"Who do I want to sign with?" (free agents thread)

Let's come up with a definite way of who is getting the better offer. A formula if you will so it isn't up to one person saying, Cubs offer is better than the Cardinals just because....

I basically looked at a per year basis, unless someone offered 7 yrs/3.5 million which would beat 4 yr/3.7 million

Like I said though, there could be other situations too.......I mean, what's the magic number for a 4 year offer to beat that 7 year offer? 4 yrs/3.9, 4, 4.1???? We need to come up with something that is not up to a person's opinion, no disrespect intended.

I'd agree that there needs to be a formula. To a veteran/older player a longer term deal with more guaranteed money would be more important even if the per year on the short term deal is slightly more. For a young/future star maybe a long term deal with more per year isn't better than a shorter deal with a little less per year. Reason would be they wouldn't be locked up through their prime and would be eligible for a new deal in 2-4 years which could give them quite a bit bigger deal.

I'd be willing to work on or work with some others on some type of formula. If this could be done you could just put it in excel. Then everybody could download and use when bidding for free agents.

Plus can we please get rid of the 7/ml min offer? In real life no one is going to accept an offer longer than 1 year for the min so that should be the rule here.

Personally I'd accept the 7 yr/ML min offer

2 things for this discussion....

1st I agree with getting rid of the "7yr ML min" type offers. There's no buyout on these so there is no reason for the player to do this. I'd suggest something like a 2 yr cap on ML minimum - 375K per year contracts, 3 yr on 376k - 450k contracts, 4 yr on 451k - 550k contracts. These would include team option years but not player options.

2nd there should definitely be a formula or something we follow to assign or calculate value for each offer. If you're looking at two 4 year contracts it's pretty easy to figure out which offer is best. The problem comes when comparing say a 4 yr to a 6 yr deal. At what point does the 6yr offer make more sense in the two below?

4 yr 4 million = 16million
6 yr 2.5 million = 15 million
6 yr 2.75 million = 16.5 million
6 yr 3 million = 18 million
6 yr 3.25 million = 19.5 million
6 yr 3.5 million = 21 million
6 yr 3.75 million = 22.5 million
6 yr 4 million = 24 million

In addition to contract length and per year value you also have to consider the players age, skill level, and even team/player options. In the above example an aging player, say 31 at the time of the first year, would definitely want the longer term deal. But would a 24 year old? The 4 year deal may make sense, because they would be able to enter free agency at the age of 28, which would be their prime years. Also is a 3 yr deal at 4 million a year with a team option for a 4th yr at 4.5 million better than just a 4 yr 4 million deal? What would the dollar value of the team option for a 4th yr have to be to make it equal?

I'm not sure how exactly to set it up, but something that assigns a weighted value based on their age/skill level to each year of the contract would be needed. Basically the point is to not have two or three teams bidding for a free agent and not be sure whose offer is currently the best.

ok i tried to put this into a spreadsheet... here's what I'm trying to do, let me know what you think. A player isn't going to look at just the total value of the contract. He knows that once his contract runs out he will most likely be able to sign a new contract (the odds of this decrease the older he is, but I'll get to that latger).

So the 1st thing he will look at is the value per year. The 2nd thing he will look at is the total value. So what we need is a way to figure out the value of those extra years to him. My thinking on this is a player hits his prime at about age 32. So I've tried to come up with a multiplier (I think it ends up actually being a divisor but that doesn't sound like the right way to explain it) for each year.

If a player receives a 4 year and a 6 year offer when he's:
24 years old he will be 28 and 29 in years 5 and 6 of the 6 year deal. It's my opinion that this player will expect more per year from the 6 year offer because he's locked up through his prime years. At age 28 he'll become a free agent in the 4 year deal... this is the prime time for him to do so.

30 years old he will be 34 and 35 in years 5 and 6 of the 6 year deal. It's my opinion that this player will expect less per year from the 6 year offer because he's getting guaranteed money for the years he will be past his peak and starting to decline.

So the problem is figuring out how to calculate this. I've put the following multiplier for each year in the following spreadsheet. I'm not attached to these values, just my best guess as to what they would be....

24 & under -----1.35
25 -----1.35
26 -----1.4
27 -----1.4
28 -----1.35
29 -----1.25
30 -----1.16
31 -----1.08
32 -----1
33 -----0.95
34 -----0.89
35 -----0.83
36 -----0.77
37+ -----0.7

I'm having trouble with megaupload, it never generates a link, and it's hard to explain what these mean... Basically these are used for the "extra" years on the longer of two deals... say years 5 and 6 when comparing a 4 year deal to a 6 year deal. for example the value in the formula for 1 million dollars to a 37 year old is 1000000/.7= roughly $1.43 million. and to a 28 year old 1000000/1.35= roughly $741,000

If I could upload it.... I use a spreadsheet and these multipliers. I use two examples. In the first a 30 year old would prefer a 6 yr 4.75 million per year contract over a 4 year 5 million dollar per year offer. In the second a 24 year old would take a 4 year 4.75 million dollar offer over a 6 year 5 million dollar offer.

I'm not sure this is accurate, but I think with some tweaking to the numbers and maybe some additional factors such as something for team and player options this is a good way to calculate what the best offer is.

I think this is definitely on the right track. I hope we can get more discussion on this to see what other people think. Great job O's.

I think my spreadsheet was to small or something. I added some pictures to make it a larger file and now it works. You can just ignore those pictures, even though that was the tab it was on when I saved it. Just go to sheet 1. Take a look, give me your thoughts, play around with it, let me know if anybody thinks the numbers should be different.

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=FG25KV50

here's how it works, age goes in column A, so if they are a free agent their age now goes in the first cell, just add a year for each year of the contract offer.

Column B, $$ per year for each year of the shorter contract. Column C isn't really necessary, but it's there. Weighted average per year is total value of the shorter contract divided by years of the offer.

Column D is the per year value of the longer of the two offers. Column E is the weighted value. Basically for the same years of the two offers this will just be what the per year number is. For the extra years though you divide the number in column D by the number next to what age he is in that year. This is found in columns H & I.

Then you add the numbers in column E up and divide by length of the offer.

Let me know if you have any questions

We have to set up a system so that when you outbid people you have to do it by a certain amount, especially a big contract. If someone bids 7/15, you should have to at least bid 7/15.5 to beat that.