Setting your budget

Setting your budget is not the only place where you can fail during a season, but can be the beginning especially to someone new. There is no wrong way to set your budget but I will try to tell you what to look for. This is how I set mine. If someone has something to add or correct a mistake I made, please tell me and I'll be happy to fix it =)

1. Go to your Franchise Payroll Analysis (FPA) . At the bottom it will give you the Player Payroll Budget and Player Payroll Used. Write these numbers down on a scrap piece of paper as you will need them for later. Or you can try to remember them, but I write them down.

2. Now you will need to know how much you need for each arb player you plan to keep, you can use the negotiate button to find out how much a player wants for each season. Remember you will only need the first season in this years for budgeting planing right now. Add these numbers up.

3. You will need to find out how much each of your FAs want that you want to keep. The only ones we are worried about is the ones above league minimum salary which is $327,000. Add all of the salaries up and write that number down.

4. Add all of those numbers up from #1 through #4 then add approximately 7 million dollars.

5. Coaches I usually make it $8 million or less, $10 million or $14 million dollars depending on how I think I am going to perform that year. If I think it is a rebuild year I use $8 million or less. If I think I have a chance at the wildcard I will use $10 million dollars. If I think I will make a serious run at the World Series, I will use $14 million dollars for coaches. However, the proper way to find out which coachs are wanting to return and which ones are looking for new jobs. We can find out which coaches are jumping ship and turning their backs on us by looking at the rehire center. Honestly, rehiring coaches is the least favorite part of this game for me. We can select the coaches that we want to return at it will give us a total salary for all of them at the bottom of the screen. The ML coaches are the ones we should concern ourselves with the most. They cost the most and the ones that will be fought over the most. They also are the ones that cost the most to replace, even if you use the minimum salary to replace them. If I am making a serious run and know I need good coaches, I won't even pay attention to the minimum salary as a good coach will not even consider it. The 3 most expensive coaches are the hitting coach, the pitching coach and the bench coach. The bench coach is by far the most expensive and in my opinion the most important. If you happen to get ejected during the game, they are the ones who is running it in your place. They can run over $4 million or even over $5 million dollars in the hiring phase where everyone has a shot at them. If you have a coach that you absolutely want, another that is only so-so and can only keep one; keep the coach you absolutely want. Do not let him get to the free agent market for coaches. If you plan accordingly this can be an easy phase or a nightmare if you don't. Also, the better the coach, the better and faster your players advance. Also the better the coach the more of a chance your team will win. We pay for what we get with coaches. But do not go overboard if you are rebuilding. That money can be spent better else where, specifically in payroll or IFAs (if that is your thing).

6. Prospect Payroll, and the all of the scouting departments work the same. High school and college deal work with the amature draft. If you have a high draft pick (picks 1 through about 15 or so) expect to pay around $2 million to $10 million (or possibly more depending) from the prospect payroll to get him signed. The riskier you draft, the higher amount you can expect to pay. I draft conservativly the first 5 rounds because I think it is paramount to get those players signed. It is not worth the risk not to sign your first 5 picks. They are by far your most important picks. Imagine not being able to draft your first round pick and you have a top 10 pick. Yes you get a compensation pick the next year, but it is sandwiched between the 1st and 2nd round. So you went from a top 5 pick and possibly a franchise player for years to come to a ok player at best for not signing the player the year before. The scouting department tells you the scouting reports on each player, so... If you skimp on this expect to be disappointment when the actual players numbers are shown. The more you spend in scouting the better. Although I never have spent over $10 million and have never been disappointed with the results. I may miss a player or two, but any amount of money spent we will scout ALL of the players. Also the less you spend in the scouting department, the more players will not be scouted at all and the higher calibur the player will be.

7. International Scouting finds out-of-country players from all over the world throughout the season. If you spend the minimum the first year ($6 million dollars), your scouts will find some players, and very few of them will be any good, only one or two will be worth getting into a bidding war over. I usually skip this all together as I do not see the benefit of spending $10 million dollars+ on IFAs then getting into a bidding war over them. A good IFA will run $10 million dollars+, and the IFA of the year will run over $20 million dollars. ALSO the player being paid, his bonus money comes out of your prospect payroll. So you are possibly robbing yourself of money that you will need in the draft. I think we can get more for our money in the draft than with in the IFA section, especially if you have a top 15 pick. Think about it; to get a top IFA you will need to spend roughly $12 million dollars in international scouting and then on top of that you will need to spend another $15 to $20 million+ dollars to sign him. So if we go this route we have invested roughly $27 - $32 million dollars on one player without even drafting a single player yet. Not worth it in my humble opinion. This year I got my IFA spending down from $6 million to $2million dollars so I don't think I will see any prime players. Next year I hope to get it down to zero. International Scouting is a trap that should be avoided unless you are dead set on spending $20 million dollars plus for a player and can afford to do that.

8. Advance Scouting allows you to see any active player and his values. The lower you go with this the more his values are skewed downward or sometimes upwards. I've tried this at $14 million dollars on up and have found that keeping it around $15 million dollars is enough to show you accurate values for a player. Setting it above $15 million dollars is no nessecerally a waste but spending above $15 million dollars will not improve its accurancy except for a point here or a point there.

9. Training; I've used $10 million dollars before. Last year I tried $7 million dollars because my players had a very high injury rating. I had one very serious injury all year long, however I think I would have got that serious injury anyhow because that players injury rating was so low. If your roster has players full of high injury ratings I would advise maybe thinking about using $7 million - $9 million dollars. If your roster is full of players with low injury ratings OR has a player in a key position that has a low injury rating I wouldn't spend below $10 million dollars.

10 Medical; this helps a player rehab. I've used $10 million dollars here before for the most part also. However last year I tried $7 million dollars. This is because of my players all had high values for injuries. I didn't notice much of a difference in rehab times. I am going to start keeping this as the same as the training amount. However, if you have a lot of players with low injury ratings I wouldn't skimp in this department. I am lucky where I don't have that problem though.

There is one thing to keep in mind. On the top half of the budgetting, it gives totals to "help" you along. For some reason, mine are not accurate or close to accurate so I do not use them. The only one that is semi-accurate is the player payroll. That is just something to keep in mind.

If anyone has anything they see as a glaring mistake please tell me so I can fix it. Thank you =)