Rules rule!

So, ya. Some of you's guys wants a prospect cap. Some of you's guys wants a minimum win requirement. Well, I've got some things to say about these matters.

First off, let me point out two examples of what I absolutely don't ever want to see in this world:

Toronto FivTs
This team is in Hometown. He tanked his first couple seasons, back in the prospect rich days, then has proceeded to systematically trade rape, season after season, possibly with aliases in the early days. This situation doesn't happen in good worlds, Check out his AAA team. Now some might say he's a savvy owner. I think it's bullshit. I was in that world but left after a couple seasons when it just seemed pointless.

And:

Tacoma Tomahawks
Yes, that's right 60 million spent on prospects this season. Less than 17 million in payroll, and shockingly just a .337 winning percentage. I just threw up in my mouth.

Oh, and this:

Baltimore Blue Crabs
Last season we saw a 154 million payroll with 0s in all scouting and medical. Same story season before, and to slightly lesser degrees the previous few seasons. Consequently there is nothing in the system, and when the owner bailed, the new owner is left with a first season budgeting nightmare.

I don't want to see any of that in BPF.

Now all these calls for a prospect cap/minimum win floor, seem to miss the point of the 60/40 rule. As nj mentioned earlier, we had an owner, mira21, who was able to field very competitive ML teams while keeping his payroll really low. Now he tanked his face of the first season and if the 60/40 rule was in effect then, he'd would've been here for the one season. But the franchise won 95 games with a sub 15 million payroll and often won 100+ sub 30 mil. To me, that's good management. He kept his other budget departments really high, which I respected. That's why I'm not so excited to enact a minimum payroll on it's own. I want owners to play many ways, and allow for some freedom. If you think you can compete and still add young talent, more power to you. What gets me is when I see decent FAs go unsigned while some team fields lesser, but cheaper, talent in a concerted effort to lose. While saving on the payroll, they load their prospect. I also hate seeing prospects being kept down when they are ML ready. No team in real life, would keep a player ready for the bigs, in the minors. When a player is ready, he plays, it's that simple. Whether the team is bad or good. In fact, he's more likely to in the Bigs earlier the worse the team is. And sometimes there are situations where an owner takes over a team with awful, awful contracts. This hampers efforts to improve quickly, so the owner just has to ride it out for a few seasons while the contracts expire. I know, I've taken over reigny teams. This might mean some terrible records, but the payroll is, say 80 million. That to me is not tanking. So it just seemed fair to say "spend less than 40, win more than 60". It accomodates for poorly run teams to get their shit together, and for freedom to budget for prospects while remaining competitive.

One thing that I don't like  to see though is both declining records and payrolls. I've rebuilt, but my rebuild history shows a general pattern of declining payroll with increasing wins. What is crap is having, say, a 33 million/56 win team that next season has an even lower payroll and worse record. That, folks, is tanking. Not rebuilding, but balls out tanking. I do disagree with bluegreyjay that a team should never lose more than a hundred. Hey, it happens. it just shouldn't happen more than two seasons in a row. But I'm open to what the world thinks so let's get voting.