Psuedo-Service Time

[WinnieThaPujols]

This is a very long post. I highly suggest you read it all to understand what the hell I did. It shouldn't take that long to read though.

You hear a lot about "service time" in the Majors. Well, not really. The mainstream doesn't really talk about it. But it basically works something like this: when a player comes up from the minors, his "service time clock" starts ticking. Basically, once he accumulates six seasons worth of major league time, he can become a free agent.

These six seasons of being under control are broken down into two "types:"

Arbitration in Layman's Terms

a. the first three years the player is at the team's mercy; he essentially will be paid the league minimum

b. the next three years he's eligible for arbitration; I don't really want to explain arbitration if you don't know how it works. Basically, the longer you've been in the league, the more you have the potential to make... and how "good" you have been determines how much you'll make. Typically, players in arbitration make significantly less than they would on the open market.

Now, what does this have to do with MVP? MVP has a huge flaw, I think. Sooo many players are signed to one-year deals, so when the first season ends, you've got to re-sign them. Far too often, these players make way more than they should.

Example

Anthony Reyes is signed to a 1 year, $100 K deal. When that contract expires, he usually re-signs for 2 years, $2.7 million. That's pathetic and stupid. In the game, he'll average a salary of roughly $2 million a year for three seasons through the third year (3 years total, $5.8 million total). In real life, he'll be making the league minimum for the next three years!

I wanted to fix that. How do I do it? I just signed him to a four year deal. Since Anthony Reyes was first called up this year, I gave him three years at 300 K (league minimum), and then gave him one year at $4 million (I'll explain this later). So in total, his contract is basically 4 years at $1.2 million. ($4 million + $300 K + $300 K + $300 K ~ $5.2 mill; $5.2 divided by 4 years =~ $1.2 million...).

Implementation

I went through every player on the major league roster who had less than six years of service time; basically, this means that, barring a trade or release, they will be with their team next year.

Next, I found out how many years it is until they're a free agent. The maximum number of years I signed a player to is 4.

The third step was to find out how many of those years the player would be making at (or around) the league minimum. The maximum number of years this could be was three [based on part "a" of the arbitration layman's guide].

Fourth, I found out how many years they'd be going to arbitration, and assigned a salary for each of these years. The salary is based on their potential rating -- a high-pontential player will likely become good, and will likely have good seasons. As a result, they would make a lot in arbitration. Each year of arbitration they'd make progressively more and more money.

Fifth, I found the total money he would make until he hit free agency. I divided this number by the number of years until free agency, and then converted it to points.

The above was for players on the major leaguer roster. For the minor leaguers:

All single A players under 26 had their contract length changed to 6 years (3 years in the minors, 3 years at the league minimum when they get to the bigs).

All double A players under 26 had their contract length changed to 5 years (to years to develop, 3 years at the league minimum in the pros).

All triple A players under 26 had their contract length changed to 4 years (1 year to develop, three years at the league minimum in the pros).

Why the "age 26" thing? It's an attempt to filter out journeyman minor leaguers.

Summary

So what does this do?

It makes Dynasty/Owner mode more enjoyable. After the first year, you won't have seemingly hundreds of contracts to re-new. With the Cardinals, I had about 20 total free agents (maybe 8-10 major leaguers, and a handful of journeyman minor leaguers).

It makes things more realistic. Young players in the game are incredibly valuable in real life, because they're so cheap! This attempts to give these guys added value.

It makes the computer smarter. How? It spares them decisions they have to make! Simulating without my implementation, I saw guys like Miguel Cabrera, Jeff Franceour, Josh Johnson (etc) in free agency... it will be years before they hit the market!

It will be easier to be a small-market team. You will have guys locked up to years at cheap values (LIKE THE WAY IT REALLY IS), so you won't have to worry about paying guys $2+ million after their first year in the league!

Final Thoughts

Consider this "mod" (it's really just a massive edit to a set of rosters) to be in BETA and risky. It's very well possible that it could throw off the "virtual market" in the game, because it alters so many contracts. So far that hasn't been the case, but it's possible that we see that type of thing in the future.

The game seems to give arbitration-esque contracts to some players...but not all. Sometimes a young guy will be re-signed for 1 year and the league minimum... and then there are guys like Wainwright, Ervin Santana and Reyes, who inexplicably get way too much money way too early in their career.

I'm using DarkEnigma's free agency mod, which I'm a huge advocate of. Basically, the free agents are very, very reflective of real life... but the stupid 22-year-old players that should be under contract for years are no longer there!

Download

http://winniethepujols.clawz.com/BETA.zip

I hope that works. Just open the MBE file with MVP Edit, and then extract to your database folder... make sure you backup your original files.

