Free Agency Start!

[Rockies GM (Alex)]

Hey everyone!

PLEASE READ THROUGH ALL OF THE FOLLOWING QUICKLY, just so we're on the same page for tomorrow ! 

Free Agency will open at NOON ET tomorrow, January 2nd! I bumped it up a few hours because why not. Here's what you need to know:

- Anyone can bid on any player obviously

- The minimum bid is $300k

- Bids must increase by $300k

- The maximum amount of years is 5 years on a contract offer, and the maximum amount of options is one.

- Remember the new option rules, there is a penalty to releasing a player with an option year early now.

- The time needed to sign a player will be 72 hours from January 2nd at NOON ET to January 5th an NOON ET.  

- After January 5th at NOON ET, the time needed to sign a player will be 48 hours.  This has always been done to just gives teams more time during the bidding to survey the large amount of players.  We want each player to be bid on fairly, and not just have someone sneak in a great bid that gets missed with the large group of free agents.  72 hours for any bids posted before noon ET on Friday, 48 hours for any bids after that.  Easy enough?  

- The Free Agency Tracker will be updated continually, I believe you are able to enter your bids into there when you top an offer for a player.  PLEASE KEEP IT UPDATED.  Will and I will try our best to stay on top of it, and anyone can pitch it, but it'll be easier if everyone is just using the free agency tracker as they submit bids.  

- Be sure to use the Free Agency Tracker to monitor your cap space.  You are not allowed to bid more than your current cap space allows.  For example... if you have $30m in cap space, you can't have $22m on Santana, $8m on Shields, and $5m on Jansen at the same time.  This is over-bidding.  Bid within your cap constraints and use the Free Agency Tracker to help you out.  

- When players hit a certain threshold, dependent on their ranking, they go to silent bidding to determine who wins that player.  The silent bidding periods are 48 hours after silent bidding is announced.  Here's the thresholds consistent with the rules for the current players in free agency:

$32m - Chris Sale, Daniel Murphy, Stephen Strasburg, J.D. Martinez
$26m - Kenley Jansen, Jake Arrieta, Aroldis Chapman, Craig Kimbrel
$22m - Kyle Seager, Mike Moustakas, Jason Kipnis, Zach Britton, Rich Hill, Brandon Belt, Raisel Igelsias, Adam Jones, Justin Turner, Carlos Santana, Josh Reddick
$17m - Todd Frazier, Mark Trumbo, Andrew Miller, Greg Holland, David Robertson, Carlos Gonzalez, Albert Pujols, Mark Melancon
$14m - Hanley Ramirez, Cole Hamels, Alex Cobb, Felix Hernandez, Hyun-Jin Ryu
$12m - All other players

I may have missed a player or two, but just consult the rules and use this ranking list to determine a players silent bidding threshold.  

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Here's a link to the rules on free agency:Link  

Here's a link to Will's Free Agency Tracker: Free Agency Tracker 

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Astros GM (Will) if you could update the salary caps on the Tracker before tomorrow that'd be awesome.

This is going to be awesome!  I'll try to be as active as I can to announce signings when they're official and update the Official Rosters.  Orioles GM (Michael) will be helping me with this as well.  

Thanks everyone!  And Happy New Year!

- Alex

[Rockies GM (Alex)]

Also, I'll announce a start for the silent bidding on the remaining International Free Agents soon. We'll likely start that this coming Sunday and have the bidding go through the week, just like we did with Ohtani.

[Rockies GM (Alex)]

Another thing: when a RESTRICTED FREE AGENT is signed to a contract. The team that holds his rights via restricted free agency will have 48 hours to match the contract to retain the player or decline it and let the team who won the bidding get him. That 48 hours starts whenever someone posts that a player has been signs and tags that team with an @ with their username so they get alerted of it. You can PM them as well.

[Astros GM (Will)]

The Free Agency Tracker is updated with the team budgets again.

I will be adding drafted players to the tracker as well to try and update the budgets in real time, but they will show up as already signed.

If players are bid on that are not currently in the tracker, they will get added by either Mike or myself and will show up immediately.

We'll do our best to keep the tracker updated throughout the day and at least by the end of the day. I may get off to a slow start as I return to work tomorrow. Good luck everyone.