Budgeting 101

Here is a look at how I handle budget requirements and why. I am not recommending this to be absolute as everyone has their own ideas, reasons and beliefs.

Player Payroll: I have a formula for this area that works relatively well.

1. I take the Player Payroll as given at that time and then look at my Arbitration eligibles and determine if I want to keep any of them. I don't look at the 1 year plan at all only long range. Why, because the chances of him excepting a measly 1 year salary is slim and you could win or lose in arbitration and a loss could hurt a lot. Second I look at my ML FA's and see if there are any that I wish to keep. If there are I add them to the Player Payroll budget and then add 5M. This becomes the low end Player Payroll budget.

2. If you are going to delve into the FA market then you will need to add 10M to 15M depending on how many you are wanting to go after instead of the 5M. The studs don't come cheap. If I am not looking for studs, then 10M will usually work fine. Remember to keep enough cap space for advancements, trade and signing draftees and stuff.

Prospect Payroll: I do this one last, but I try to set it around 10M. This will allow me to sign all my draftees and maybe a high priced one if it happens. I have learned, that it is easier and cheaper to buy a FA or two than to fight over one future IFA.

Coaches Payroll: Here you need to look at the coaches that you want to keep and wish to return. I really don't pay much attention to the minor league coaches all that much at this time, I am more worried about the ML ones for they are the most expensive to replace. More on that in Coach Hiring 101. Depending on how many are "jumping ship" and no suitable replacement wanting his job, I set the budget between 10M and 14M and normally use 12M or 13M, 10M if I only need to get 1. The high end is if you need to replace a high priced coach with a better one. This year I had to almost replace my entire ML staff, though by looking at my coaches you wouldn't have thought that, so I set my budget to 13M.

Domestic College Scouting: I always set this equal to my Advance Scouting. Why? These are the players that will impact the ML team the fastest, so I don't want any surprises from a lower budget and I normally will take a college player over a high school player in many instances.

Domestic High School Scouting: I usually try and set this to 14M. Mainly because I tried 18M here and that didn't seem to work well and thought it a waste of 4M. Why so high? It gives me a better read on the young ones later in the draft.

International Scouting: From experience I have determined that IFA's are just not worth the fight for a good one. To me it is better to put the money elsewhere to better help the team. The more money spent here though gives you a better read on the the players and you get to see more players. That does not mean you will get to see all of them.

Advanced Scouting: I always set this to 18M. Simply I would rather almost see the true readings of any player.

Training: What the help section says and what it really means is different to most peoples logic. It says it helps players avoid injury. Which it can, but it is the logic that is two-fold here. To begin with, during the season it allows your players to advance in their playing abilities through the coaches. It was always regarded that better coaches provided this, but after toying with this and reading the forums, a higher training budget helps this along. Now here is the kicker, the players personal abilities (the gold ones) rarely, if ever, improve during the season. The money spent on training doesn't kick in until the off season, but does improve his chances of not getting injured during the season. I try and set this as high as possible with at least 15M or more. The lowest I would recommend here is 13M after doing a study in another world.

Medical: A little mystery is involved here also. What it does is allow a player that does get injured to rehab faster coupled with the players health and makeup. This also minimizes the damage or loss of points to all his abilities and a bad loss could be earth shaking to a team. It also lessens the degree of the injury. I always like the doctors report that it is a 2 or 3 month injury that turns into 10 or 11 days. I have yet to determine that a player whose injury is less than 15 days should be put on the DL. Though, I do if a players health rating seems to zoom downward by a lot at he time of the injury. I try to budget 14M or more here. After doing the study, I would recommend at least 13M here.

What the trend in the study showed was that players whose health rating was below 70 were for the most part picked on first, the lower the training and medical (under 13M) the worse it was to these guys. Once the sacrificial lambs (as I call them) were out of action, then waves of critical injuries started occurring to the better players (and I use that term loosely). Some of the critical injuries where abated somewhat by high training and medical budgets. Although in that world I had one player that had a critical injury that probably has ended his career with training and medical set high (bad makeup). It wasn't a tremendous loss as he was a career minor leaguer anyway, but a good one.