Prospect Signing Bonus Stipend

[Chicago D'backs GM (Greg)]

We will be adding a prospect signing bonus stipend to the rules. Starting with bidding next week every team will have $5M they can use to sign prospects. This money is independent of the salary cap, so if your team's salary is $120M you can still spend up to $5M on prospect signing bonues. You are able to spend over the $5M stipend with any additional money being deducted from your team's salary cap.
For this season there will not be a cap on total signing bonus spending. Starting with next season, a team will be able to spend over the $5M stipend, but will only be able to use an additional $5M of salary cap space on signing bonuses ($10M total). This is designed to promote signing of MLB players and prevent teams from stockpiling cap space to spend on prospect signings.

Signing bonuses paid to date will still be applied to your salary cap. Only future signing bonuses can be applied against the stipend.

We can still fine tune this if need be. If you have any questions or comments let me know.

[Toronto Marlins GM (Max)]

I don't think there should be a $10M cap on spending for SBs. When a big time international spec goes on the market most people will bid $10M. I could see a 10-way tie happening. This would also allow the other 5 teams to bid on other FA specs for cheap since most teams are saving their cash. Just my two cents, I do like the $5M stipend though

Max

[Chicago D'backs GM (Greg)]

I know what you mean. I don't like the idea of getting a bunch of identical bids either but I like the idea of teams savings 20-30M in salary cap space for prospect bidding even less. I'd rather the salary cap space be used to sign MLB players so that teams can be competitive. If someone could think of another way to accomplish that I'm open to ideas.

[STL (Jimmy)]

I like the cap idea. And I don't think it will impact that many FA signings. If there are 10 bids for $10m for one player, only one team wins, which means that 9 other teams still have the $10m to spend on other FA. As long as teams are making their priority list, I don't think it will impact the prices at all, if only slightly. With only 15 teams, everyone should betrying to be competitive and I agree with Greg saying most of the cap should be geared towards signing MLB players, to maintain competitive balance.