American League Newsletter
Top Stories:
DRAFT-DAY APPROACHES
SALARY PROPOSAL #2
UPCOMING DEADLINES
As if you didn’t know, this coming Saturday will be our 7th
BRASSball Rookie Draft. Festivities begin at 10AM eastern time, though
It is VERY important that each of us be certain that we can enter the
room without any difficulty. Corey has e-mailed specific directions
January Trades
METROPOLIS trades Columbus’s 2nd
round pick and 1.6 million to TOLEDO for Carlos Pena and Alberto Castillo (pd).
NORTH GEORGIA trades Eric Owens to SANTA
BARBARA for Ron Coomer, Shane Spencer, and McKay Christensen.
METROPOLIS trades Ben Diggins to OCALA
for Ocala's 7th round pick in 2002.
COOK COUNTY trades Pete Harnisch and
$1,036,333 to BOX CITY for Jay Buhner and Ed Sprague.
METROPOLIS trades the #17 and #90 overall
picks in the upcoming draft, and John Mabry (pd) to COLUMBUS for their #1 and #2 pifcks in
2002.
OCALA trades Russ Branyan, and Ocala's #2
in 2002 to METROPOLIS for Long Island's 1st round pick, and Columbus's, Fleetwood's, and
Long Island's 4th round picks.
REVISED
SALARY DISCUSSION
This month I wanted to "officially" unveil a second option
for us as we consider the pros and cons of switching to a year-to-year salary structure.
Mark and Corey have spent considerable time devising a plan which would serve our
purposes. Here’s another. It is the "official" system of the WINTER BRASS
league, and it has been in play for a couple years now. I am a strong believer in this
model, as I think it adds a tremendous dose of realism to our league. In addition, I
believe it would be relatively "pain free" to implement, as we will retain the
same contract "language" we currently use. The only difference is that, going
forward, contracts would no longer be paid with the clumsy lump sum system we have now.
I know there has been some concern over possibly taking our simple yet effective system
and making it more complicated than its worth. I understand that mindset, but I think it
is unfounded. This system is very easy to comprehend, and once everyone gets familiar with
it, I believe you’ll wonder why we weren’t always doing things this way!
Here’s how it works. We (I) would have to do a minor conversion
of each of our rosters. What we do is break out each team’s roster into a
"4-year plan". With this plan, you can see how your payroll shapes up from year
to year. This will allow an owner to effectively budget his money both short term and long
term. For instance, if I wish to sign Julio Lugo to a 3 year contract under our current
system, I have to cough up 2 million to do it. Never mind that in real life, a team would
only be responsible for one year’s worth of that 2 million. Under this proposed
model, this is exactly how it would work. My team would have to pay $666,667 immediately,
to cover the cost of this year’s salary ($2,000,000 / 3 years = $666,667). Then, the
new roster sheet would detail that I was further "obligated" to pay Lugo
$666,667 in each of the next 2 seasons. The difference is, I would not have to pay the
second and third year’s salary until the year it came due.
That’s the easy part. The tricky part is taking our current rosters, and plugging
them into this new system. Pretty easy to do though. I have included a sample sheet which
includes the rosters for Minnesota and Morris to assist in comprehending what we’d
do. Each team would receive all the money back into their bank account for FUTURE years of
contracts they had already "paid in full" under our current system.
For example, Minnesota paid Jason Giambi $13.5 million this past off-season over two
years. If we switched to the new system I am proposing, the Mudcats would receive back
$6.75 million for the second year of the contract that, under this new system, wont come
due til 2002. As you can see, Minnesota will have to pay $22,930,714 of that money he gets
reimbursed when we convert to the new system, at the beginning of the 2002 season for
players he’ll have under contract (not to mention other players they would need to
sign to fill out their roster). The same would occur for all of us for players we prepaid
in full, but who have additional years remaining after the current one.
In future years, any player we sign will simply require the first year’s payment. The
KEY to this system is making sure our teams remain solvent. Since we would still only be
getting $35 million per season, each team would need to make sure they budgeted wisely so
they could pay all their player’s when the contracts are due to be paid each year. In
Minnesota’s case, their bank account would rise from its current level of $1,995,042
to $35,371,470, or a difference of $33,416,428 (which represents the total amount of
salary they paid for future years on all their current players).
Please note that players tabbed with a "pd" would not entitle their current team
to reimbursement for any outstanding seasons. These players would be handled a bit
differently. Essentially, they would play for free for any future seasons they are on a
team’s roster.
A system like this would likely require a couple minor "tweaks" to our current
salary structure. Specifically, we would likely have to change the total costs of
contracts which were 6 years or more. Currently, a 6 year deal costs 12 million bucks.
Under our current system, that’s a ton of cash to come up with all at once. Under
this new system, a team would only have to pay 2 million of that per year, which is next
to nothing when one considers we get $35 million per season. In order to prevent teams
from signing all their players to 7, 8, or 9 year contracts and making us A "keeper
league", we would likely have to adjust the minimum cost of these larger year
contracts upward a bit. (The Winter BRASS league increased the cost of the 6 year deal to
16 million, or 2.67 million per year).
Also, in an effort to ensure no team leveraged all their future money for a one year run,
thus leaving their team in financial peril for future years, Lenny and I are discussing
having a rule in place whereby each team MUST, at ALL times, have at LEAST $10 million
dollars more in their bank account (including the $35 million they would receive after the
current season) than they are committed to paying the following year. For example, if my
team is obligated to pay $35 million next year to players under contract, I must have at
least $10 million in my account now. This way, when I get my $35 million after the current
season, I still have 10 million extra to fill out my roster. This aspect of the proposal
is a MUST in my view. It is just a matter of how much the limit must be. In truth, a team
should have a much higher buffer than this. A team which doesn’t budget for future
years is playing with fire under this system.
That’s all I’ll say about this for the moment. I know we are all studying for
next week’s draft. Still, take a close
look at the roster sheet I attached to this e-mail and see how our current system changes
under this new proposal. I think you’ll find it a system that is innovative yet easy
to understand. I welcome your comments on the matter.
MORRIS LIVES!!
The Morris Monarchs are back in our midst. Jack Howard has taken the
helm of the Queens Kings, and relocated them to Morris, Illinois. We welcome Jack back,
and hope for a much longer stay than the first time!! ;)
FEBRUARY 8th: CONTRACT SIGNINGS FOR ALL DRAFTED PLAYERS ARE DUE!!
THAT’s ALL FOR NOW! HAVE A GREAT DRAFT!!!