Capping 4th-6th PR scores/salaries

[Rangers GM (Stephen)]

Hello all,

In the following post, TJ suggested the capping of PR scores / salaries for arb players in their 4th-6th years:
mlbbaseballleague.proboards.com/post/38409/thread

This is a concept that was employed in a 15tm league I helped admin which had similar rules to this one.

I am interested to know if there is any support for this, and/or if there are any suggestions on what thresholds/caps people would think were fair and appropriate.

Thanks,
Stephen

[Braves GM (Eric)]

I know the league that 'inspired' this league (in a loose sense) has caps as well. I think it's $7 (4th), $10 (5th), $15 (6th)--though those numbers were likely pulled from somebody's...hat.

In my opinion this sort of mimics reality, which might be our goal, but it also is a rarely realized, though easy to remember rule (you remember rules that benefit you, for sure!).

The Dee Gordon example is a solid one, because we all knew that his contributions were limited to one or two categories and were likely to vary wildly given his history. If our goal is to sort of match reality, an arbitration panel would not have thought him worth that much relative to his peers, I'd wager.

But, as TJ says, we more often have the opposite end of the spectrum occur, where a player's history of performance is ignored for a single injured/poor season. But I think the burden of a Dee Gordon hinders a team more than a $1 Alex Bregman helps it.

I'd vote 'yes' for reasonable maximums.

[Rangers GM (Stephen)]

I would be interested to hear views on what 'reasonable maximums' might be here.
Perhaps simply capping a player rater score at 10 or 12 (and therefore resulting 4th, 5th and 6th year salaries) would do the job?


For every problem, there is a solution - I guess the issue is that with every solution invariably comes complexity.

With respect to those $1 Alex Bregmans, a thought is that a 5th or 6th year arbitration salary could be the highest of the calculated arb salary or the salary that the player had last year.
If you finished your 3rd year with a PR score of 7.0, you would earn $3.5 as a 4th. If your year as a 4th was lost, your arb salary couldn't go down so you would remain on $3.5. This is perhaps more representative of real life, where players do not see their arb salaries crash down.
This probably doesn't work for pitchers though due to their injury-proneness.

Andddddd everything starts getting more and more complicated.

[Reds GM (Kyler)]

I'd support maxes and minimum crashing, Something like PR capped at 12, so for a 4th they can't be higher than a 6, for a 5th can't be higher than a 9, and a 6th at 12. Then having a rule where someone's salary can't go down in 5th or 6th year. so if they were a $4 in their 4 year, that's the minimum they hold in their 5th and 6th.

[Rangers GM (Stephen)]

Kyler did a much better job than I did explaining the avoidance of 'minimum crashing'. Thanks.


A cap at 12 wouldn't affect many players. There are only 8 right now in 2021 with PR scores over 12. Several of them are not arb-eligible this winter, so you're really only taking a pretty small number from a small number of players.
There are 19 with a PR score over 10.

If we were to seriously consider removing the 'arb crashing', that would add quite a lot of salary obligation to arb players. It would add far more than capping maximums would remove.
Off the top of my head, I do not know what the consequences of that would be.

[Braves GM (Eric)]

I'm sitting here thinking about the arb crashing, and it sort of is a 'bonus' for owning an elite bat that loses a year. After all, you did lose a year of expected production, why not get a bonus for holding him? Also, his trade value is higher given the wackiness of the system in place.

But, yes, the complexity of such a rule would add another layer onto a process that's already one of the most onerous on this board.

[Pirates GM (TJ)]

Put me down for a cap of 10. There are rarely more than 20 players in a season who reach that high a player rater, and an even more limited number who reach that number while ALSO being in their 4th-6th arb years. (Pretty sure half the guys putting up 10+ this year are long out of arb). But it would remove the egregious one-off salaries, provide some clarity for GMs doing their mid-season planning (I can't be the only one who has had to consider passing on a trade in a past year because I thought one of my arb guys might go nuts in September and push me over my expected cap), and generally reduce the whipsaw.

As far as the salary floor, I think the current arb floor of a buck is fine. The owner benefiting from the cheap injury-rebound guy had to live with missing out on his player the previous season, and getting him at a bargain the next year (or being able to trading him at a small profit because of the reduced salary) seems fair enough.

[Astros GM (Adam)]

A cap of $10 seems like 2nd simplest solution. (Only slightly more complex than no cap at all.)

It’s a great conversation to think about. Sorry I don’t have much to add. Any of the suggestions above ($15,$10,$7; $12,$9,$6; non-reducing arb salaries) would be fine with me. I’m also fine if we leave it as is.

My very mild opinions are:
- Some kind of maximum arbitration salary (probably?, maybe?, just guessing?…) qualifies an improvement to the overall game… as long as it’s simple.
- Perhaps aside from the Ohtani uncertainty, any caps should be delayed a year before implementing them so as not to favor some teams over others.

[jason (Jason, NYM)]

I'm thinking no cap at all.