Highly, highly recommend this:

http://www.mvpmods.com/Downloads/details/id=2828.html

All I want is for people to install this and sim a few seasons and tell me if free agent seems realistic... the most important thing is that there should not be a lot of young guys in the pool. In fact, there should be practically none! Really, people who've been in the league for six years or less should not be in there.

Examples at to how contracts work:

Frankie Rodriguez

Originally signed at: 1255 points, 1 year (roughly $3.6 million)

Frankie has about 3 years of service time. He'll went through arbitration in 2006, and will go through it in 2006 and 2007. Based on his potential [5 stars / super], I said:

1st year of arbitration he'll make $4 million

2nd year he'll make $6 million

3rd year he'll make $8 million

3 years, $18 million; that translates to $6 million per year, which equals about 1816 points.

New contract: 3 years, 1816 points.

Anthony Reyes:

Originally signed at: 1 year, 100 points (roughly $331 K)

This is Anthony's first year in the league. In 2006, 2007 and 2008, he'll likely be making the league minimum. In 2009, he'll be eligible for arbitration. Based on his 5 star / super potential, he'll make $4 million in 2009. His contract breaks down as follows:

1st year - league minimum (~ 330 K)

2nd year - league minimum (~ 330 K)

3rd year - league minimum (~ 330 K)

4th year - 1st year of arbitration + super potential = $4 million

4 years, $5.2 million. That's roughly $1.2 million a year, or about 400 points a year.

New contract: 4 years, 400 points

Cody Ross:

Originally signed at: 1 year, 100 points (roughly $330 K)

Ross didn't break a full year of service time until after this year, so he won't be a free agent for a long, long time. He has 2 star / some potential, so his contract will look like this:

1st year - league minimum (~330 K)

2nd year - league minimum (~330 K)

3rd year - league minimum (~330 K)

4th year - first year of arbitration + 2 star potential = $1 million

4 years, $2.2 million. That's roughly $550 K a year...

New contract: 4 years, 166 points

[krawhitham]

I just edited the resign.csv file

I took the average age of all rookies, added 6 years, and made all ages under that resign at 100%

[WinnieThaPujols]

I just edited the resign.csv file

I took the average age of all rookies, added 6 years, and made all ages under that resign at 100%

Then why do I see guys like Jeff Franceour, Josh Johnson, Miguel Cabrera...etc... appearing in free agency?

This method forces the teams to re-sign these players, because, well... they don't have to do it -- it's essentially done automatically.

Plus I think the fact that you have to re-sign 800 people after you sim a year is a problem and a huge burden.

[krawhitham]

Well because I never released it, I talked about it before and most people were against it

[WinnieThaPujols]

Well because I never released it, I talked about it before and most people were against it

Ah... I thought you meant that this was implemented into the 06 Final.

What do you think of what I did? I realize your method is easier but do you think this is more precise or anything? Or just a waste of time? I'm interested to see what results people have when they sim.

[krawhitham]

I'm all for it, it should be done for UR too

[Hory]

I was thinking of implementing something like this in MVP 94, but what advantage is there to editing all the contract lengths for hundreds of players rather than just editing a few values in the resign.csv file?

I'm not putting down your work & idea, because it is a very good idea, just wondering which is the better approach to take?

[D-Unit]

This is a good idea. I hate re-signing half of my organization every year. And my AAA pitchers always want million dollar contracts for the minors...

[WinnieThaPujols]

I was thinking of implementing something like this in MVP 94, but what advantage is there to editing all the contract lengths for hundreds of players rather than just editing a few values in the resign.csv file?

I'm not putting down your work & idea, because it is a very good idea, just wondering which is the better approach to take?

Yep, no offense taken.

Well, because as I understand it, resign.csv is only relative to age... which can be a problem.

Think of it this way:

Jason Bay didn't get into the major leagues until he was 26 years old. Albert Pujols came up when he was 21 years old. If resign.csv is only based on the average age of rookies, it would include Albert, but Jason Bay could very well escape to free agency, since resign.csv would only be telling the computer to re-sign players at a 100% rate up to age X (6 years greater than the average rookie.. so maybe age 24 or so?).

The other thing is that I think you get more accurate contract values by doing it "manually." In a four year span doing it this was, Anthony Reyes makes about $5.2 million... under MVP's mechanics, he would make $100 K + $2.8 million + $2.8 million + probably something like $4 million. My version he gets roughly $5 million, MVP's version he gets $10 million. That's 50% less (the idea is to have these guys CHEAP like they SHOULD be), and that definitely adds up when you have countless players to re-sign.