The Fuck You Campaign

[Cdawg]

Right now my only problem is the time. It's been over 4 days since the last time I heard from my agent and it's not making me feel any more....urgent. I feel as if I am asked to sign for more money after 7 days and it's too much and let my guys walk, that I(or anyone else for that matter) should get a bit more than just the average compensation.

[chrisveley]

Everyone here is pointing the blame at the agents, but we are all to blame for signing stupid deals. Here's my point.... brantley made it clear he wanted to stay in Cleveland based on Mogul personality and with the "Brantley is well settled in Celeveland".

Now as a GM I signed him to a 3 year deal at $15M a season. one of 3 things is going to happen.

1) I Trade his ass to a bottom feeder team for prospects (or a crazy GM that thinks they are one peice away from a championship)... no chance at a championship for atleast 3 years. Brantely loses. CLE wins

2) I use him until he's close to FA. I have exclusive rights to resign him... he wants way too much, so I trade him to a shitty team for prospects. Brantley loses. CLE wins.

3) I play him and he signs for less when he could have asked for a 5 year deal at $15m/season originally. Brantley loses, CLE wins again.

How is this a good offer for the player? I was willing to give a NTC, and even offered it. It wasn't even brought up by the agent. The player wants a NTC, the team offers one, and the Agent doesn't bother with it and signs a shorter term?


There are flaws.... we need to accept this (shit, remember when I signed Soriano for 5 years? I can admit mistakes). There are many flaws by the GM's and there are flaws by the Agents.

[dejota]

The Agent - An Editorial
First and foremost, this is meant to be informational, not dictate rules. It's meant to help you utilize and understand the intents of the Agent Feature.

Why have agents?

When Fink and I were cooking up the process our main goal was to spice up the free agent markets. As we all know, FA classes tend to be very weak in a league setting and we thought that by creating Agents with more realistic demands would lead to fewer re-signings. While it's not as effective as imagined, it still leads to better free agent classes than if we let mogul determine all contracts/extensions.

The other main reason for creating agents is to take market control away from the game and put it directly in GM's hands. With agents, The GMs have final say in almost every contract exceeding 5M annually. Whether it's through re-signings done by the agent or in free agency itself no "crazy" contract will be given without a GM approving it first.

If guys like Haren or JJ weren't getting 15M for 7 years the agents wouldn't have a leg to stand on when trying to get you to sign your players to similar deals. On the other side of that coin GMs can't sign their star players for pennies and hoard talent. Indirectly this means agents also contribute to parity.

How are agents best utilized

- Agents are best utilized when you refuse to overpay for a guy. If you put your foot down and move on, as teams are often forced to do in real life, you take away most if not all the power an Agent has.

Until agents are costing players money by holding out for top shelf deals, there's ZERO precedent for discounted deals.

- Offer extensions early in a contract. What most people don't seem to realize is that most discounted deals signed in the MLB are in exchange for more salary elsewhere. The best example of this is Hanley Ramirez's contract.

For his first 3 years Florida basically paid him the minimum, which is all they are required to do. During his 3rd year they realized two things: A) He was good enough to keep around long-term B) Miguel Tejada's deal, which was already a couple years old, was going to set his market value.

Being Florida they knew they couldn't afford the 16-17M he'd get annually on the open market. So they offered him a slight raise over his expected arbitration earnings for the next three seasons in exchange for 3 free agency seasons at CURRENT market value. Essentially what would (and has) become a bargain by the time the free agency years took effect.

They paid him 5.5M in '09, 7M in '10 and 11M for '11. Those are all slightly above what he was projecting to earn for those three years. In exchange hanley gave them a very similar discount for his 3 FA years. Without an agent figure there'd be no way to replicate this deal. He'd either get signed for the intro arb value long term or get market value after his arby years (arguably 20-25M in the mogul universe).

When you bid for your guys try to mimic this model. It's a win-win for the player and the team. If you average the annual value in mogul Hanley only earns 11.66M per year for that span.

- Keep in mind that the agent does owe your team anything. The agent will always bear the players best interest in mind. While that's seemingly one-dimensional ($$$) it's not.

We try to reflect this in how we determine which agent a player signs on with. The role on a team, the location of a team (especially relevant to home), being the face of the franchise, etc. all are factors. If you're player is scoring high in any of the areas it's important to highlight them in your pitch. If there's other motivations to stay with a team, it's ridiculous for a player to maintain top dollar demands. It's your job as a GM to highlight these areas and, if necessary, shove your players nose it in it if their agents don't agree.

