God dammit I had a really long writeup going here and then I accidentally refreshed my page and undid my work. So, this is going to be a condensed response.
Basically there are a few issues at play, and the one I'm going to focus on is the idea that contracts really mean nothing and free agency and player movement (as well as parity) is hindered by it.
So, how do we fix it? Well, I have a few ideas. I'm sure none of them are GOOD ideas, but I'm hoping they get the juices flowing and lead to discussion.
Let's say you're Mr. Moneybags Infinite, and money is literally just a concept to you. You can go and buy Dotts subscriptions for half the league and not bat an eye. So, when it comes time to sign a new extension, you really don't have to care because you know you want to stay where you are and you know contract money means nothing to you. For this discussion, let's pretend that he's signing a new deal while his player was at his peak, not just a walking corpse that the Yeti are just reenacting Weekend at Bernie's with.
At his peak, Wolfie McDummy had 1,400 TPE. That is the fourth-highest amount of any player on the TPE tracker. So he wants to come back to Colorado, and signs his league minimum of $5,000,000/year. He's happy because he stays where he wants. Colorado is happy because they're getting a completely decked-out player and still have $80,000,000 to spend on filling their roster. Win/win. Well, what if we made it so that if you sign the minimum, your player is capped at a specific amount of TPE. There would have to be some scaling involved, but we could come up with a, "projected value" or, "expected value" of the contract, and use that to determine the TPE cap. So, in the example I'm using, let's say McDummy signs for $5mil, and his expected value is actually $7mil. We would put some scale out there saying that every X amount of dollars means you lose that much FROM the minimum TPE number on the signing sheet. So maybe Colorado can sign Wolfie to $5mil/year, but his build is capped at 900 TPE for the length of the deal.
This one is a weird option that I haven't fully fleshed out, but basically what it boils down to is you can sign for less money but you won't be able to afford certain things. Only problem here is that players will probably all want a shit load of money and we'll end up burning up teams' salary caps. We would have to fundamentally change the contract system to allow for bonuses and other means for players to get paid more than from just their contract.
Another simple option that might not break anything. If you just finished up a contract with your team and you want to be extended, they have to pay you more than they did last time. Now we could make this only apply if they paid you less than 50% above the minimum. So, any team that signed a 1000 TPE player for anything less than $7,500,000/year would have to pay them a certain percentage more than THAT amount the following season. My thought would be 25% would be fair. This would also apply retroactively, so if you signed all your rookies to $1 million/year, and by the time they were due for an extension they went up to the next payment bracket, you have to pay them more based on the amount difference you would have had to pay them. So, for example, if you signed them to $1 million, and then in the next three seasons they still were under the TPE bracket, then you have to pay them $1.5 million (the base of 50% over minimum) plus another 25% on top of that, for a total of $1,875,000/year. If they went up to the next bracket where their minimum is now $2mil, then you would have to pay them at LEAST 50% above the minimum.
These numbers would obviously be adjusted, but you get the point. The main point is if you're signing a bunch of players to league minimums to keep your dynasty going, well, you're going to be on borrowed time because eventually they'll cost too much.
This one is really not even half-baked, but one that I've been thinking about. Now, these would be a limited set of bonuses that every team has and has the same amount of, and once you use one to sign a player you can't use it again until their contract it up, EVEN if they go inactive. Also, if you trade said player, they still get that bonus and it comes off your books. What sorts of bonuses would there be? Well, that's tough. We have to make them enough of an incentive to really try and sway player to move around, but we can't make them just obscenely powerful that they break balance. It could be something like, "if you sign with us, we have a regression limiter boost that will cut your regression by 25%." Or even something like special access to a seventh tier of equipment that they can buy to get more TPE. These would have to be voted on and balanced obviously, but it might give someone incentive to sign somewhere.
And that's all the crappy ideas I have. I think at the end of the day we all would like to see some more parity in the league without it hurting the overall enjoyment of the users.
Basically there are a few issues at play, and the one I'm going to focus on is the idea that contracts really mean nothing and free agency and player movement (as well as parity) is hindered by it.
