Poll: Cost-Controlled Salary Increases

[Ben (Rays GM)]

We will be increasing the dollar amounts in the cost-controlled salary schedule for the 2018 season, in order to correct for the fact that payroll has been increasing while cost-controlled salary has remained consistent, resulting in cost-controlled players taking up a smaller percentage of overall cap (and therefore further advantaging teams with more cost-controlled assets). The question is, how much of an increase do we want - a small increase to simply correct the problem? An over-correction to give teams at the bottom (teams with fewer cost-controlled assets) a stimulus that would allow them a chance to get back in? Something in between?

For this poll, I'm proposing three options:

Option 1 - Small Increase:

Minors/1st year: $0.5 million
2nd year: $0.6 million
3rd year: $1.0 million
4th year: $1.5 million
5th year: $2.0 million
6th year: $2.5 million

(Option 1 would come with a cap increase to $130 million $135 million, mostly to cover higher cost of minor leagues)

Option 2 - Medium increase:

Minors/1st year: $0.5 million
2nd year: $1.0 million
3rd year: $1.5 million
4th year: $2.0 million
5th year: $2.5 million
6th year: $3.0 million

(Option 2 would come with a cap increase to $135 million $140 million, to cover higher cost of minor leagues and higher salaries)

Option 3 - Large increase:

Minors/1st year: $0.5 million
2nd year: $1.0 million
3rd year: $1.5 million
4th year: $2.0 million
5th year: $3.0 million
6th year: $4.0 million

(Option 3 would come with a cap increase to $140 million $145 million)

Depending on vote totals, a run-off between the top two options may be deemed necessary.

Regardless of the outcome, we will revisit the amounts again within 1-2 years and consider a further increase.

[Ben (Rays GM)]

Discussion occurred in the Collective Bargaining thread, but you are welcome to further discuss here.

I voted large, but I see pros and cons of all three options.

[Jon (Astros GM)]

Would we keep minors at .4? Or all minors and 1st year guys become .5?

[Ben (Rays GM)]

All minors and first year would become $0.5 million. Having them at the same salary is a necessity for our league rules. Even the smallest increase includes a cap increase of $5 million, which is designed to cover the increased salary of up to 50 minor leaguers.

Part of the reasoning behind the increase is that the current minimum salary in MLB is now $0.5 million. It's also a 25% increase on the original amount, which reflects the fact that cap is now 25% higher.

[Ben (Rays GM)]

Note to all:

Jamie just ran the numbers using his own roster as an example and pointed out to me that the cap increases don't do nearly enough to cover the increases in payroll. I pointed out that people would likely non-tender more players, but running the numbers on my roster he's absolutely right.

Brian and I discussed it and we think some roster-pruning isn't necessarily the worst thing (especially because it's the teams at the top who have the most cost-controlled talent stocked up who will have to do the most thinning out), but we definitely don't want people to have to over-do it. At the same time, we don't want to over-do the cap increases either, or there's a risk of there being too much money in the game. As such I've added an additional $5 million cap increase to each proposal. Instead of $130/135/140 million for the respective increases, it's now $135/140/145

[jamie]

For anyone curious about the impact of each scenario, I built a spreadsheet calculator so you can check. Just fill in columns A and B with your players, column G with their years active ("2nd Year" through "6th Year" or "Minors", or their contract years), and column H with the value of their contract if they came from Free Agency. Everything else is calculated for you. Then use the table at the top of the page to see what your resulting salary would be, and how much $ you'd have left, for each scenario.

For me, after the updates to the proposed salary caps (see Ben's post above), I'd have $15m, $8.3m, or $11.8m leftover (depending on small, medium, or large impact respectively) compared to my current $18.3m leftover. Prior to the recent change in salary cap, the medium option would have left me with only $3.3m.

Attachments:

Cost Control Scenario Comparison.xlsx (54.35 KB)

[Ben (Rays GM)]

Keep in mind when using Jamie's calculator that the change wouldn't go into effect until 2018. It's still useful to do it with your 2017 numbers just to get a sense of what it might look like for reference, however.

As you can see, increasing the caps by the additional $5 million helps alleviate some, but not all, of the financial burden. We don't want to completely alleviate the burden - instead, GMs will need to be a bit more thoughtful about which players they want to keep vs non-tender each offseason.

[Ben (Rays GM)]

With 16 votes for the medium increase against just 2 for the large and 0 for the small, this passes with the medium increase.