Effective immediately FA bidding

[Admin]

5. FREE AGENTS


[1] Contract Signing Rules: The salary for any given year of a contract cannot vary from the contract's Annual Average Salary (AAS) by more than 40%, ie. 60% of AAS <= any given year's salary <= 140% of AAS.

For example, if a players annual average salary is $5,000,000 per season, the lowest salary that can be offered is $3,000,000 and the highest salary that can be offered is $7,000,000.

[2] Contracts may not exceed 5 years in duration.

[3] To sign a Free Agent, post a new thread in the appropriate section with the title "players name" Then submit an AAS bid. The bidding will continue until none has submitted a bid for a period of 24 hours. Once the 24 hour period has expired, the winning franchise must decide the length of the contract and yearly breakdown of the contract based on rule 5.1 For example if the winning AAS bid is 5,000,000, then you decide 4 yrs of length or 20,000,000. the contract will look something like this (under the 5.1 rule):

07- 3m
08- 5m
09- 5m
10- 7m = 20m

The minimum increment for the next bid is determined this way:

Current High Bid < 500K ---------> 25K minimum increment
500K <= High Bid < 1M -----------> 50K
1M <= High Bid < 2M --------------> 100K
2M <= High Bid < 4M --------------> 200K
4M <= High Bid ---------------------> 500K

[4] From September 1st til the end of the season, NO 1 yr deals will be allowed. The player auction must start before the 1st in order for it to count as a 1 yr deal. This will prevent a team from offering a huge contract for less than a 30 day period.

******** NEW IMPORTANT RULES (as of Feb 2008) ********

[5] Any player over the age of 40 may only receive a 2-year contract at MOST. Any player approaching the age of 40 will only be allowed a contract that ends 1 year after turning 40.
ex. Player A (age 38) can have a contract no longer than 3 years.

[6] At any given point, the number of players for which you are the highest bidder shall only exceed the number of open roster spots (appropriate for the bid, ie. MLB or MiLB) on your team by one player. So if you have 3 open MLB spots available, you can only be the highest bidder in 4 MLB player auctions (regardless of how many other MiLB spots you have open).

[7] Each GM may not have more than 2 3 FA auction threads initiated at any given time. A previously initiated auction must complete before another may be initiated for that GM.

[BK Dodgers GM (Man)]

Please note regarding rule 6 in the above. We will generally base the number of open roster spots on what's shown in the official league spreadsheet unless we know otherwise (due to it possibly being not up-to-date at the moment).

Enforcement of this rule can be difficult during high volume bidding times, so please cooperate and follow this rule as best you can rather than depending too much on the LO to enforce it.

Thanks for your patience and cooperation...

PS: Please note that the rules above are actually not new (at least for preseason FA), but merely clarified a bit more.

[BK Dodgers GM (Man)]

At this point, the LO has decided to go ahead and expand the FA auction threads limit from 2 to 3 (in rule 7 above) effective immediately.

Please note that other restrictions still apply as before, eg. number of high bids in rule 6 above.

Carry on...

[BK Dodgers GM (Man)]

The minimum bid increment rule has changed effective immediately. Please see the following for details:

mlbknowitalls.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=rules&action=display&thread=4807

We will update the big rules post accordingly.

[BK Dodgers GM (Man)]

All,

Please do *NOT* edit nor delete bid posts more than a few minutes after posting. The LO understands if a mistake needs to be corrected, etc., but doing so long after the bid has been posted will invalidate the bid post and might also be considered renegging in some instances.

If you didn't notice the mistake until sometime later and it's an invalid bid, then just make a new bid post instead (and point out that the previous post was invalid). If the bid was a valid bid, then it stands although you may still bid higher (as usual), if you wish.

Also, please be reasonably clear w/ your bids using generally accepted conventions.

Going forward, the LO will *NOT* make interpretations about whether your bid amount is in thousands or millions or something else outside of accepting K, M or similar to mean thousand or million, etc. For instance, we will no longer accept something like "$1.2" as 1.2M. There should just be no need for that.

Thanks for your cooperation...

[BK Dodgers GM (Man)]

All,

Please remember that you must now complete legal signing of each FA w/in the newly re-established 72-hour deadline after end of auction or you will start facing disciplinary actions as outlined under the Addendum/Clarifications section of the Special Waiver Pool rules post (and the player in question might also eventually be subjected to the SWP, if the player remains unrostered on CBS as a result):

mlbknowitalls.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=rules&action=display&thread=5174

As w/ all player acquisitions, please make sure to roster your legally signed players on CBS w/in the 2-week grace period (from end of auction) in order to avoid having them subjected to the SWP.

Thanks for your cooperation...

[BK Dodgers GM (Man)]

Clarification on item #5 regarding players over-40-yo. The limit is 1 year max after the player reaches 41-and-over, which aligns w/ the Retirement Rule over here:

mlbknowitalls.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=rules&action=display&thread=86

If the player is 40-yo before the season begins, then it's 2 years max (to end when he's 41), etc.

[BK Dodgers GM (Man)]

Please note the new minimum for MLB FAs of 800K -- and no more contract length limits (for at-or-near-minimum salaries) other than the usual 5-year max and limit for players approaching 40-yo (and beyond).