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I'll repeat what I said earlier:
What the player development expense should represent first and foremost (as the Rangers' financials show) is the cost of running the minor league affiliates. Those cost MLB clubs money, roughly $20 million on average, or in the area of 10%-12% of expenses.
It can also be used to help develop players' abilities (which makes sense in that the more a club spends the better instructors and facilities it has). But it should mostly be about the minor league affiliates.
Making the affiliates have a cost adds some interesting options for users who are managing the finances of their OOTP clubs. While currently most MLB teams have about the same number of affiliates, which consequently means the costs are roughly about the same for each MLB team, that wasn't the case in earlier years. In the earlier years there were often extreme differences in the size of the minor league systems of MLB teams. In 1950, for example, the Dodges had 24 affiliates while the Braves had only 11.
With a per affiliate cost in player development, those wishing to mimic the minor systems of earlier years will have to face choices: if their club is strapped for cash, maybe it has to give up affiliates and reduce its minor league system, with likely means fewer new players coming up through the ranks and less playing experience for them. In contrast, a wealthy club might choose to expand its minors organization by taking in more affiliates, which means more young players to choose from.
Those sorts of decisions, fuelled by finances but which have an impact on the organization's potential future on-the-field performance, are what makes things interesting for those looking for something a little deeper than just building a roster without having to think about revenues and expenses.
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