Alternative to the Bentel Plan for M Contracts

[Copperfields]

In private e-mails, Rich has confirmed that he believes that the intent behind Matt B's proposal was to delay the long-term contract decision for M-contract players - especially those fringe players who may not get significant playing time early in their careers. It was not necessarily the intent to "lock up" M-contract players for a greater portion of their careers. If that's the case, I have an alternative to propose.

I don't want to steer discussion away from Matt B's original proposal - we can certainly still consider it and vote on it one way or the other. That's why I started a separate thread rather than hijacking the original, which can be found here: cfcl.proboards19.com/index.cgi?board=general&action=display&thread=1169929520.

After swapping some e-mails with Rich and confirming how Matt's proposal came about, I think the following idea might address the same problems without some of the inherent danger. It takes elements of Matt's original proposal, and combines it with some ideas sparked by Rich and Matt G.

The Problem
I really understand the feeling that the contract decision comes much too soon for some players - I've been there. Unfortunately, making concessions to allow more time for those players means you're also allowing teams that drafted star minor leaguers to hang onto them for a significant chunk of their careers.

We're tried to address this problem with the X-contract rule, which postpones the long-term contract decision for former M-contract players for a year. The problem, as Rich alluded to in an early post, is that not all "years" are created equal. Let's look at a few former M-contract players who are currently on C contracts (eligible for X or long-term contracts): Ryan Howard, Chris Burke, and JJ Hardy.

• Ryan Howard debuted in 2005 and has compiled 932 AB at the major league level.
  
  
• Chris Burke actually came to the majors a season earlier than Howard, but because the Astros didn't have a place for him to play, and with some injuries tossed in, Burke has received only 700 major league AB.
  
  
• JJ Hardy came up in 2005, the same as Howard, but due to injuries he's played barely half as much as Howard has, getting only 500 AB.

I don't think anyone would argue that I'll have plenty of performance data available when I need to decide if Howard is worth a LTC this spring. The owners of Burke and especially Hardy will have a little tougher time of it though. Some minor leaguers get promoted to the majors and step right into a starting role. Others take a while to get established for one reason or another.

The Proposal
As Rich pointed out, our rules and contract clocks are based in years, while our information about players' abilities accumulates in AB and IP. What if we provided some standard baseline for all minor leaguers before their contract clock starts ticking? Just for sake of discussion, say 200 AB for hitters and 75 IP for pitchers. Here's how it would work:

When a minor league player is called from the minors by his major league team, his contract will change from M to R (for Rookie, of course). The player will remain on an R contract (accruing stats for his CFCL team if on the active roster) until he reaches 200 At-Bats or 75 IP in the major leagues. Once that threshold is met, the contract changes to D and from that point on the player moves through the normal contract progression (including X contract).

Basically, this gives all M-contract hitters a 200-AB / 75-IP audition in the majors before his contract starts ticking at full speed. A couple key points to note:

• The contract changes from M to R automatically, as soon as the player gets called up by his NL team.
  
  
• The 200 AB/75 IP limits are cumulative, not single season.
  
  
• If a player on an R contract reaches the end of the season without having passed the 200 AB or 75 IP career marks, his contract will revert to M status on the day after the season ends. That way he can still be kept on Reserve as an M-contract player going into Draft Day (assuming he's in the minors). If he is on the major league roster on Draft Day, he'll keep his R-contract status and:
  • Must be placed on the Active Roster of his CFCL team
    
  • Will count as a major league keeper
    
  • Will count against the $2.60 Draft Day spending limit

Here are some of the benefits I see of this approach:

• You'll be able to activate a minor leaguer as soon as he's promoted without fear of his "clock ticking". I guess it is ticking in a sense, but at a much slower rate than usual. It won't actually kick into high gear (the normal D - C - X progression) until he reaches the AB or IP limit, which, depending on his role, can be that same season or a couple years down the line. All this means you no longer need to keep a productive player on Reserve just to preserve his M-contract status.
  
