The race for Tannehill is heating up as it comes down to the wire. The St. Louis Bishops have had their name cleared after inking C Alex Romo to a monster deal. But a few new teams are being circulated around the winter meetings as possible suitors for the crown jewel of the free agency market.
The Minnesota Lumberjacks have signed a few sizable 5-year deals already and now are getting some buzz as possibly pursuing Tannehill. The money is there, but will adding Tannehill to the other contracts anchor this team down in a few years?
The other team that fell under the initial radar sweep is the Los Angeles Aces. While Jacksonville remains the leading candidate, they would be happiest to see Los Angeles take home the trophy if they cannot. While Minnesota had an unprotected draft pick, they already forfeited it by signing SP Josias Estrada. Los Angeles' first round pick is unprotected, and as yet still their own.
There is not much time left, but the intrigue builds thicker than ever? Where will "Rolls" Royce Tannehill land?
Wednesday, February 9, 2011
Tannehill's Pay Day Approaching
Jacksonville, FLA -- SP Royce Tannehill is poised to become ULB's first superstar--or at least its most overpaid one.
Tannehill's rights were originally owned by the Jacksonville Sharks, but as he was eligible for free agency, he wanted to test the waters. Financially, it was the smart move. He's poised to become ULB's richest player for its first 5 seasons.
A 5-year deal worth upwards of $100M seems all but imminent. Our investigative sources say only 3 teams are prepared to offer at least that much. They are the Chicago Hitmen, St. Louis Bishops, and Tannehill's original franchise, the Jacksonville Sharks. St. Louis and Jacksonville appear to be the frontrunners.
So with a contract that lofty, the question immediately springs to mind: is he worth it? Tannehill is a right-hander who throws strikes--hard--and keeps the ball in the yard. He will easily surpass the 200 IP mark, and he fares about as well versus left-handed batters as he does right-handed batters. He is more than capable of anchoring a staff, and in fact, elevating it to the next level.
But still, $20M for 5 years is an incredibly large commitment. If there's one knock on Tannehill it's his durability. He has to stay healthy for the contract to be even remotely worth it. Depending on how many starts he gets per year, he is making roughly $500k each time he takes the mound. Because the deal is 5 years long, he opens himself up to more injuries the longer he plays for the team that signs him.
One thing not likely in play is Tannehill's Type A designation scaring off the remaining bidders. Jacksonville would obviously forfeit no picks if they resign Tannehill. St. Louis and Chicago meanwhile have protected first round picks in the midseason Amateur Draft. So it's boiling down to the money, and the question: how much is too much?
We'll have continuing coverage of the Tannehill story as it develops, including breaking the news to you when he signs.
 |
| Royce Tannehill is currently 29-years old. |
A 5-year deal worth upwards of $100M seems all but imminent. Our investigative sources say only 3 teams are prepared to offer at least that much. They are the Chicago Hitmen, St. Louis Bishops, and Tannehill's original franchise, the Jacksonville Sharks. St. Louis and Jacksonville appear to be the frontrunners.
So with a contract that lofty, the question immediately springs to mind: is he worth it? Tannehill is a right-hander who throws strikes--hard--and keeps the ball in the yard. He will easily surpass the 200 IP mark, and he fares about as well versus left-handed batters as he does right-handed batters. He is more than capable of anchoring a staff, and in fact, elevating it to the next level.
But still, $20M for 5 years is an incredibly large commitment. If there's one knock on Tannehill it's his durability. He has to stay healthy for the contract to be even remotely worth it. Depending on how many starts he gets per year, he is making roughly $500k each time he takes the mound. Because the deal is 5 years long, he opens himself up to more injuries the longer he plays for the team that signs him.
One thing not likely in play is Tannehill's Type A designation scaring off the remaining bidders. Jacksonville would obviously forfeit no picks if they resign Tannehill. St. Louis and Chicago meanwhile have protected first round picks in the midseason Amateur Draft. So it's boiling down to the money, and the question: how much is too much?
We'll have continuing coverage of the Tannehill story as it develops, including breaking the news to you when he signs.
Saturday, February 5, 2011
Budgets by Division
The budgets have come across the wire for each of the 32 teams preparing to launch their innaugural season in the United League of Baseball. Here is a breakdown by division of player payroll budget. Which teams will be making runs at expensive free agents in an attempt to wear the crown first?
AL North
Toronto Mounties, $85M
Buffalo Mammoths, $82M
Montreal Hilltoppers, $80M
Cleveland Crows, $75M
Pretty reasonable payrolls from the only division to feature Canadien teams.
