My favorite setup yet: Best of both worlds?
 

I've been torn between these local leagues with long-term player stability full of dynasties and defined roles via free market vs the global leagues I've built that are so deep but often get kind of messy with players coming and going quickly.

So why not put a bit of both in the same universe and create a league rivalry?

The United States Baseball League has 10 teams and
-no salary cap or revenue sharing
-teams keep all money and use it on players
-3 team playoffs at the end of the year
-no foreign players allowed, only Americans
-9 years of team control, so teams stay mostly the same from year to year

The World Baseball Association has 10 teams and
-4 years of team control so players move from team to team often
-a huge revenue sharing mechanism that means every team has a chance
-open to players from all around the world with zero limits
-no playoffs, best record wins

WBA features teams that are high on the global interconnected city rankings, like New York/LA/DC/Chicago/San Francisco/Miami along with Mexico City, Toronto and the 2 newest teams: London and Quebec. They are proud of their internationalist and a bit of socialist flavor with nicknames like Mets, Americans, Union, Statesmen, etc. No team is able to dominate the league due to the financial constraints: the Americans have the best win% at .583 but no one has won back-to-back titles since the first two years.

https://i.imgur.com/yCLvY0c.png
https://i.imgur.com/Sb4PjST.png

The USBL is proud of its local focus and sense of community their clubs engender in their local cities. They have more self-sufficient cities that aren't really "global" in nature like Salt Lake City, Indianapolis, Memphis, Raleigh, and more. The financial mechanism of this league means the big clubs like Indianapolis (made 9 consecutive finals) and San Antonio can dominate the league with >.600 career win % and 10 of the 11 titles going to the top 3 teams.

https://i.imgur.com/whcWIcW.png
https://i.imgur.com/xpby19U.png

the spread in finances is large in the USBL, Memphis/Raleigh/New Orleans/Buffalo have around 35-40% as much payroll as San Antonio and Indy.

in the WBA, the poorest team (Washington) has nearly 60% of the payroll as the big-spending Americans.

Overall, thanks to the global TV deals the WBA brings in more money and thus is much more competitive for free agents and rookies (no draft so everyone competes for same free agents and fresh rookies). The only time the leagues compete is in the new postseason tournament called the Champions League. the top 4 teams from each league make it and a 6-game group stage precedes a couple of best-of-3 semis and a best-of-3 final.

Indy won it last year, the first time in 4 tries a USBL team won it.