OOTP Baseball:Screens and Menus/League Menu/Transactions/Free Agents

The Free Agents section (League Menu >> Transactions section >> Free Agents, or click on the two-arrow icon in the League section of the Icon Bar) contains information about players in your baseball universe who are not currently under contract to any team.

Note: Even if you do not have the concept of free agency enabled in your league, there will still be unsigned players on the free agent list, such as players who went undrafted, or those who were released from their contracts.

This section consists of several related screens:

• All Free Agents
• International Amateur Free Agents
• Posted Players
• Pending Offers
• Upcoming Free Agents

There is a separate section of the wiki that covers the overall concept of baseball Free Agency. Please visit that page to understand how OOTP handles free agency, including rules and how to enable or disable it for your leagues.

All Free Agents

The All Free Agents screen lists all players in your baseball universe who are not currently under contract to any team. This screen is available year-round, although the bulk of free agent signing happens during the offseason if you have free agency enabled in your league.

Use the All Free Agents screen to look for players you'd like to sign. You can take advantage of OOTP's Views, Filters, and many of the Common Drop-Downs and Common Action Menus. Review those sections to get a better understanding of how to manipulate the data on this screen to suit your needs.

If you find a player of interest, you can offer a contract by right-clicking on the player's name in the list and selecting Offer Contract from the context menu. For more information, see Offering Contracts.

Any player without a contract is considered a free agent, even if your league does not have the concept of free agency enabled. Some examples of players who may appear here include players who went undrafted or those who were released from their contracts. See Free Agency for more information on the overall concept of free agency, how to enable it, and so on.

Commissioner Options

Commissioners have several additional options on this page:

Option	Description
Create Fictional Player	Allows you to create one or more fictional players
Import Historical Player	Allows you to import actual historical players from a historical database, one by one
Delete all free agents	Allows you to delete all the players not currrently assigned to a team

International Amateur Free Agents

The IAFA or International Amateur Free Agents system is a way for organizations to sign generated international prospects to their organization. Every year a pool of players will be created and announced to teams via an email/mail announcement. Every organization will be given a period of time to look over the players before signings commence at a later date. These players will usually have high potential but will also be very raw in current talent making them potentially high prospects for organizations.

International Scouting and Budget Trading

Before signing begins users can have their scouting directors invite and scout players they deem interesting. These invitational practices can be accessed by going to the scouting tab and then navigating to the Scouting>International sub-section.

On this page, you can use your practices to run invitees through to learn more about their abilities and gain loyalty with them. You can invite 10 players at one time and you can run the practices monthly. If you do not run the practices manually your scouting director will automatically invite players and run practices. The relationship or loyalty you earn with players will make them more likely to sign with your organization even if they’ve received a similar offer from another team. However, be aware that other organizations will be building relationships with players as well.

IAFA Budget Trading

In addition to scouting and inviting players to camp organizations will also be able to trade IAFA budget space. They can trade for or trade away budget space with other organizations. To trade away or trade for IAFA budget space you will need to add those as a line item in the Initiate Trade screen with another organization.

The cap trading rules in OOTP are the same as in real life;

An MLB club can trade up to 100% of its ISBP (international signing bonus pool), and a club can acquire up to 60% of its assigned ISBP via trade or trades. While up to 100% of a club's originally-assigned ISBP (plus up to an additional 60% of the club's originally-assigned ISBP that might be acquired in a trade or trades) can be traded, there are some restrictions:

A club's ISBP (or a portion of it) can only be traded during the International Signing Period (ISP) to which the ISBP was assigned. In real life this is January 15th through December 15th, but in OOTP this is from the signing period start until the next IAFA reveal.

A club can trade ISBP space only in increments of $250K (including multiples of $250K) unless the club was trading all of its remaining ISBP in one transaction. If one of these rules isn't met, the trade button will be greyed out.

IAFA Event

Once the IAFA signing date is met all organizations will begin offering contracts to players in the pool. Contract negotiations will commence and teams will fight to secure the players they want to add to their squads. You will need to use your budgeted IAFA money wisely to make sure you get the players you want.

In order to prevent teams from acquiring all of the top tier talent the IAFA has two types of spending caps. The first cap is a hard cap which is the default setting. Teams are allotted a certain budget cap for IAFA players and when that cap is met they are not allowed to go beyond that for the signing period.

The second cap is a soft cap set by turning off the check box that reads Use hard Intl. Amateur FA Cap in the League Settings>Players Tab. If that checkbox is deselected teams will be able to go over the set IAFA signing cap but will incur penalties if they do so. The penalties for spending above the cap are:

• Any amount over the cap will be taxed with an additional 100%
• If a team spends between 5-10% over the cap, they will not be allowed to sign more than one player for a bonus of more than $833,333 in the following IAFA signing period.
• If a team spends between 10-15% over the cap, they won’t be allowed to sign any player for a bonus over $833,333 the following IAFA signing period.
• If a team spends more than 15% over the cap, they won’t be allowed to sign any players for a bonus of more than $333,333 the following IAFA signing period.

Posted Players

The Posted Players screen lists any posted players available to, or posted by, teams in this league (if the posting rules are turned on in your game.)

Pending Offers

The Pending Offers screen lists all pending offers that your have made to free agents.

Each offer that you have made displays here until the offer is resolved (accepted or finally rejected). The Reaction column will tell you how the player feels about your current offer. If the player has responded negatively, such as that he wants more money, just right-click on the player and select Offer Contract, and offer him something better!

If you have changed your mind about offering a player a contract, click the Withdraw button to withdraw an offer. Be careful, though! Withdrawing offers can have a significant negative impact on how a player perceives your team, especially if he was leaning towards accepting your offer! Withdraw too many offers, and word may get around that you're not fair at the bargaining table, which can hurt your ability to sign free agents in the future!

Offers that other teams have made are not displayed here.

See Offering Contracts and After the Offer for more information on the contract offer process.

Upcoming Free Agents

The Upcoming Free Agents screen lists all players who are scheduled to become free agents at the end of the current season:

This screen projects which players will reach free agency at the end of the season. You can use this as you plan out your offseason moves. Will it be a good crop of free agents? Can you get some value in return at the trade deadline for your pending free agent slugger? Note that teams may make transactions (such as sending a player to the minor leagues) that can affect their service time, and thereby whether or not they reach free agency. This screen is only accurate as of the moment you view it. Do not assume that a player on this list will be available for you to sign at the end of the season! Teams can and will re-sign players to extensions before they reach free agency!

This screen is only relevant if you have free agency enabled. See Offering Contracts and After the Offer for more information on the contract offer process.

On this page, you can take advantage of OOTP's Views, Filters, and many of the Common Drop-Downs and Common Action Menus. Review those sections to get a better understanding of how to manipulate the data on this screen to suit your needs.