The Plan

[Rockies GM (Alex)]

Okay, wow, I agree with Nationals in saying we're overreacting a bit, but I have come up with a possible long term solution.

Here we go:

New Changes:

- The Salary Cap will stay the same. With franchise and ARB increases it would kill teams to lower it.

- Bidding will be done silently on all players ranked 1-100. Players ranked 100-150 will go to silent bidding when they reach 20m. Players ranked 150-250 will go to silent bidding when they reach 15m. All other players will go to silent bidding if they go over 10m.

1-100/silent
100-150/silent @ 20m
150-250/silent @ 15m
250/silent @ 10m

As a bonus to add: all players ranked 1-100 may not exceed 40m through silent bidding. All players ranked 100-150 may not exceed 30m through silent bidding. All players ranked 150-250 may not exceed 20m through silent bidding. And finally, all other players may not exceed 15m through silent bidding.

At first glance, you would say then people would just bid the max. Another rule, the team with the most cap room would be awarded the player. Lesser team... or the team with the worst record in the previous year? Either one.

- Players will also be released into free agency by ranking. Players ranked 1-100 will be released first. When they're done, 100-150, and so on.

- New Franchise and Arbitration policies will also be put into place.

Arbitration:

As of now, here is our current ranking system we use with the raises.

Ranked 1-25 they will get a 6M raise
Ranked 26-50 they will get a 5M raise
Ranked 51-100 They will get a 4M raise
Ranked 101- 200 they will get a 2M raise
Ranked 201- 250 they will get a 1M raise
Ranked 250+ they will get a 500K raise

I proposed increasing the yearly increases to make players more worth they're value. Like Stanton making more than 12.4m by the time he's hit over 80 HR's in his 2nd year of his ARB contract.

Here would be the new rankings:

Ranked 1-25 they will get a 10M raise
Ranked 26-50 they will get a 8M raise
Ranked 51-100 They will get a 6M raise
Ranked 101- 150 they will get a 5M raise
Ranked 151-200 they will get a 3M raise
Ranked 201- 250 they will get a 2M raise
Ranked 250+ they will get a 1M raise

More realistically now, Stanton would be making 30.4m a year by the time he's in his third year of his ARB contract, which will still be offered only for 3 years max. Instead of only paying 6.4m for Stanton when he's already a top 25 player, you're giving him 20.4m by the time he's in his second year.

Franchise Tags:

The Franchise Tag system would also increase significantly. Pujols for 25m isn't enough, a player like that should be making more than 1/7 of a team's payroll (1/6 with the new cap). In the MLB, players like Mauer (even when he was good) made at LEAST 1/4 of the teams salary.

Here's the former rankings:

Ranked 1-25 --> 25M Annual salary
Ranked 26-50 --> 20M Annual salary
Ranked 51-75 --> 15M Annual salary
Ranked 76-100 --> 10M Annual Salary
Ranked 101-200 --> 5M Annual Salary
Ranked 200-250--> 3M Annual Salary
Ranked 250+--> 500k Annual Salary

Again, Pujols for 25M is ridiculous. Here's the new system:

Ranked 1-25 --> 40M Annual salary
Ranked 26-50 --> 30M Annual salary
Ranked 51-75 --> 20M Annual salary
Ranked 76-100 --> 15M Annual Salary
Ranked 101-150 --> 10M Annual Salary
Ranked 151-200 --> 5M Annual Salary
Ranked 201-250--> 3M Annual Salary
Ranked 250+--> 1M Annual Salary

Now, for example, Pujols is making 40M a year, just under 1/4 of the teams salary cap of 150m. A guy like Elvis Andrus is making 30M (ranked #29 I believe). Teams are going to need to pay big bucks to keep great players. If they can't, they'll go to lesser teams who don't have a couple of big contracts on their team.

- Restriction Tags

They will stay the same, 2 for each team, with the pay less for free agents policy, teams should be able to realistically have the decision to keep a player they let go with a restriction tag.

- Draft Comp Rounds

We'd keep them, with more teams losing free agents, more draft picks will be given (we only had like 7 Comp round picks this year).

- Prospect Protection

Again, still the same. Teams will have to trade big for young all-star talent still making 400k a season.

- Rookie contracts

Do we make rookies free to own? Get rid of the 300k? And just have them start PP when they reach the majors. I say yes, this will help teams cut some of the cap that they've accumulated as well.

- 40-man rosters

Two options here.

1. We get rid of the them and have standard 25 man rosters.

Or 2. I like this. We install a 40-man roster. You are only allowed to keep 40 guys on your team that have reached PP or higher. All others will go into Waivers (we actually get to use them!) where the player can be claimed at the contract, or, if not claimed, becomes a free agent. We'd have to do something where a team can't just waive a bad contract just to get rid of it.

- Playoffs

We add the two wild card teams to the playoffs like the MLB is doing and keep the Astros in the NL for now. We'll cross that bridge when the MLB does.

- Releases

Still paying half of the contract, but a new twist added here. If you choose, you can pay the entire contract in hole in one year. So if I have a bunch of cap space as the Cubs (for example) and I want to cut Soriano's contract of 19m for three more seasons. I can either pay him 9.5m for 3 more years, OR I can pay him 28.5m for one year and be done with him.

- Price

Of course, free of charge We should have a commissioner's appreciation day

Please let me know what you think of this. Let's grit our way through this free agency. I know it wasn't the best, but it's what we got so let's roll with it.

Thanks everyone,

Alex

[Angels GM (Derrick)]

I agree that the cap should NOT be lowered. IMO the problem with free agency is the open bidding. I would prefer if all of free agency(reguardless or player ranking) was conducted via silent bid.

My suggestion would be to from now on release the available free agents up for bid in groups of ten or fifteen at a time. Then allow 48 hours for any interested teams to submit their silent bid. After 48 hours....any players that had been bid on would go to the highest bidder. Then we release the next group of ten or fifteen up for bidding and repeat the process until all available free agents have been exhausted. I would suggest when making players available for bid, starting with the lowest ranked first. Thus leaving the big name/big money free agents until the last couple groups to be made available. This would require even the owners with alot of available cap to be savy in how they ultimately do spend their money.

[Royals GM (Bill)]

I'm all for the proposed changes and they will no doubt help, but the main problem remains, and that is that the cap is too high. It's simple math. You add 75% more payroll to chase the same number of players; mix in a limited pool of FAs, and you end up with a $36M Francouer.

I think the new measures will help, but the Marlins just paid Reyes $18M per year and Heath Bell is getting $9M in the real world. The Cards are offering around $25M to Pujols and maybe he'll end up with $30M....just sayin

[Braves GM (Jared)]

The salary cap will even itself out. Its almost like inflation in the real world. I like the new changes.

[Orioles GM (Michael)]

Pujols for 25m is completely rediculous! I agree! Overpay! The real teams are offerin him 22! (but seriously lets make it more realistic so that bids are similar to real ones.

My proposal is we cut salary cap in 2012-2013 offseason, and then make max bids more standard, with 25M being the max total. Because in all seriousness, 25M for one player is a ton, even Pujols just not when your cap is 175