[Pelican]

I think this comes down to how much time you have on your hands, combined with how much control you want. (The latter is not really a “control freak” issue so much as sooner or later the AI manager will do something you never intended….).

With experience, you should be able to play a game in one-pitch mode in ten or fifteen minutes. You can do the math. Something like 36 hours total to complete a season. Add on for trades and organization changes. An hour a day for a month? Five hours a day for a week?

Now that I am (mostly) retired, I like to play out games. Some even play in pitch-by-pitch mode, which easily doubles the time for each game. Others set up rosters and daily lineups and team strategy and then auto-play, maybe week by week, make adjustments. Back when I was working full time and raising three kids, if I played at all, it would have been auto-play.

I love re-do’s and what-if’s. With the original Mariners, you could re-do the expansion draft, or simply try to do better sooner with the guys they took. Your sim would be heavy on GM stuff, finances, setting up an organization, then a 40-man roster and active roster and lineups. Lock in your manager and player strategy settings, maybe play the first few games for fun, and then auto-play, going back to check box scores, making changes as needed. Should be fun. Expansion teams are tough, because of the limited talent left for the draft, and because new teams rarely if ever go heavy into free agents - even though that is the only way to get better fast.