@Yankee151 What's a good player dev budget for a rebuilding team?
The effects of dev budget are subtle enough that they are hard to measure, so it is up to you whether you'd rather spend X amount of money on something that might help your players in the future or X amount of money on players who can help you win now and increase your budget going forward. When I'm rebuilding, I prefer to spend any excess money on 1 year details for star players in FA. This brings in more $ because the players are popular and hopefully they'll also help me win more games, which will also bring in more money. Once I'm REBUILT, then I put more into the dev budget. The "League Average" (ie baseline) is set at $6M and I would recommend that as a minimum. When you have excess money, add to it in multiples of the baseline (ie 6,12,18, 24) as it is generally accepted that there are threshold values that need to be reached before you get a bump.
All that is to say, $6M or $12M is what I'd recommend for you now. Once you actually have a few drafts worth of players you care about in the minors bump it to 12-18. I have mine set at 12M now fwiw.
General budgeting rules I recommend are as follows:
1. Start with UR current budget (excluding cash)
2. If you don't anticipate making the playoffs and you don't currently have $10M cash reserves, then Subtract $10M because you want to start carrying $10M cash year over year and you need to budget for that if you don't currently have it. If you are going to make the playoffs or already have $10M cash reserves, then you can allocate your full budget (but not the $10M). You want to end the season with a balance of $10M
3. Subtract Dev Budget (6-12M)
4. Subtract Scouting Budget ($0-6M)
5. Subtract Draft budget ($5M) once you understand budgets more I actually DON'T recommend doing this (I typically just use my cash reserve for signing picks)
So basically, you take ur current budget and subtract between $30M-$40M (use the higher number if you want to play IFA) and this is how much you can allocate to your payroll this season. It is also important to consider future budget projections and player salaries as well. Since you're rebuilding, you ideally will be increasing your budget each year, so you should be able to start increasing payroll based on those projected increases as well.
I have a current budget of $159M, and I will not be playing IFA this year, so I can support a payroll of roughly $129M. My projected payroll is $141M, but I will be declining arb extensions on two pitchers for a total of $5M and trading away a pitcher set to make $9.5M. That will take me to $126.5M, and I'll probably pick up one small free agent role player/backup.