Admin Notes
For the first round of free agency only, free agent bids must be at least the minimum salary for the player's age. Minimum salaries are provided on the "Negotiating Contracts" help page, but a summary is as follows by sport:
Soccer and Hockey: $0.25M up to age 22, increases by $0.03M per year to $0.52M for age 31+
Basketball and Football: $0.40M up to age 22, increases by $0.05M per year to $0.85M for age 31+
Baseball: $0.30M for all ages
The eventual goal is to incorporate this minimum bid into the free agent bidding web tool. However please note that no coach will be punished for under-bidding; his free agent bid will be increased accordingly.

Comments
Dick Butkus: Really like this idea. When number of managers shrink, HEL at the minute, quality players are picked up for next to nothing late in the first round. I do this myself as a strategy, but it does inhibit wither humnans or BOB from upgrading in later rounds. The only other alternative I see is to rework how the BOB teams draft in the 1st round which would be a much bigger piece of work.
Pythagoras A: Due to the way financials/budgets are set up in DEL, not everyone has the same budgets. Finding the cheaper players is one of the few ways that newer owners can try to compete with the power teams that have been in place a long time, and can throw higher priced contracts at most players. There isn't anything that prevents those same teams from placing minimum bids as well. It kind of seems like the top teams want to be able to win every round, which would eventually drive out newer owners if they don't have any tools left to them to try to compete.