My favorite way to play is by expanding MLB by two teams and taking on one of them (there's a lot of speculation around this, anyway). Fast sim season 1, then expand on the first day of the offseason so you can have a full offseason of transactions to start building. It's also fun to take this opportunity to reorganize divisions - I do 4 divisions of 4 teams each, and expand the playoffs by 1 to 6 teams each (similar to the NFL with byes). The only problem with this method is you need to turn Challenge Mode off because you can't edit league structure with it on
- I just don't like uneven divisions created with 32 teams and only 6 divisions total.