AL East
Baltimore Ironclads, $96M
New York Legends, $91M
Philadelphia Quakers, $78M
Boston Checkers, $73M
The Yankees they are not--the Legends don't even have the highest payroll in their own division.
AL South
Jacksonville Sharks, $97M
Kansas City Bolts, $80M
Louisville Thoroughbreds, $79M
Houston Vultures, $74M
The Sharks left themselves plenty of financial wiggle room only to trade away 2 big contracts this morning--pending league approval.
AL West
Los Angeles Aces, $102M
Seattle 747s, $90M
Portland Pioneers, $90M
San Francisco Slingers, $79M
The AL West is the only division to feature 3 teams with over $90M. Can the Slingers keep pace?
NL North
Milwaukee Wolves, $105M
Minnesota Lumberjacks, $94M
Chicago Hitmen, $84M
Detroit Roadsters, $78M
The Wolves are the second predatory animal to have the highest payroll in their division, after the Sharks.
NL East
Cincinnati Tall Stacks, $125M
St. Louis Bishops, $116M
Indianapolis Racers, $85M
Pittsburgh Phantoms, $72M
Indeed, the two highest payrolls reside in the same division. This could be quite a heated battle on the open free agent market. It will be interesting to see what kind of coaches Cincinnati ends up with given their $6M available to spend on them.
NL South
Atlanta Fireballs, $108M
New Orleans Jesters, $89M
Charlotte Cavalry, $69M
Tampa Bay Barracuda, $61M
The anti-NL East, the NL South features the two teams with the lowest payrolls.
NL West
Las Vegas Daredevils, $89M
Arizona Geckos, $87M
Salt Lake City Miners, $84M
Oklahoma City Kingfishers, $77M
We finish as we began, with a lot of middle-of-the-road payrolls. Who can emerge from the pack?
AL North
Toronto Mounties, $85M
Buffalo Mammoths, $82M
Montreal Hilltoppers, $80M
Cleveland Crows, $75M
Pretty reasonable payrolls from the only division to feature Canadien teams.
AL East
Baltimore Ironclads, $96M
New York Legends, $91M
Philadelphia Quakers, $78M
Boston Checkers, $73M
The Yankees they are not--the Legends don't even have the highest payroll in their own division.
AL South
Jacksonville Sharks, $97M
Kansas City Bolts, $80M
Louisville Thoroughbreds, $79M
Houston Vultures, $74M
The Sharks left themselves plenty of financial wiggle room only to trade away 2 big contracts this morning--pending league approval.
AL West
Los Angeles Aces, $102M
Seattle 747s, $90M
Portland Pioneers, $90M
San Francisco Slingers, $79M
The AL West is the only division to feature 3 teams with over $90M. Can the Slingers keep pace?
NL North
Milwaukee Wolves, $105M
Minnesota Lumberjacks, $94M
Chicago Hitmen, $84M
Detroit Roadsters, $78M
The Wolves are the second predatory animal to have the highest payroll in their division, after the Sharks.
NL East
Cincinnati Tall Stacks, $125M
St. Louis Bishops, $116M
Indianapolis Racers, $85M
Pittsburgh Phantoms, $72M
Indeed, the two highest payrolls reside in the same division. This could be quite a heated battle on the open free agent market. It will be interesting to see what kind of coaches Cincinnati ends up with given their $6M available to spend on them.
NL South
Atlanta Fireballs, $108M
New Orleans Jesters, $89M
Charlotte Cavalry, $69M
Tampa Bay Barracuda, $61M
The anti-NL East, the NL South features the two teams with the lowest payrolls.
NL West
Las Vegas Daredevils, $89M
Arizona Geckos, $87M
Salt Lake City Miners, $84M
Oklahoma City Kingfishers, $77M
We finish as we began, with a lot of middle-of-the-road payrolls. Who can emerge from the pack?
Friday, February 4, 2011
Tips for Rookies: Budgeting
Today's event is budgeting, which can be accessed by going to Admin Office > Budgeting > Set Budget. This is an important first step in the season as it shapes the kind of team you are capable of having this year. Think you can contend out of the gate? Consider pumping up player payroll and making a run at some premium free agents. Prefer to develop in house? Turn up your prospect budgets and start building through the draft. The choices are endless. Here are some pointers to make some sense of things.
The Basics
In total you have $185M to divvy up between the categories of Player, Prospect, Coaches, College Scouting, High School Scouting, International Scouting, Advance Scouting, Training, and Medical.
