[struggles_mightily]

Salary and budget determine what's possible, I guess, and then ratings and stats of the concerned players determine what's desirable. I don't factor in age too much as long as a player was good last season -- however old he is, he's only one year older than he was when he was last good. I use 'heavily favour prospects' so it's usually difficult for me to get a young cost-controlled player from another team. With my own prospects I'm generally happy to go with guys who have shown a bit at the ML level (in September callups and ST), and will sometimes plug in a rookie starter if they have insane stats at AAA and good ratings, even if they're not over the big league hump yet. I'm playing modern-day MLB right now and it's hard to avoid evaluating prospects partly on how good they are in real life, too.

With the trade settings I have, it's rare to be able to trade an expensive veteran for a useful piece (and useful pieces become harder to find if you're a good team), so I rarely trade a veteran unless I'm happy for it to be a straight salary dump or a deal for an ml non-prospect.

I find players by searching in all personnel -- for any position other than 1B and LF I generally like to have someone rated at least 6 at their position, and then I set low basic benchmarks for ratings that weed out the worst hitters (so, say, I might look for someone who's at least a 4 for contact, gap hitting, power and eye -- this misses players who have zero power or good power and no patience, but for a positional starter I tend to prefer hitters that are reasonably well rounded anyway). I play with 2-8 ratings on, scouting on, but potential and 'tools' (defense, speed) ratings only. Then I look at contracts to rule out players who are too pricey or, on the other hand, too good value to be tradeable for anything I want to give up. This is for starters. For bench guys I'm much more likely to have a specific profile in mind in terms of skills at secondary positions, handedness, speed (or not), etc., and am usually less worried about getting a well-rounded player. My team right now is too good and too over-budget for me to target specific players, though -- I shop guys who have no future role and pick up the best offered player in terms of organisational fit, usefulness, flexibility (who has options?) and cost/contract type.

Being unable to get starters from other clubs easily means I tend to amass fringy bullpen arms. There are probably 12 relievers in my system right now who are basically much of a muchness. I'm not sure you necessarily want to follow that practice.