  
• It eliminates at least part of the season vs playing time bias -- all minor leaguers will get the same number of AB or IP as a cushion to get started. Some players - the Ryan Howards and David Wrights - will reach that limit the same year they're promoted, which means nothing will really change for them under this rule. They'll still end the season with a D contract, just like they do now. Other players - the JJ Hardys or Chris Burkes - might not reach that limit until a year or two down the road, depending on how they're used by their major league team.

The big unknown with my proposal is this: where to set those AB and IP limits? They ought to be higher than the current "rookie status" limits, but shouldn't be so high that guys are into their second year as a starter before the contract kicks up to D. They should definitely be a level that's reachable if a player is promoted to the majors for the first time mid-season and performs as a starter (or near-starter) for the rest of the year.

Whew! Thoughts?

[Nick's Picts (archived)]

On first pass, this is more palatable, but I still hesitate to support this proposal. I'm all for upping the cumulative limits from 150AB/50IP before starting the clock, but I think that when a CFCL team moves a player to their active roster that contract should become a D contract.

On a more abstract level, I think rule changes that more accurately reflect player value or make fantasy baseball more like the real game are great additions. I think that there are some things we cannot adequately model however. One such thing is the whole ML infrastructure going from the draft, signing bonuses, options, rule 5 drafts, and arbitration. The current system is a relatively fair way of introducing minor league talent into the CFCL. It rewards teams who engage in advance scouting of the minors and gets players into the draft pool before their career is half over. In short, I would amenable to looking at increasing the cumulative AB/IP to a more reasonable level, but I'm not too keen on adding additional contract types and letting teams derive stats from players who are not on the payroll.

[stones]

nickpicts said:

On first pass, this is more palatable, but I still hesitate to support this proposal. I'm all for upping the cumulative limits from 150AB/50IP before starting the clock, but I think that when a CFCL team moves a player to their active roster that contract should become a D contract.

On a more abstract level, I think rule changes that more accurately reflect player value or make fantasy baseball more like the real game are great additions. I think that there are some things we cannot adequately model however. One such thing is the whole ML infrastructure going from the draft, signing bonuses, options, rule 5 drafts, and arbitration. The current system is a relatively fair way of introducing minor league talent into the CFCL. It rewards teams who engage in advance scouting of the minors and gets players into the draft pool before their career is half over. In short, I would amenable to looking at increasing the cumulative AB/IP to a more reasonable level, but I'm not too keen on adding additional contract types and letting teams derive stats from players who are not on the payroll.

Well stated Nick. I agree completely. With these comments mirroring my thoughts, I continue to be against a change in this rule. Sometimes luck is just simply that and it comes in both flavors, good and Steve's. If Hardy (and it hurts to use him as an example) were the healthy and Howard were the constantly injured guy, that would just be BAD luck for Howards owner and good luck for Hardy's.

Again, if we change this rule, I would want to see some penalty or other impact associated with this. I am a believer in the old adage of each action should have an equal but opposite reaction. Maybe we raise the extra year values from .05 to .07 or .08 just to make someone have to reach a little harder to keep a rising star.

As always, if it ain't broke (which I would say it ain't) then don't fix it. Mr. Cliche strikes again.

In a weak attempt at being a smartahole, I have Ricky Weeks, I would like to keep him just a little longer because he really hasn't paid off for me yet. While he wasn't a minor leaguer I drafted, someone did and I probably traded a minor leaguer in the package to get him. Therefore, I would like to propose that an owner can keep a guy from his favorite MLB team who has yet to reach his previously promised potential for two extra seasons after he starts to earn me the cost of his contract.

[Copperfields]

nickpicts said:

In short, I would amenable to looking at increasing the cumulative AB/IP to a more reasonable level, but I'm not too keen on adding additional contract types and letting teams derive stats from players who are not on the payroll.

Interesting word choice Nick, in terms of not being "on the payroll," since this is the one proposal designed to get players on the payroll immediately.

By contrast, our current system actually encourages you to horde your minor leaguers on your Reserve List until they reach the AB/IP limits. Raising those limits would only make that odd practice more pronounced. Not to pick on Matt (we've all done this same thing), but he let guys like Stephen Drew and Lastings Milledge pile up stats on his Reserve List because he didn't want to lose a year of eligibility. He eventually activated them only when they'd passed the AB limit.