So, how do we fix it? Well, I have a few ideas. I'm sure none of them are GOOD ideas, but I'm hoping they get the juices flowing and lead to discussion.
Option 1: Let a player sign for less money, but cap their TPE.
Let's say you're Mr. Moneybags Infinite, and money is literally just a concept to you. You can go and buy Dotts subscriptions for half the league and not bat an eye. So, when it comes time to sign a new extension, you really don't have to care because you know you want to stay where you are and you know contract money means nothing to you. For this discussion, let's pretend that he's signing a new deal while his player was at his peak, not just a walking corpse that the Yeti are just reenacting Weekend at Bernie's with.
At his peak, Wolfie McDummy had 1,400 TPE. That is the fourth-highest amount of any player on the TPE tracker. So he wants to come back to Colorado, and signs his league minimum of $5,000,000/year. He's happy because he stays where he wants. Colorado is happy because they're getting a completely decked-out player and still have $80,000,000 to spend on filling their roster. Win/win. Well, what if we made it so that if you sign the minimum, your player is capped at a specific amount of TPE. There would have to be some scaling involved, but we could come up with a, "projected value" or, "expected value" of the contract, and use that to determine the TPE cap. So, in the example I'm using, let's say McDummy signs for $5mil, and his expected value is actually $7mil. We would put some scale out there saying that every X amount of dollars means you lose that much FROM the minimum TPE number on the signing sheet. So maybe Colorado can sign Wolfie to $5mil/year, but his build is capped at 900 TPE for the length of the deal.
Option 2: Make league money and contract money different buckets of money that you spend on different things.
This one is a weird option that I haven't fully fleshed out, but basically what it boils down to is you can sign for less money but you won't be able to afford certain things. Only problem here is that players will probably all want a shit load of money and we'll end up burning up teams' salary caps. We would have to fundamentally change the contract system to allow for bonuses and other means for players to get paid more than from just their contract.
Option 3: Make it cost more to re-sign players.
Another simple option that might not break anything. If you just finished up a contract with your team and you want to be extended, they have to pay you more than they did last time. Now we could make this only apply if they paid you less than 50% above the minimum. So, any team that signed a 1000 TPE player for anything less than $7,500,000/year would have to pay them a certain percentage more than THAT amount the following season. My thought would be 25% would be fair. This would also apply retroactively, so if you signed all your rookies to $1 million/year, and by the time they were due for an extension they went up to the next payment bracket, you have to pay them more based on the amount difference you would have had to pay them. So, for example, if you signed them to $1 million, and then in the next three seasons they still were under the TPE bracket, then you have to pay them $1.5 million (the base of 50% over minimum) plus another 25% on top of that, for a total of $1,875,000/year. If they went up to the next bracket where their minimum is now $2mil, then you would have to pay them at LEAST 50% above the minimum.
These numbers would obviously be adjusted, but you get the point. The main point is if you're signing a bunch of players to league minimums to keep your dynasty going, well, you're going to be on borrowed time because eventually they'll cost too much.
Option 4: Give each team a pool of special bonuses they can offer big-time free agents.
This one is really not even half-baked, but one that I've been thinking about. Now, these would be a limited set of bonuses that every team has and has the same amount of, and once you use one to sign a player you can't use it again until their contract it up, EVEN if they go inactive. Also, if you trade said player, they still get that bonus and it comes off your books. What sorts of bonuses would there be? Well, that's tough. We have to make them enough of an incentive to really try and sway player to move around, but we can't make them just obscenely powerful that they break balance. It could be something like, "if you sign with us, we have a regression limiter boost that will cut your regression by 25%." Or even something like special access to a seventh tier of equipment that they can buy to get more TPE. These would have to be voted on and balanced obviously, but it might give someone incentive to sign somewhere.
And that's all the crappy ideas I have. I think at the end of the day we all would like to see some more parity in the league without it hurting the overall enjoyment of the users.
![[Image: lip-chap.jpg?width=383&height=468]](https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/461498035348701185/777250920941223966/lip-chap.jpg?width=383&height=468)
![[Image: k4AYgU9.gif]](https://i.imgur.com/k4AYgU9.gif)