However, at the end of the day, players and agents have no loyalties to your team. There's no reason to EXPECT that your player's will remain with your team when their contracts are up. If anything, the agent means you should expect the opposite. If you operate with that mindset it's easier to cut ties and manipulate the market to your advantage. If you can't get on board with that you'll be stuck in an endless cycle of overpaying your players.

- Lastly, negotiations are fluid and generally don't happen all night. If you come with vague propositions such as "what does he want to stay on my team" the answer will be the same every time: every last penny you think my client is worth. You've already pigeon holed the entire negotiations to one dimension: money. Not only are you vague in your offer, you're vague in your opinions of the player's talents and value.

When you negotiate it's important to have a very firm starting point and a good reason for starting there. Simply put, the more you put on the table initially the more avenues for the negotiation to go down. Some avenues end in discounts, others end in being stone walled. The agent wont tip his hand, so be prepared to negotiate!

I apologize in advance if this is rambling lunacy, I did it quickly on my lunch break and will edit/reread it after work. I just really wanted to get this out there and hopefully a discussion going because very few GMs seem interested in taking advantage of the agent feature fully. Considering FCM's love of the loophole, I figured maybe I wasn't doing a good enough job explaining it. So please, post any questions/thoughts/etc. here and hopefully we can make this a more interesting feature.

[chrisveley]

I agree that the Agent system is useful and a pretty good idea. I was complaining about the inconsistency about it. Cabrera signed for a good amount of money and it was clear he was greedy and wanted to only sign long enough so he could get a big payday in FA after this year contract was done... in Mogul his Greed was high... that make sense. Brantley was the complete opposite, thats where my issue is. I wasn't looking for a discount, and I'm not complaining about the $15M a season for 3 years. From Brantleys perspective it just doesn't make sense.... why not a longer term if he wanted to stay in CLE, why not a NTC? I honestly made out like a bandit on this one.

Cabrera seems to factor in his personality completely, but Brantley didn't in the least

Thats what I mean about consistency.

[raysman1]

I'm fine with the agents the only problem I have is with the time....just like cdawg said above, I last received a PM from McInnis 2 days ago...IDK what the hold up is.

I haven't had any problems with him yet, the Bourjos signing was very quick, but this Stras one has taken a while but it probably because it takes McInnis a century to respond to my PM's.

[Atlbravesfan27]

here is a somewhat simple fix...as i'm sure its been stated before(i'm too lazy to read ALL of this mess), but, if people would stop throwing around ridiculous money to players, these agents would have nothing to stand on...but when some of you clowns go out and give players like Schierholtz 10M a season, or Gallardo 19M, or whoever a huge contract who sucks, then the agent can almost ask for whatever he wants.. now i know some players get injured after a contract etc etc, but some of the money that is given to players is just plain stupid.. be smarter with your money, the less precedent the agents can go on...

for the agents, while its common sense that every player wants to make the most money, SOME players are not all about money. When they are a perfect fit for a team, the "hometown discount" should be reasonable, and actually a discount, not 2M less than if he were out on the open market. SOME players actually are not all about money and are about loyalty if they like where they are... anyhow, just my quick 2 cents...


just thought of this too, i would also suggest a 3rd agent for players that have subpar seasons/vitals relative to their overall.. there are alot of consistent underachieving 90+ players in this league, and regardless of their overall, those players should sign much fairer deals.. just a couple of expamples, Gallardo on my team who will be a FA next season, has done awful since signing his current contract, and this past offseason, Gordon Beckham was waaaaaaaaaaaay overrated and the agent was asking for waaaaaaaaay more than what he is worth...

[mike]

I think you need to rethink something Stang. No player is about loyalty. The only thing the are loyal to is the money. The only way players really give a diascount for is if they love the city but that only really applies if they are winning. Also a player is only "loyal" if you are the NE Patriots of baseball where the team mentaloity takes precident. So they figure than win their by taking a bit less money. The agent is supposed to milk you. If you don't highlight other points about your club and just focus on money then why should the player and his agent do any different? As far as other teams making rediculous deals highlight how much of an idiot that other GM was or explain that your not names the Yankees.

As far as Chris goes he could be on to something about consistentcy.

And anyone who complains about how long it takes with pm's maybe the agent wants to make you sweat a bit and squirm. I mean if your just starting talks about the player when the seaoson is almost over he should make you sweat a little to try and milk you for every last penny.

