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I created a save with only the MLB, did not change any financials, blocked all trades until opening day, created a template with that save and did the following sims:
1. 25/25/25/25 Average trade frequency : from opening day to the trade deadline, the following trades were completed : 17 in Aprill, 10 in May, 17 in June and a staggering 181 in July.
In real life, in 2022, 75 trades were completed in July. I did not check the quality of the trades, but I did see a lot of teams retaining a lot of salaries and some head scratchers.
2. 25/25/25/25 Low trade frequency : from opening day to the trade deadline, the following trades were completed : 0 in April, 0 in May, 3 in June, 69 in July with the vast majority being in the last 5 days of July. Less teams were retaining salaries and those who did were clearly unloading bad contracts. Again I did not go with a fine comb, but did not see any major players get traded.
3. 25/25/25/25 Very Low trade frequency : from opening day to the trade deadline, the following trades were completed : 0 in April, 3 in May, 3 in June, 71 in July. Many teams were again retaining salaries. Christian Walker was traded fully retained for Jordan Balazovic. Not Arenado to the Cards bad, but still pretty bad since Balazovic was optioned to the minors.
This leads me to a couple of conclusions :
1. Obviously more data points would be needed.
2. 25/25/25/25, which I pretty much always used before in 21, 22 and 23 doesn't seem to sim well right now. I'll go back to the default setup or a more rating oriented player evaluation and maybe try again.
3. It seems that the AI REALLY likes to trade in July, which was not really the case in previous versions if I remember correctly. IRL, teams DO tend to trade a lot more in July than in other months, but 181 trades in July is a bit much.
4. Sortable trades for the league would be a godsend.
5. A lot of teams seem to have very little budget room in the first year, which might explain why so many trades involved retained salary.
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