The salary cap (either version) shouldn't be that hard to understand. Perhaps Zach and I are partially guilty of a confused presentation of our ideas. It is my wish to remedy any confusion with this post.
As it stands, there is a somewhat massive imbalance of talent in the league. This also leaves the better teams with vast amounts of resources to acquire future talent (see: Offseason 2008-09, Connor trades Harang, Ankiel, McGowan and Cabrera to acquire Matt Wieters).
A worse-off team than mine may not have been able to pay the price to move up and get Wieters.
The salary cap, by definition, gives each team the same amount of resources to acquire and accumulate talent. Each team will (eventually) have $260 with which pay their players. No more, no less.
Usually, salaries are established at the league's creation through an open auction. Since we did a snake draft instead, we currently have no player salaries. There are a couple of ways to remedy this problem:
1) Determine player salaries based on PECOTA projections (Zach's proposal)*
2) Determine player salaries based on past-season performance (Connor's proposal)
After we initially set salaries by either of these methods, my proposal is that prices would be set by the market going forward. We would agree on a rate for salary inflation (say, $3/year), and if the owner of Torii Hunter was willing to pay $15 for Torii Hunter in 2008 but is not willing to pay $18 in 2009, Hunter can be cut. Hunter will then be bid on and auctioned off. His salary will be determined by the prevailing market price (say, $12).
This obviously gives more value to young, cheap players that can be picked up off of free agents for $1 and experience a modest price increase each season, creating a good chance that they will overperform their salary for many years. But you aren't going to win a league with a bunch of $1 rookies (Zach's apparent strategy for this season notwithstanding).
If you still have questions, I encourage you to go through the Google Doc emailed out by Zach. I'm still not 100% done with my proposal, but most of the meat should be on there. If you're unable to view the Doc, let Zach know.
*While setting these prices retroactively is something of a tricky subject leaving it impossible to be completely fair to everyone, I can't justify the logic of setting retroactive prices using projections of the future. This could be particularly cruel to the managers that this new system was meant to most help, given the gaudy PECOTA projections for some young players currently on under-performing (is that the correct PC lingo?) teams.... Thus, my opposition to Zach's sub-idea.
Addendum: There are no "picks" under this system (also, there are no "picks" under the current system). There is only "cap space". It's just like every other major professional sport except baseball. e.g., The Panthers have $20 million in cap space. Therefore, they sign Player A at $8 million, Player B at $4 million, Player C at $5 million, and Player D at $3 million. You might even say that these players are "auctioned" on the open market and the highest-bidding team wins the player. Yeah, it costs money to sign Peyton Manning, but with it comes the benefit of Peyton Manning's production.
2 comments:
I argue most my point in the google doc, so go there and read my arguments...they are between mine and connor's proposals.
But just in short, the major reason I oppose Connor's idea is because his way automatically adds $81 (27 players x 3 dollars) to a teams salary cap after each season. This will force every team to drop their whole bench after every season and then go from there. Thats not the point of a salary cap or of a keppers league. In my way, you will only get dollars added to your teams salary cap based on what your team is projected to do. If you team is projected to do horribly, you wont incur much of a salary cap increase and vice versa.
For the most part, the top teams have the most money and the bottom teams have the least (other than kyle who acquired some of the top pitchers). I would say that, relative to overall team salary cap, PETCOA did well this year. I propose that, until we notice something unfair with their projections, we stay with them for determining player salary value.
Would a set percentage increase make more sense than a set gross increase? Maybe an annual increase equal to the greater of 10% and $1 would prevent someone from needing to unload their entire bench of $1 players who just suddenly quadrupled in value.
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