One could argue that the Bulls were not in a pennant race last year, so no harm was done by keeping the players reserved in an attempt to save a year of contract. On the other hand, the Bulls were involved in some pretty close races in TB, RS, and RBI and might have been able to pick up the point they needed to pass the Lambchops. Regardless, though, doesn't it make the league better if all teams put their best players on the field rather than consigning good producers to Reserve?

My proposal makes it pointless to keep these guys on Reserve - it gets them on the active roster and on the payroll (their salaries count!) immediately. Or at least it eliminates the incentive to keep them reserved. At the same time, it still provides a mechanism for delaying the LTC decision for minor leaguers who come up and receive only spotty playing time. It does this while also ensuring that players who come up into starting roles move more quickly into the "standard" contract progression.

Raising the AB and IP limits would only allow teams to let productive rookie players rot on their Reserve List even longer than they do now, and thereby postpone the need to activate them until they're closer to the peak portion of their careers.

Truth be told, I fall more in line with Steve's thinking. I feel the current system is just fine, and agree that the breaks are the breaks. I felt the Bentel proposal was a little too extreme, and thought my proposal was a decent comprimise that had the added benefit of eliminating the whole "Reserve List Rot" syndrome, which has always bothered me.

[Nick's Picts (archived)]

copperfields said:

Interesting word choice Nick, in terms of not being "on the payroll," since this is the one proposal designed to get players on the payroll immediately.

You're right, David. My phrase didn't really get at what I was going after. Perhaps I should elaborate a bit.

By "on the payroll" I really meant "start their path toward free agency." Your proposal strikes me as a way of introducing a kind of "options" option where MLB teams can yo-yo borderline ML talent a certain number of times without incurring a penalty for not starting them toward free agency. By my understanding, CFCL teams would be permitted to bring up ML players without penalty whenever their MLB counterparts do without incurring penalties for doing so. Basically, letting the CFCL team experiment in the same way a MLB team might.

This gets at my statements about modeling the whole ML infrastructure in fantasy baseball. While I think it would be cool to try to derive something and add it as another dimension to fantasy baseball, I don't think this is the place to do it and I don't imagine most of the owners in the CFCL are into pursuing it.

Anyway, I digress...

The principle benefit I see accruing from this proposal is that CFCL teams can more easily benefit from "free" stats when an MLB team starts handing out cups of coffee. If the issue is that more time is needed to evaluate whether a certain kind of player is deserving of an LTC then simply increasing the cumulative AB/IP is the simplest way to go about this. One can even imagine a system where we look at AB/IP in a season or some total number of AB/IP in a career. Pulling numbers out of my rear orifice: say 175AB/60IP in a season or 350AB/120IP cumulative, whichever comes first.

Even though this is not in any particular flow--and I'm too lazy to go back and work this into my screed so far--my biggest issue is that an owner can use stats from an edge case from season to season but not have that reflected in their budget at draft time.

And, yes, I realize that you and I are really a lot closer on this than it would appear on first reading. I do thank you for thinking about the problem Matt B. was trying to solve and dressing it up in a different suit. I remember sweating out the last two weeks of the 2005 season hoping that Cain would get shelled at least once to keep him under 50IP after his call-up in late August/early September. Lucky for me he came in at 48 (or was it 49?) IP in 2005 so my gamble in 2005 paid off.

I think we're conflating the MLB team's need to see a player in live action in order to properly evaluate him verses a CFCL team seeing a player in live action (read: have on their active roster). If the question is really just sample size, then the obvious answer is to increase the size of the sample.

And I realize I have just repeated myself.


On review:

In all of that, I also failed to add that I do see the point you are trying to make w/r/t reserve roster rot. I guess I see the benefit of each team fielding its strongest roster at any given point outweighed by the potential harm of keeping players out of the draft pool for another year or two.

[Copperfields]

I hereby recind this proposal in light of the fact that:

1. It wasn't really addressing the intent of the Bentels' original proposal,

2. I like the Bentels' rephrasing of their original proposal better than this one,

3. There was zero outside interest in my alternate to begin with.