3/19/2023

Preparing for the Free Agency Era

I’ll do another article later (here) explaining the purpose of all these maneuvers in detail; this one is more of a heads-up and a reminder to myself what needs to be done and when.

The nutshell version: we will begin making changes to the financial settings this off-season. Contract extensions will be permissible starting then, as will be multi-year contracts (up to four years). We will begin a policy of keeping all teams at the same Fan Interest, Fan Loyalty, and Market Size; this will tend to limit the gap between the “richest” and “poorest” teams. A Luxury Tax will also be implemented; teams spending over 120% of the average payroll will be taxed and that revenue will be distributed evenly amongst the bottom-spending teams.

Free Agency will technically be implemented after the 1964 season but since all one-year contracts will be automatically renewed at that time there will be no free agents (aside from the usual pool of castoffs and never-wuzes) until the 1965–1966 off-season, which is also when expansion/realignment will occur (unless we have to put that off due to an insufficient number of GMs).

1963–1964 Off-season

League settings:

• Attendance settings
• Check “Apply Gate Share to season tickets”
• Team Revenue settings
• National Media Contract fixed?: Yes, same contract for every team
• Team Owner controls Budget?: No, entire revenue available
• Revenue Sharing: Luxury Tax
• Soft Cap (% of average payroll): 120
• Tax above Soft Cap (%): 20
• Team Expenses & Salary settings
• Player Dev. Budget Baseline: $0
• Contract Years Maximum: 4 years
• Contract Extensions: Allowed

Team settings (do this for all teams):

• Fan Interest (1–100): 80
• Fan Interest Modifier: 0
• Fan Loyalty (1–10): 8
• Market Size (1–20): 12
• Local Media Contract: set to baseline setting in League Settings
• Local Media Contract Years Left: 1
• Media Revenue This Year: set to National + Local

1964 Opening Day

Team settings (do this for all teams):

• Fan Interest (1–100): 80

1964–1965 Off-season

League settings:

• Financial & Free Agency settings
• Uncheck “Enable Reserve-Clause Era Rules”
• Minimum Service Years for Free Agency: 6 Years
• Service Years Required for Arbitration: 3 Years
• Super 2 Deadline: No Super 2 Players Allowed
• Compensation for lost FA’s: No Compensation
• Allow Free Agents from other Leagues: Disabled
• Allow Free Agents to leave Leagues: Disabled
• Reset Service Time for FA’s signed from other leagues: Disabled
• Foreign players become FAs on contract end: Disabled
• Allow Contract Opt-Outs: Disabled
• Team Expenses & Salary settings
• Player Dev. Budget Baseline: $0

Team settings (do this for all teams):

• Fan Interest (1–100): 80
• Fan Interest Modifier: 0
• Fan Loyalty (1–10): 8
• Market Size (1–20): 12
• Local Media Contract: set to baseline setting in League Settings
• Local Media Contract Years Left: 1
• Media Revenue This Year: set to National + Local

1965 Opening Day

Team settings (do this for all teams):

• Fan Interest (1–100): 80

1965–1966 Off-season

Add expansion teams

League settings:

• Team Expenses & Salary settings
• Player Dev. Budget Baseline: $0

Team settings (do this for all teams):

• Fan Interest (1–100): 80
• Fan Interest Modifier: 0
• Fan Loyalty (1–10): 8
• Market Size (1–20): 12
• Local Media Contract: set to baseline setting in League Settings
• Local Media Contract Years Left: 1
• Media Revenue This Year: set to National + Local

1966 Opening Day

Team settings (do this for all teams):

• Fan Interest (1–100): 80

All subsequent off-seasons

League settings:

• Team Expenses & Salary settings
• Player Dev. Budget Baseline: $0

Team settings (do this for all teams):

• Fan Interest (1–100): 80
• Fan Interest Modifier: 0
• Fan Loyalty (1–10): 8
• Market Size (1–20): 12

All subsequent Opening Days

Team settings (do this for all teams):

• Fan Interest (1–100): 80

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