Player Opt Out Contracts

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commish
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Player Opt Out Contracts

Post by commish » Fri Mar 10, 2017 1:55 pm

What guidelines and/or rules, if any, need to be in place for a player opt out contract to be offered? Discuss.
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DavidJ
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Re: Player Opt Out Contracts

Post by DavidJ » Fri Mar 10, 2017 2:38 pm

This is new territory for me. Any other league I've been in has never had a rule about opt-outs.

On one hand I think it's a good thing to push the envelope on these kinds of things to expose what the AI can and cannot deal with in OOTP. If humans find a way to blatanly exploit the AI, then that's worth a quick note to the OOTP peeps to see if they can tighten things up. Not saying this is a blatant problem in this case because we have not actually see the offer. So thanks to whoever brought this to the forefront!

I always try to put myself in the position of the player and his agent in all contract discussions/disputes. As OOTP GM's we are always looking for an edge, whether solo or online. And I really feel the developers of the game probably would not want things to get TOO tight in this area, otherwise the fun of being a GM (and winning) becomes negotiating with Scott Boras, which isn't that fun in real life I suspect.

Top of my head, a couple of suggestions.

1) I like Steve's suggestion of only allowing an opt-out in a contract of equal (or escalating) value each year of the term. Personally, as I mentioned in Slack, I have found front-loaded baseball contracts to be extremely rare in general. I can certainly see whay an OOTP GM would desire them, but cannot really see why most players would bite on one.
2) I would add to that only allowing an opt-out no earlier the halfway through any contract term.

And to push the envelope...

3) An opt-out cannot be used with any other option in a contract term. To me an opt-out is an opt-out and personally I would not negotiate one with some other qualifier coming later in the deal. Especially if I was betting on my value increasing. Why would I tie myself into a vesting option later (and I find player options redundant in these cases, so I would rather just opt-out and renegotiate anew - but again,. that's just me).

Examples:

Good:
5-5-opt-5-5
5-5-opt-5
5-5-5-opt-5-5, etc.

5-7-9-opt-10-10
5-5-opt-7-7

Not good:
5-5-opt-5-5-5
5-opt-5-5
5-opt-7-9-11-13
5-7-opt-9-11-13

Or we can just leave this as a gentlemen's agreement we won't exploit the AI?
GM Owen Sound Waveriders - April 24, 2019
Canadian League Champions - 2020

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Al B
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Re: Player Opt Out Contracts

Post by Al B » Fri Mar 10, 2017 4:02 pm

I posted in Slack but I'll post here as well for a more permanent record.

I looked at the team salaries page for each team in the league and found that there are only two players in the league with opt-outs in their contracts. In both cases the opt-outs occur after the halfway point of a multi-year deal, and in both cases the player will be turning down an increase in salary if he opts out.

So it looks like the only two times the opt-out has been included in a deal, it has fallen well within the range of David's "good" examples.

I'm in agreement with David on what constitutes a "good" and "bad" use of the opt-out, and if a rule is deemed necessary, I would support those examples as a basis for the rule.

But as there is no evidence that anyone has ever tried to exploit the opt-out, I think I'd prefer to try the "gentleman's agreement" route and see what happens.

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