League Updates Mr. EFL Answer Man Rules

Poor? Porsche? Porcello? Or, Wavering Waivering Woeverine? Or, Forbidding Forebodings For Bidding?

 

Dear Mr. EFL Answer Man:

Explain to me how our new bidding sheet works. Also, how our new waiver wire works. And what should I do with, hypothetically, Rick Porcello?

Thanks.

— Your biggest fan

 

Dear Biggest:

 

Let’s say you have Rick Porcello on a contract expiring after 2018, paying him $7,000,000 per year. He fell to you because his previous owner got spooked by his 4.65 ERA in 2017. You picked him up in the Rule 5 draft because he won the AL Cy Young in 2016.

 

Your needle has been swinging wildly on Porcello since you got him. One day you think he’s the perfect number 2 to Madison Bumgarner, and spend your idle time dreaming up ways to get another Cy Young-worthy pitcher to form a wedge of dominant pitching with which to crash through the rose-bush-bramble to the EFL championship!  The next day you think about trading him. The day after that you wonder if you should drop him to see if there is anyone else out there as silly as you who might pick him up off the waiver wire. After all, if no one wants him you could just get him back.  Right?

 

Wrong. Or, probably wrong. For two reasons.

 

First is the waiver wire. If you DFA Porcello now, he will go onto the bottom of the waiver wire list. On February 17, just before the Rookie Draft, we will go through the waiver wire, starting at the top. As each name comes up, teams will be asked in draft order whether they want the player on his EFL contract. If a team says “yes”, it will take the player, move to the end of the draft order, and the next player will come up. If everyone says “no”, the player will go onto the Free Agent Draft list. We’ll do that for all the players, and finally we’ll come to Porcello.

 

It won’t matter where you are in the draft order at that point, you won’t be able to claim Porcello, because you lost all right to do that when you DFA’d him. (Our DFA’s are irrevocable.) So if you DFA him, you can’t get him on his current EFL contract. Unless you can swing a deal for someone else to claim him and trade him to you.

 

Let’s assume Porcello goes unclaimed, and goes into the draft. Can you draft him?

 

Well, I suppose you could. But he would then be on the market with his Boston Red Sox contract, which runs through the 2019 season at $21,000,000 per year.  As Porcello’s immediate past EFL owner, and no season segment (ie, the off-season, or a month in the season) having passed, you can match that bid at $21,000,000 for two years. (Other EFL owners would have to go to $21,250,000 to get him for two years.)

 

But what if you want to bid for fewer years, or more?

 

Get out your new bidding sheet (or pull it up from this link.) (Or this one.) (Or look at your Google Docs.) (Or maybe it’s somewhere on the league website.) If you look up “$21,000” (meaning $21,000,000) in column A, and go across to Column C, you’ll see the figure the figure “$24,478”.  This tells you that a one-year contract for $24,478,000 is as appealing to the average 32-year old ballplayer as a 2- year contract for $21,000,000.   “They occupy the same indifference curve” is how an economist would put it. Sure, the two-year deal is more money, but the ballplayer can go back on the market and get another contract in 2019, so he doesn’t face a choice of working one year or two years.  He is probably going to work both years anyway, so he doesn’t need twice the salary to sign a one-year deal.

 

You probably don’t want to pay Porcello $24,500,000 in 2018. So what about a longer-term deal?

 

Your starting point is still the C column next to $21,000 – that $24,478.  To find an equivalent value for a 3-year deal, you look in the D column and find $24,736 across from $18,500,000.  This happens to be more than $250,000 higher than $24,478 – so anyone can bid that figure to beat Porcello’s current contract. But this $24,736 is the lowest figure in Column D higher than $24,478, so you can’t go lower at 3 years to find a match.

 

By the same process you’ll see that a 4-year bid has to be for $16,250,000 ($16,500,000 for any other owner), and a 5-year bid has to be for $14,750,000 (same for any owner), and a 6-year bid is against the rules for everyone.

 

So it probably isn’t going to be smart to DFA Porcello if you think you’re going to want him in 2018.

 

Note that, once you get used to it, this new bidding sheet will be as easy to use as our old one. Compared to our old bidding sheet, our new bidding sheet makes it more feasible to offer shorter-term deals than the players’ MLB contract, but requires higher initial bids to offer longer-term deals. The Commissioner is very happy about this, even though he thinks someday we’ll need to go a step or two further to be even more realistic.

 

Anyway – you aren’t going to find a recent Cy Young winning pitcher for cheaper than Porcello anywhere – not the Rookie Draft, of course, and not the Free Agent Draft, either.  You’d better hang on to him unless someone makes a really sweet trade offer.

 

Just a little friendly advice from a source you can trust.

 

  • EFL Answer Man