Orphan School - Lesson 3: Cash

A continuing series to allow new owners of Orphan teams to catch up:

Some of you might be launching into transactions right away this week.  That's great, but just a few notes about cash and player salaries before you find yourself in a hole.  See Rules: Finances for full details.  You may think you have a roster full of dead weight, but there are financial implications of transactions you should be aware of before you start cutting guys.  Sometimes, you may have to work around roster problems you inherited in creative ways.

Make sure you read the rebate exceptions at the bottom of this post.

How teams get cash:

• All teams got 40-plus million distributed to them in December.
• All teams get 2 million at Opening Day.
• There's an extra million handed out at the end of May, June, and July.
• In small amounts, you get cash for every win plus there is cash distribution each week dependent upon your place in the division.
• Teams get cash for final division placement and post-season results.

That's pretty much it.

On the other hand, your team has already paid the salaries of every team on your roster.  Every time you sign a player from here on out, you will also need to pay that salary right away.  But here's a "bonus" of sorts: if you cut a player, you get some sort of salary rebate.  (Same thing goes on salaries when you pick up a player in a trade or trade away a player).

Salary assumption and rebates are based on a sliding scale depending on how much is left in the season - take a look at the Weekly Transaction Deadlines for the season.  The 3 columns on the right of the deadlines table show you the salary percentage you have to pick up or get back in transactions.

So, in February, as you sign players, you need to pay 100% of their listed salary.  BUT, you'll only get 50% of a salary back if you cut a player.  Take a look at Week Zero - April 5....at that point the salary rebate goes to 80% (why the difference?  When we started the game, salary rebate in the off season was zero...a rule change put it up to 50%).  So, you never get 100% of a salary back when you cut a guy - 80% is the maximum.  There are 25 weeks in the regular season, so essentially we cut off 4% from the value each week.  When we get to Week 15, the 40% mark, there are 2 important changes: a) all signings the rest of the season are at 40% of salary and b) no more salary rebates.

Trades are a slightly different story - right now if you trade a player away you get 100% of the player's salary in rebate.  And later in the season, when we hit Week 15, the salary rebate/assumption for trades continues to decrease each week by 4%.

So, at the moment, there is more financial benefit to you to trade a player away than cut one.  This is also a way that you can fill out your roster if you're short on cash - trade away one expensive player for a couple of cheaper ones (etc.).  More on that another time.

Two important exceptions on salary rebates:

1. For players with salary 200 or below, you NEVER get a rebate when you cut them.
2. Contracts...do you have a "2010" or "2011" in the Contract column for a player in your roster?  This is important....this player was signed to a "long-term contract" in 2009 or earlier.  At that time, a cash amount was paid for the entire length of the contract.  Until that time runs out (so 2010 = the 2010 season), no more cash needs to be paid for him.  BUT - you never get a salary rebate for cutting or trading away a player on a multi-year contract.  Be aware of that before you start getting rid of these guys thinking you'll get extra cash.  Contracts are a much deeper subject - you should read the rules about them.

Again, if you're short on cash, you can use contracts to your benefit in trades.  Pick up a player from another team who has a contract for 2010 and trade away a guy who doesn't have a contract.  You get a salary rebate for trading away your guy and not have to pay anything for the guy you're getting.

One final note - if you're on the other end of the cash balance scale, there is a "use it or lose it" aspect of cash to retain a competitive balance.  You can only carry a balance of 5 million (listed as 5000 on your roster page) into the season.  Anything above that will be cut off in early April.

Orphan School - Lesson 2: The Roster

In a continuing series to help Orphan Team owners get up to speed...

See the BWB Rules about Rosters to cover this topic.  (a new tab/window will open)

There are 26 mandatory positions on your roster:

• 9 starting batters - covering all 8 fielder positions plus DH (any OF will do)
• 5 backup batters - fill in at a given position in a game if needed.  We'll talk bench on another day, but you want to cover all positions here, so multi-position guys are valuable.
• 5 starting pitchers - your starting rotation ordered 1-5
• 5 bullpen pitchers - the scoring formula outlines how many of these are needed in any game if your starting pitcher doesn't go 9 innings.
• 2 spot pitchers - If your scheduled starter doesn't have stats for a game, a spot starter will fill in from here.  You can also put a relief pitcher in here too who will fill in if any of your 5 bullpen guys don't have stats.

Those 26 slots can be filled by any player in the system, no matter their salary.
You also have 2 roster slots for the "Taxi Squad" and any player with any salary can go in these slots.  This is, in effect, our "disabled list" but you can put any player there - he doesn't have to be hurt.  However, his stats will never be used for a game (except for the last 3 weeks of the season, that's an exception for another time).

So you have 28 roster spots that can be filled by a player of any salary - 100-10000 (or whatever the top salary might be).

Side note: Injured Reserve is not your normal disabled list.  If you put a player on IR, you cannot remove him from there all year except if you cut or trade him.  You'd use that for some guy who wrecked his knee in April but you want him next year.  The IR spot does NOT count against your roster spots (so it basically gives you a 41st player if you use it).

Your final 12 roster spots are "minor league" slots.  And in BWB, our definition of minor league eligible is a player who has a salary of 250 or below.  So Matt Stairs just signed a minor league contract in real life and if he starts off there instead of the majors (and for some reason you have him), you still can't put him in your minor league slots - his salary is 408.  Think of these guys as "out of options" - you have to DFA them, you can't send them down...and in BWB that means if you want to get them out of an active spot you need to put them on IR (never to be used again this season), put them on Taxi Squad, or cut/trade them.

To help you out, there are some guides on your roster page.  Right above your player list, you'll see any warnings about your lineup and roster:

And below your roster list, there is a table that lets you know how you're set up on roster minimums and maximums - let's check it for a different team:

 

 The left side of this table shows the minimums.  This team has the minimum number of hitters - 14 - so if he cuts one, he'd need to pick up another to remain legal.  On the right side, we see roster maximums in relation to the number of hitters with salary over 250 you can have.  Your maximums are 16 hitters with salary 250 or higher and 14 pitchers at 250 or higher.  But then why doesn't the total add up to 30?  That's because in order to reach the maximum, you need to use the taxi squad slots, which are pitcher or hitter.  Your mandatory spots in the roster are 14 hitters, 12 pitchers (26 total).  Using the 2 taxi squad spots gets you 2 extra positions for players (now the total is 28) and all other roster spots - 12 total - are "minor league" slots.  

The team above can now only sign players who make salary 250 or below.

And - think about it - this roster is full on the major league side.  If this team signs a player with salary 100 now, but wants to use him in the starting lineup, there is no room - the 28 possible slots for players with salary 251 or higher are full - so in order to play the rookie, one of the higher-priced guys need to be dropped.