Budget Setting

Setting the Budget is not the only place where one can fail during a season, but can be the beginning especially to a noob. There is no exact an science but will tell you what to look for. This is somewhat the way I do it. If I made a blaring idiotic mistake or left something out, tell me and I will add it or fix it.

1. Go to your Franchise Payroll Analysis. At the bottom it will give you the Player Payroll Budget and Player Payroll Used (may want to write those numbers down).

2. Next you need to know how much you need for each Arbitration Player you plan to keep, you can hit the negotiate button to find out how much a player wants for per season (remember you only need season 1) and add the total up for each player.

3. Next you need to find out how much each of your Free Agents want that you wish to keep (the ones above minimum salary--327K).

4. Add all this up and add about 5 to 10M for player payroll for the season.

5. Coaches I usually make it 10M, 12M or 14M depending on certain factors. If I think it is a rebuild year I use 10M, 12M if I got a chance or 14M if I am gonna make a run. But the proper way is to find out what coaches is wanting to return and which are looking for new jobs. You can find this out by looking at the Rehire Coaches. You can even select the coaches that you want to rehire (the ones that want to stay) and it will make a running total for you even. The ones you are worried about the most here is the ML coaches. They cost the most and will cost you the most money to replace and it even gives you minimum amounts you can spend, don't pay much attention to that as a good coach won't even be close to that amount. The most expensive to replace is the Bench Coach, Pitching Coach, and Hitting Coach, they can run 2M to 4M+ in the dog-eat-dog coach hiring phase. So plan accordingly, of coarse the better the coach, the better the player can advance and teams can win.

6. Prospect Payroll, and the various scouting departments work hand-in-hand. College and High School deal with the amateur draft. If you have a high draft pick (1 to about 15) expect to pay lots of money from the Prospect Payroll to get him signed (could be 2M to 10M or more). Some of them can run that high in later rounds also but is uncommon. The scouting departments tells you how good the player is, so if you use a low amount, don't expect the best results.

7. International Scouting finds out-of-country players from all over the world throughout the season. If you spend the minimum (6M) your scouts won't find very many and they are usually not very good. I usually spend 6M, 10M or 12M here. I use 6M if I don't plan on getting one or if I am looking for a specific good cheap specialty player down the road. A real good International Players can run 10M+ and it comes from Prospect Payroll (remember, more than one team can see him and drive the price up). But don't expect them to step right into a ML role, normally they are treated like draft picks and need minor league playing time. If I use more than 14M here that means I must be drafting past position 20 and using Internationals as a #1 draft pick.

8. Advance Scouting allows you to see any active player and his values (try to set this as high as possible 16M+), the lower you go the farther the values are skewed downward and/or upward even.

9. Training, I usually try to use any excess here or 14M minimum, helps players to keep from getting injured.

10 Medical, helps players rehab faster after getting injured, try for 12M+ here.

One thing to note: The top half of the budget screen gives totals to help you set your budget, but mine is never accurate (or even close for that matter) for some reason except for the current Player Payroll.