The first category, Player, is determined by taking $185M and subtracting your values for all of the other categories. You don't set this category directly, but it is determined by the values you set for all the other categories.
Prospects and Coaches can be set anywhere from $6M-$20M. They can be set anywhere between this range every year.
The remaining categories can only be increased or decreased by $4M in either direction from what they were set to the previous year. Because new worlds start with a baseline of $10M for all of these categories, you may only set them to somewhere between $6M and $14M this year. Then next year, you can increase/decrease them by $4M more again if you desire. The minimum value for all of these categories is $0M and the maximum is $20M. If you've done your math, you know you cannot reach $20M in these categories until Season 3 at the earliest.
The Categories
Player: This is the big one, the base payroll for all of your players, from ML down to Rookie ball. If you want to mimic the Yankees, turn this up and reel in the big fish in FA. If you prefer to model yourself after a small market team, keep this low and trade away high-salary players for younger prospects.
Prospect: This category determines how much money you have available to pay to prospects their signing bonuses. There are 2 ways to get new prospects, which we'll discuss more later. They are the Draft and the International Free Agent market. Draft players will have demands based on where they are drafted and how willing to sign they are. International Free Agents will have initial demands, but often be bid up by other owners trying to land the same player. Basically, turn this up if you want to try and build up your farm.
**Remember that in this world this category is capped at $25M for the entire season. Though you can only set it to $20M initially, I will discuss budget transfers later. Budget transfers will allow you to bring this category as high as $25M, but no higher due to our world rules.
Coaches: This category determines how much money you have to sign your coaches. The simplified theory is "Coaching + Playing Time = Development". Young prospects will develop no matter what level they play baseball at, as long as they are getting playing time and their coaches are good. The more money you put here, the more likely you'll be able to land the premium coaches when the time comes.
College/High School Scouting: Both of these categories effect how many players you'll scout in advance of the midseason Amateur Draft, as well as how accurate the projected ratings you'll see for them are. College players tend to be older (obviously) at the time of draft, meaning they are closer to the majors but have fewer developmental years left in them. High school players are younger with more developmental years. The higher you put both (or one) of these categories, the more likely it is that you will have a strong draft. Remember to consider where you are drafting! If you're drafting 32nd overall, it may not make sense to pump these categories too high, unless it is to plan for the future (remember the +/- $4M per year rule).
International Scouting: Throughout the year, your scouts will inform you of international prospects/players that you are then allowed to sign using your remaining prospect budget. Turning this category up means you will be notified of a larger selection of these players, and you will also see more accurate projected ratings for them. This is the only other way to stock the farm outside of the draft. The advantage to this category is that even if you have a bad draft slot, you can still land a stud prospect via this process. The disadvantage is that these prospects tend to command much more expensive signing bonuses as owners bid them up, sometimes dumping their whole prospect budget on one player.
Advance Scouting: This category controls the accuracy of the projected ratings you will see on players under 27 years old (all players 27 and older have projected ratings that match their current ratings--even though it is still possible for them to develop slightly). Turning this category higher means you will be more confident that the player you are trading for will reach the projections you are seeing. Many veteran owners will turn this down once they understand the development patterns, but I would advise against it as a rookie owner. I have plenty of seasons under my belt and still keep this very high most of the time. Very important if you want to make any trades involving prospects.
Training: Training is responsible for 2 important things. First, the higher your training the less likely your players are to get injured. This is important as it makes it less likely that your ML stars will go down to injury, and that your precious prospects won't get injured and have their development wrecked. Second, a high training budget will slow the ratings decline of older players.
Medical: The slight difference between training and medical is that medical reduces the length of injuries once players are injured. So, for example, if you have high training but low medical your injury frequency will be low but your players have a higher chance of getting injured for a long time and taking big ratings hits. If your training is low but your medical is high, you will see a higher frequency of injuries but each injury will have a low chance of being for a long period of time. If you just want healthy players, you'll have to turn both categories up.
Budget Transfers
Though you cannot perform these until tomorrow it is important to keep them in mind, as they may effect how you budget. If at any point during the year you find yourself with excess Player, Prospect, or Coaches budget, you are allowed to transfer it to another category. You can do so in $2M chunks, and you forfeit half of the money in order to do so. But, for example, to get to the $25M Prospect cap, you could overbudget Player by $10M, then transfer all of that to Prospect, giving you $5M more to use there. Just keep it in mind that you can do this, as you'll probably use it some day.
And that's it! Happy budgeting!
The Basics
In total you have $185M to divvy up between the categories of Player, Prospect, Coaches, College Scouting, High School Scouting, International Scouting, Advance Scouting, Training, and Medical.
