As I'm sure most of you know /r/baseball had a very successful Trade Deadline game over this last All-Star Break.

There also exists a Winter Meetings version of the game; the major difference between is the presence of free agents. The "top" 50 users (determined by karma) were considered free agents and therefore able to sign with whatever team they pleased, for whatever terms they pleased.

Some (notably the Commissioner's Office of the Summer Trade Deadline) took umbrage with the "whatever terms they pleased" part. Even some of the qualifying offers were patently ridiculous. By the end of it the offers had gotten out of control

Of course, that was kind of the point, but it has left some people unsure of how to do one this year.

I have an idea. it isn't perfect, but it is a solution. Namely, a virtual money system. Each team would have a limited amount of money to spend based on the average of the real-world free agent spending of the last four years (numbers taken from here).

There would be a list of accepted (read: actually doable) things that teams could offer the free agents. None of this receiving the Nile, the Amazon, and the Mississippi nonsense.

Each accepted item would have a set value (ex: custom flair =$1 mil, modship = $100 mil, etc.), and each contract signed with a free agent detracts from that pool. Any leftover money could be used in trades.

If the money is calculated on team-by-team basis, each team would get the average of their free-agent spending of the last four years. The Tigers would get over 250 million dollars to play with in this scenario, whilst the Phillies would get under 50 million.

If the money were calculated as the average of the averages of the 30 teams (so Arizona's four-year average plus Baltimore's four-year average and so on), each team would get about 118 million of these virtual dollars.

When calculating based on the year-by-year averages (2013's average 2014's and so on), each team would get around 120 million.

This would just be for Reddit/Internet based things. I haven't thought about physical stuff.

I don't represent anybody involved with the game. This is just an idea.