Penalties for dropping players under contract in contract lg

[HCOFTRC]

How do you guys handles this?

Do you go 50% of his contract left?? If player has 2 yrs left and you drop.. 1 yr gets charged to your contract amount??

Thanks

[hankscorpio]

We do 40% penalty. Applied to each year of contract remaining. So if he's under contract for 2015 and 2016 and is dropped, then the penalty is carried forward to 2016. Which takes an organized person to keep track of year to year.

We started at 25% and it encouraged people to sign everyone to a long term deal except the biggest contracts (we have no limit on total years) because the penalty wasn't steep enough. 40% has been an effective deterrent though, and 50% wouldn't be unreasonable at all.

[HCOFTRC]

So if guys has 3 yrs left .. He'd be on the books at 1.5 for the next 3 seasons at 50% penalty..

[outrage]

We do 25% and I think it works just fine. We have a couple teams with over 15% of the cap in penalties. 50% seems kind of harsh to me, but I guess it could work if that's what you would want to do.

[HCOFTRC]

Do you round up?? 2 yrs left on contract would be .5 yrs at 25%..

[junk_monkey]

We have quite complex contracts. The higher the value of the deal the more is guaranteed, and it's that guarantee that is the penalty for dropping - $1-3 = no guarantee - pick up and drop whenever you like - $4-12 = 25% guarantee rounded up. Maxes out at $51+ = 75% guarantee.

If you have a player on a $12 for 3 years the guarantee is $3 per year so drop him and you will have a $3 penalty in each of the 3 years. We do allow for this penalty to accelerate, so that $3 over 3 years can become $9 this year. But you can't structure it any other way - either take the penalty over the course of the contract as was originally set out or take it all now.

It means you have to be pretty serious to offer a big deal to a player.

[SteelLake]

$1-$2 players can be dropped at no penalty (but player has to be >$9 to sign multiple years in waivers and >$14 to do any type of re-signing). The rest are a 50% cap hit for remainder of contract (also have ability to buyout dead $ w cap space left over at end of year and a minimum cap floor so owners don't abuse it).

Owners also get a tag every year that they can use in multiple ways (1 of which is to buyout any contract for free).

Startup league, but I think 50% will keep owners honest with contracts , but other provisions will prevent teams from being screwed for years

[bonscott]

In my long running salary cap/contract league we can assign a player up to a 5 year contract. If dropped you take a 50% cap hit (and of course get 50% of the salary back) and if the contract is longer then 1 then you take an additional cap hit *next* season based on the length of the contract: 2 - 15%, 3 - 25%, 4 - 35%, 5 - 45%.

Only the cap hit next season do we need to track on a spreadsheet. Then when the commish rolls over the MFL league to the next season he adds in that cap hit for each team and then we move on tracking for the next year.

[hankscorpio]

Do you round up?? 2 yrs left on contract would be .5 yrs at 25%..

I guess I'm a little confused. I'll be more specific in how mine works.

You sign a guy to a $10 contract in the 2015 draft and assign 3 yrs (2015, 2016, 2017 seasons)
You drop him in the middle of the 2015 season.
You take a $4 penalty (40%) for the remainder of 2015, and have $4 dead money on the books for 2016 and 2017. But the net effect is opening up $6 in cap space for FA.

However there are no maximum number of contract years in my league like some people have. If you had a maximum number, it would be personal preference if you want to have both a cap hit penalty (as described above), and/or a contract years penalty like you seem to be asking about.

If I did enact the contract years penalty, I wouldn't do any rounding. the cap hit I wouldn't round either. FA can only be bid in increments of $1. Teams often have an odd number like $2.20 in cap space remaining, and can only bid up to $2. I wouldn't like losing $1-$2 because I came out on the wrong side of multiple round-ups when in the in-season waiver moves $1-$2 is a pretty big deal.

[hankscorpio]

In my long running salary cap/contract league we can assign a player up to a 5 year contract. If dropped you take a 50% cap hit (and of course get 50% of the salary back) and if the contract is longer then 1 then you take an additional cap hit *next* season based on the length of the contract: 2 - 15%, 3 - 25%, 4 - 35%, 5 - 45%.

Only the cap hit next season do we need to track on a spreadsheet. Then when the commish rolls over the MFL league to the next season he adds in that cap hit for each team and then we move on tracking for the next year.

This is a good way to minimize the burden of tracking penalties, especially in a league that allows 5 year contracts. My league is a 3 yr maximum contract, so at worst you're tracking 2 years out, and it's pretty rare to have one of those drops.

[HCOFTRC]

Thanks for all the replies.. Sounds like in our just contract league/no salaries..we have 1-3 yr contracts.. The best and easiest way would be .. 3 yrs left= 2 yr penalty, 2 yrs left= 1 yr penalty, 1 yr left= 0 penalty

[StraightCashHomie]

In my long running salary cap/contract league we can assign a player up to a 5 year contract. If dropped you take a 50% cap hit (and of course get 50% of the salary back) and if the contract is longer then 1 then you take an additional cap hit *next* season based on the length of the contract: 2 - 15%, 3 - 25%, 4 - 35%, 5 - 45%.

Only the cap hit next season do we need to track on a spreadsheet. Then when the commish rolls over the MFL league to the next season he adds in that cap hit for each team and then we move on tracking for the next year.

This is a good way to minimize the burden of tracking penalties, especially in a league that allows 5 year contracts.

I agree that is a good way to do it that minimizes tracking penalties, but you still have to track who is dropped and how many contract years they had left, no?

Either way, I think 50% is too soft of a penalty, that's what we used to do and people just added and dropped guys as they see fit.

Ours is now complex, but I like the way it works, and though I have to track it I don't mind it too much because I have calculations read to punch into a google spreadsheet that everyone can look and see what their future years are looking like as well.

If a player has 1 year left, it's a 60% cap hit in that year only.
If a player has 2 years left, it's a 70% cap hit in the first year, and 50% in the second year.
If a player has 3 years left, it's a 80% cap hit in the first year, 60% in the second year, and 40% in the third year.
If a player has 4 years left, it's a 90% cap hit in the first year, 70% in the second year, 50% in the third year, 30% in the fourth year.
If a player has 5 years left, it's a 100%% cap hit in the first year, 80% in the second year, 60% in the third year, 40% in the fourth year, and 20% in the fifth year.

So.. you don't throw out 4-5 year contracts on a whim.

[packfntk]

How do you set it so that players with 1 or say 2 year contracts can be cut with no penalty on MFL?