The first category, Player, is determined by taking $185M and subtracting your values for all of the other categories. You don't set this category directly, but it is determined by the values you set for all the other categories.
Prospects and Coaches can be set anywhere from $6M-$20M. They can be set anywhere between this range every year.
The remaining categories can only be increased or decreased by $4M in either direction from what they were set to the previous year. Because new worlds start with a baseline of $10M for all of these categories, you may only set them to somewhere between $6M and $14M this year. Then next year, you can increase/decrease them by $4M more again if you desire. The minimum value for all of these categories is $0M and the maximum is $20M. If you've done your math, you know you cannot reach $20M in these categories until Season 3 at the earliest.
The Categories
Player: This is the big one, the base payroll for all of your players, from ML down to Rookie ball. If you want to mimic the Yankees, turn this up and reel in the big fish in FA. If you prefer to model yourself after a small market team, keep this low and trade away high-salary players for younger prospects.
Prospect: This category determines how much money you have available to pay to prospects their signing bonuses. There are 2 ways to get new prospects, which we'll discuss more later. They are the Draft and the International Free Agent market. Draft players will have demands based on where they are drafted and how willing to sign they are. International Free Agents will have initial demands, but often be bid up by other owners trying to land the same player. Basically, turn this up if you want to try and build up your farm.
**Remember that in this world this category is capped at $25M for the entire season. Though you can only set it to $20M initially, I will discuss budget transfers later. Budget transfers will allow you to bring this category as high as $25M, but no higher due to our world rules.
Coaches: This category determines how much money you have to sign your coaches. The simplified theory is "Coaching + Playing Time = Development". Young prospects will develop no matter what level they play baseball at, as long as they are getting playing time and their coaches are good. The more money you put here, the more likely you'll be able to land the premium coaches when the time comes.
College/High School Scouting: Both of these categories effect how many players you'll scout in advance of the midseason Amateur Draft, as well as how accurate the projected ratings you'll see for them are. College players tend to be older (obviously) at the time of draft, meaning they are closer to the majors but have fewer developmental years left in them. High school players are younger with more developmental years. The higher you put both (or one) of these categories, the more likely it is that you will have a strong draft. Remember to consider where you are drafting! If you're drafting 32nd overall, it may not make sense to pump these categories too high, unless it is to plan for the future (remember the +/- $4M per year rule).
International Scouting: Throughout the year, your scouts will inform you of international prospects/players that you are then allowed to sign using your remaining prospect budget. Turning this category up means you will be notified of a larger selection of these players, and you will also see more accurate projected ratings for them. This is the only other way to stock the farm outside of the draft. The advantage to this category is that even if you have a bad draft slot, you can still land a stud prospect via this process. The disadvantage is that these prospects tend to command much more expensive signing bonuses as owners bid them up, sometimes dumping their whole prospect budget on one player.
Advance Scouting: This category controls the accuracy of the projected ratings you will see on players under 27 years old (all players 27 and older have projected ratings that match their current ratings--even though it is still possible for them to develop slightly). Turning this category higher means you will be more confident that the player you are trading for will reach the projections you are seeing. Many veteran owners will turn this down once they understand the development patterns, but I would advise against it as a rookie owner. I have plenty of seasons under my belt and still keep this very high most of the time. Very important if you want to make any trades involving prospects.
Training: Training is responsible for 2 important things. First, the higher your training the less likely your players are to get injured. This is important as it makes it less likely that your ML stars will go down to injury, and that your precious prospects won't get injured and have their development wrecked. Second, a high training budget will slow the ratings decline of older players.
Medical: The slight difference between training and medical is that medical reduces the length of injuries once players are injured. So, for example, if you have high training but low medical your injury frequency will be low but your players have a higher chance of getting injured for a long time and taking big ratings hits. If your training is low but your medical is high, you will see a higher frequency of injuries but each injury will have a low chance of being for a long period of time. If you just want healthy players, you'll have to turn both categories up.
Budget Transfers
Though you cannot perform these until tomorrow it is important to keep them in mind, as they may effect how you budget. If at any point during the year you find yourself with excess Player, Prospect, or Coaches budget, you are allowed to transfer it to another category. You can do so in $2M chunks, and you forfeit half of the money in order to do so. But, for example, to get to the $25M Prospect cap, you could overbudget Player by $10M, then transfer all of that to Prospect, giving you $5M more to use there. Just keep it in mind that you can do this, as you'll probably use it some day.
And that's it! Happy budgeting!
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