Wednesday, April 27, 2011

Tips For New Owners

I know there are probably a hundred other tips I could have published here that don’t come to mind but I at least wanted to cover some common ground, issues I have seen that come up early in every new season as rookie owners join our league.  Please do read this and also listen to the other veterans in the chat forum, who will be more than glad to help you.  I know it’s easy to say “hey, I’ll just manage my team as I would a real team and I know a lot about baseball so let’s get going” but take a moment to pause and consider how this game might be different than the real game.  Above all, have fun and be friendly to all and you’ll get the most out of this game.

A few tips for new players:

Budgeting

Player Payroll: 
The amount in this area is used to pay the player's salaries. Research is required to help figure out how much is needed. You will need to know how much is needed to resign your ML Free Agents you want to keep, Player arbitration costs, current payroll and several other costs that are paid from this area. As a rule you could use this formula: Current payroll + Free Agent keepers + Arbitration keepers + $5M at a minimum. If you plan to enter the free agent market you might add some money  depending on how many ML players you want to go after. The open free agent market can be a hit or miss proposition for ML players. You will also need to resign minor league free agents and open market minor league free agents to fill out your minors. One thing to note is some of your minor league free agents may want a ML contract and for the most part they are not worth it.

Prospect Payroll:
This area is used to pay signing bonuses for international free agents and amateur draft picks. Their salary comes from the Player Payroll. Internationals can cost a fortune for a blue chip player but if you do not have high draft picks this might be the best way to get a future star.

Coaches Payroll:
Coaches allow your players to get better at all levels. ML coaches are expensive to replace. You will need to find out which coaches want to return and their cost and how much it might cost to replace others. The Hitting Coach and Pitching Coach are the costliest to replace. Next is the Fielding Instructor. 1B, 3B and Bullpen Coach are not as costly. Although most Bench Coaches are expensive, their function is disputable at the ML level and might be more important with a young team. Most minor league coaches can be found for around the minimum costs, with the HC and PC at the upper minor levels possibly being more expensive.

Domestic College Scouting Dept:
How much money spent here determines how well and how many college players are scouted and that you see in the Amateur Draft.

Domestic High School Scouting Dept:
How much money spent here determines how well and how many high school players are scouted and that you see in the Amateur Draft.

International Scouting Dept:
How much money spent here determines how well and how many international players are scouted.

Advance Scouting Dept:
How much money spent here determines how well you see any player that is or has been on a roster. All players current ratings are seen by everyone the same. Their projected ratings however are not, the more spent here the truer the projections become. In your first few seasons with a team you may want a higher advance scouting budget, since you are not familiar with your players. After a few seasons, you have a better idea as to how your players are and you might not need a higher budget here. If you do a lot of trading, you may want this higher too.

Training:
Money spent here helps prevent injuries as the guide says, but it is more than that also. Think of it as bulking up in the weight room and thus helps being physically prepared to play on the field. With good training and coaches a players ratings improve.

Medical:
If a player gets injured, the more spent in this area lessens the injury and allows him to rehab better and faster. If you have players who get hurt a lot, you want more money in this area so that they can get back on the field quicker. If many of your players have health ratings of 90+, then you can skimp in this area a bit.

Trades:

While it’s entirely the right of a player to “go for it now” or choose to build a team slowly and methodically over many seasons, the single-greatest source of arguments in any league can be lopsided trades.  Please understand that if a trade is vetoed by a large number of players, it’s not simply a parental activity, protecting you from the bad deal.  Vetoes are often done to protect the long-term good of the league in that it is possible for one team to aggressively pursue the best players of a newly-assigned team (with a rookie owner) while others are more patient, courteous and respectful, offering only fair and balanced deals that have the potential to help both teams.  A new owner might realize within months that one or two deals weren’t a quick fix for the rebuilding situation he/she faces and then abandons that team at the end of the year while the rest of the league has to continue battling another team that built itself through lopsided trades with rookie owners who end up being long gone.  Fortunately, it’s not as common in this league as in others and some of the biggest offenders have departed, perhaps because the league did use its voting power to veto trades in the past.

Also, vetoing is not necessarily a league-wide question of whether a trade helps the new owner’s team.  Many times, a new owner argues that the trade is beneficial and says to the other owners ’please don’t protect me just because I’m a rookie’ and this is because they really want the deal because they need a certain commodity X.  What they fail to realize is that they could have achieved even more, likely much more, than just X for the players they are trading away if they had let the entire league know that a certain player was available in a trade.  The more offers you have to choose from, the more often you will find the best possible deal.  To do this, if a star or potential star is being asked about in a deal, new players are encouraged to post in the chat forum that “I am being asked about Joe Smith and so I ask everyone to send official offers my way so I can choose the one I think helps my team the most.”  It’s much more difficult for owners in the league to argue that a new owner is being exploited if the new owner openly said a player was available and had access to many offers, from which they chose the one that they felt was the best deal.

On that note, be wary of trades that offer several mediocre players for one star or potential star.  Mediocre players, by definition, are often available easily through the waiver wire or free agency.  Thus, if you are offered three players rated 70 for one player rated 80+, that can be a trade where you can often do better simply by asking in the forum if anyone would like to make offers for your 80+ rated player.  It doesn’t mean that this is necessarily a bad deal but it can be worthy of further exploration to see what’s out there.
Also, always be sure to check a player’s contract.  Sometimes, a player may look like a top talent but has extremely high contract amounts locked into their future.  These sorts of acquisitions can weigh a club down to eliminate financial flexibility in future seasons.

Finally, until the annual schedule is set and you’ve also set your team budget, there’s no way for a new owner to know what the projected ratings of players are.  Therefore, be VERY hesitant before discussing possible trade deals with veterans asking about players even before budgets are set.  Remember, owners who are returning may remember what sort of potential such players had shown previously and they could be interested in your player for that very reason.