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If you are doing a lousy small market team the best thing to do is completely tank your 1st year.
Basically trade all of your players or the vast majority. You want a starting squad of al rookie minimum salaries. More like the entire team.
Everyone gets traded for prospects who are ready to play. You dont need superstars just mlb ready ball players. There are a ton. It takes awhile to find them and then find which teams will trade and which players you can trad etc.
Sign the top 5 million int amateur free agent. promote him on day 1 and trade him for 1 or 2 top prospect who are ready to start. Again not every AI team will be willing to do it. But there are always a handful.
All that salary room you create for yourself you want to trade with teams near the deadline that are unloading top players for salary. That only have 1 season left. You eat that salary then trade those players to playoff looking teams for prospects.
Remember you are only eating 50% of the salary since half the season is gone. Sometimes you can eat less salary. You do this until you sign and trade all the big deadline players or full your salary up. Which ever comes first.
Season 2 is where you can sign top free agents and trade them for more prospects. Often you dont have to eat much contract. You want basically a 1 year deal with 2 team options. You arent on the hook for team options and you can back load the contract. You trade this guys for prospects who are ready to play.
Same thing goes for rule 5. Have the bare minimum you need on your 40 man. Then use rule 5 to get like 10 players. Whichever players cant make your starting lineup then you trade them for prospects at end of spring training. Cause teams will have injuries and all of a sudden they will want those rule 5 guys and you can pickup prospects.
If you load all the leagues and indy legues. Continually manually scout the indy leagues and free agents for cut foreign draft picks to improve you minor league system. The more you can improve your total minor league system the more trade power in the future you have.
You have to continually look to improve not just your mlb team but your minor leagues if you want to achieve the most success and the quickest time frame.
You do this for 3 or 4 years to start the save and you will be a contender. Cause the prospects you get will keep getting better or you can package a bunch of prospects together for a stud prospect etc.
You main goal is to gain assets. No player loyalty. You play the financial game. You want the bare minimum player slayer so you can use it to acquire players to trade for future assets.
This will basically make you have the best minor league system. You might not have the most studs but you will have the most MLB ready players. You only need a 2 or 3 studs on an entire team if everyone else average or slightly above average.
You wont get fired your first season and sometimes you will do better with the minimum salary guys. Each year will slightly improve as you get more assets until these assets turn your team into world beaters.
The AI teams cannot beat the human in signing free agents or deadline trades. You will get basically 90% of whatever players fall under your specifications. Especially closers tend to bring a lot in. Who cares if they want 15 million you will probably have to eat 50% of it and then you could get a minor league closer who is future stud on the minimum contract.
I almost never trade or sign any players who have real MLB experience. I am looking for AAA, AA, A guys who are ready for the call up. The MLB guys i trade and sign for are just there to get me those minor league assets.
Then once you start becoming good you can start to sign old has beens who are fan favorites who boost your interest to 100% then you can max ticket prices. And you will be a top 10 budget team if you dont have owner controls budget on.
It is even possible to boot fan interest to 100% by start of second season even if you are awful an the fans will pay the ticket price. Easily doubling your budget by season 3.
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