[Atlbravesfan27]

I think you need to rethink something Stang. No player is about loyalty. The only thing the are loyal to is the money. The only way players really give a diascount for is if they love the city but that only really applies if they are winning. Also a player is only "loyal" if you are the NE Patriots of baseball where the team mentaloity takes precident. So they figure than win their by taking a bit less money. The agent is supposed to milk you. If you don't highlight other points about your club and just focus on money then why should the player and his agent do any different? As far as other teams making rediculous deals highlight how much of an idiot that other GM was or explain that your not names the Yankees.

As far as Chris goes he could be on to something about consistentcy.

And anyone who complains about how long it takes with pm's maybe the agent wants to make you sweat a bit and squirm. I mean if your just starting talks about the player when the seaoson is almost over he should make you sweat a little to try and milk you for every last penny.

Well, you are partially right, and partially wrong.. Take for instance my employer, Atlanta Braves.. While your argument of players are loyal to winning teams are mostly correct, look at the braves in the 90's. John Smoltz, Greg Maddux, even Chipper Jones had MANY opportunities to leave for more money, and while they still got their money from the braves, there were plenty of other teams that would have easily paid them way more to pry them away... and there are other players that are loyal to their team, Trevor Hoffman on the padres, for 75% of the time he was there, they were awful.. Mark Grace, Ryne Sandberg, Cal Ripken, Todd Helton, Bagwell, Biggio, even as far back as George Brett were all loyal to there teams and most of their teams were awful.. there are plenty more players like this.. There is more loyalty to a team and city than you think.. While money plays a huge part, no doubt, but location, love of the city, fans, school systems for their kids, everyday normal things me and you have to deal with plays a role in it as well.. But this is a business, and the player AND the team has to do whats best for them which sometimes ends these great relationships...

I think its pretty simple as far as this league goes, as i said before, the agents are going to have a number in mind based on previous deals. If you are a team trying to resign a player, dont set precedents and sign players to ridiculous contracts that eventually gives all the leverage to the agent. Stand pat, be smart with your money and budget. The more fair you are to your own teams finances and stand firm in what you believe is fair market for your player, the less leverage the agents will have, until then, Agents will run your budget...

[icedragon770]

I think you need to rethink something Stang. No player is about loyalty. The only thing the are loyal to is the money. The only way players really give a diascount for is if they love the city but that only really applies if they are winning. Also a player is only "loyal" if you are the NE Patriots of baseball where the team mentaloity takes precident. So they figure than win their by taking a bit less money. The agent is supposed to milk you. If you don't highlight other points about your club and just focus on money then why should the player and his agent do any different? As far as other teams making rediculous deals highlight how much of an idiot that other GM was or explain that your not names the Yankees.

As far as Chris goes he could be on to something about consistentcy.

And anyone who complains about how long it takes with pm's maybe the agent wants to make you sweat a bit and squirm. I mean if your just starting talks about the player when the seaoson is almost over he should make you sweat a little to try and milk you for every last penny.

Well, you are partially right, and partially wrong.. Take for instance my employer, Atlanta Braves.. While your argument of players are loyal to winning teams are mostly correct, look at the braves in the 90's. John Smoltz, Greg Maddux, even Chipper Jones had MANY opportunities to leave for more money, and while they still got their money from the braves, there were plenty of other teams that would have easily paid them way more to pry them away... and there are other players that are loyal to their team, Trevor Hoffman on the padres, for 75% of the time he was there, they were awful.. Mark Grace, Ryne Sandberg, Cal Ripken, Todd Helton, Bagwell, Biggio, even as far back as George Brett were all loyal to there teams and most of their teams were awful.. there are plenty more players like this.. There is more loyalty to a team and city than you think.. While money plays a huge part, no doubt, but location, love of the city, fans, school systems for their kids, everyday normal things me and you have to deal with plays a role in it as well.. But this is a business, and the player AND the team has to do whats best for them which sometimes ends these great relationships...

I think its pretty simple as far as this league goes, as i said before, the agents are going to have a number in mind based on previous deals. If you are a team trying to resign a player, dont set precedents and sign players to ridiculous contracts that eventually gives all the leverage to the agent. Stand pat, be smart with your money and budget. The more fair you are to your own teams finances and stand firm in what you believe is fair market for your player, the less leverage the agents will have, until then, Agents will run your budget...

i couldnt agreed more