General Description - From this page, you may view eligible and potential free-agents. No free-agents may be negotiated with until after the season starts and the appropriate days are reached. Any player under contract with your franchise whose contract is up at the end of the season may also be negotiated with.

Free-Agent Eligibility - A player is eligible for free-agency when he has 6 or more years of big league experience or if he has 6 or more years of professional experience and is not on the franchise's 40-man roster. For the sake of this report, it is assumed the player will be earning a year of big league experience for each season in the future. For the current season, this report also includes any players that are not under a current contract.

Franchise - Users may select a single franchise's free agents to view, 'All Franchises' to see all applicable free agents, or 'All Previous Negotiations' to see only players with previous negotiation history with your franchise. The Re-Signing portion of free-agent negotiations is just for franchises renegotiating with their own departing free-agents. During this time, it would make sense to search by your franchise's free-agents.

Season - This represents the season in which the player will be a free-agent. A player cannot be a free-agent until he has played in six big league seasons or has played in 6 minor league seasons and is not on a team's 40-man roster (6-Year Minor League Free-Agent). Undrafted and international players immediately become free-agents unless they declare for or return to college. This search will only return players who are slated to be free-agents in the offseason preceding the selected season. For instance, upon world creation selecting the Current Season (1) will return all Free-Agents-to-be for the first off-season. You will never be able to negotiate with a player unless he is a current free-agent or part of your franchise at the big league level.

Position - This will return any player with that listed primary position as chosen by the franchise's owner. Besides each position on the field, you may also broaden your search with 'All Positions' players and 'All Pitchers' as well as position groupings like middle infield (MIF - 2B, SS), corner infield (CIF - 1B, 3B), infield (IF) and outfield (OF). Due to stats and ratings differences, you may not look at position players and pitchers at the same time.

View - You may select the stats or categories to view with the player search. These include stats from the most recent season (Stat Varieties), Current Ratings, Projected Ratings and Status Info.

Level - Users may select to view big league free-agents or minor league free-agents. If you have selected "Minors" in the level drop down list and you are viewing the current seasons list of minor league free agents checkboxes will appear next to each eligible player. The checkboxes are in place so that you can select up to 5 minor league free agents at once and negotiate with them. Once you have selected the free agents that you would like to negotiate with or sign simply click the "Submit Offers" button at the bottom of the page. 

Criteria - You may enter certain criteria based on the selections you have made in the Position and View drop down lists. You can filter the free agents that are displayed on the screen by a variety of different criteria types including stats, current/projected ratings, and status info. Just select the criteria you want to filter by, choose >=, <=, or = and type in the value you want to see. The results will then be displayed on the page.

$ - The dollar amount listed represents the player's demands if it's the current season or the player's current salary if it's a future season. The player may also request a signing bonus, a multi-year contract, no-trade clause or contract option. If it is the current season and the regular season has already started, the listed demands have already been prorated based on the number of big league games your franchise has played.

$ Pro - This indicates the player cleared waivers after being released and is available for a prorated amount of the league minimum. Since the player is already being paid by his former club, he'll be happy to accept a minor league contract for a prorated portion of the league minimum.

Who can I negotiate with and when? - During the current season, you can negotiate with anyone on the list. If you're viewing the list of free-agents for future seasons, you can only negotiate with players on your franchise that will be true major league free-agents next season who are also currently on your big league roster.

Negotiate Contract - To begin negotiating with a player, please click 'Negotiate Contract.' You will be taken to a negotiation page where you may make him an offer. Outside of the scheduled free-agency periods, you may only negotiate with your own players or unsigned players. After each cycle of negotiations, you will receive correspondence indicating the status of your offer (if it changed). This will also be reflected as an icon in the first column on this page (clicking it will take you to your correspondence with this player/agent). You may continue negotiations at any time by clicking 'Negotiate Contract' next to the player's name.

Add (to free-agent target list) You can also add a player to your free-agent targets by clicking the "Add" link. This will add the player to your target list instantly so that you don't have to continually come back to the free-agent report page. All of your free agent targets (along with those free-agents you've previously negotiated with) are conveniently located in one spot. Please keep in mind that you may only have 50 free agent targets per negotiation period. The free-agent target functionality is only available after budgets have been set until the end of the free-agent negotiation period and only pertains to current free-agents.

Remove (from free-agent target list) You can also remove a player from your free-agent targets by clicking the "Remove" link. This will instantly remove the player from your target list.

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