Quote:
Originally Posted by trndobrd
If this has been covered in an earlier post, I apologize. Does the contract follow the player in a trade? Obviously a top player with five years remaining on a seven year contract would have more value than one year remaining.
On the flip side, will owners have an opportunity to lockup newly acquired players after a trade or free agency? For instance, if I bid $25 on Andy Studebaker and win the auction, will I have an opportunity to immediately sign him to a seven year deal, or am I forced to bid based on the contract length I would like?
For bids exceeding $400 (28 year contract) are player's children immediately considered under contract when they reach adulthood?
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I'll echo cdcox's answers.
One way to think about the contract lengths is that they're a ceiling, not a requirement. In general, teams will want to sign the better players to longer contracts, so this system is an easy way to do that. And if you want a high-priced player for only a year, who cares if you get the rights to him for seven years? It's all front-loaded and you paid the same for him, so you can drop him if you don't need him any more.
And on the other end, in the Studebaker example, if you want to sign him to a seven-year deal it's probably because you think he's ascending. If that's the case then at some point he's going to hold out and demand a renegotiation. This system avoids that problem.