|
It's not a matter of the rich getting richer, more a matter of fiscal responsibility. If you have a team of highly paid superstars, you need a good record to deserve keeping them. As an example, in my last project I brought the 1962 Mets to a pennant in 1968 so the goal (postseason by '69) was reached, but if I hadn't won around 88 games and finished at least third, I would have had to shed salary and stars, and the worse the year the more would need to be done. In early June I was looking at an 82-80/fifth place year which would have meant a bloodbath in the payroll section. A better example might be when I took over the 1965 Yankees, high payroll with players no longer worthy of it and with a house rule of no disposing of players who stayed with the team historically (so I had to keep Whitey Ford who was paid for 1950-64, 216-84, 2.73, 135 ERA+, but pitched 20-22/116 ERA+). The only forced parity I want is that the big market teams don't have a financial advantage over their little brothers.
I do have a salary question now, though, in how does it work. When I did the Mets replay, Ernie Banks would have a top salary as a star, but as his performance slacked off, he took incremental cuts but would never reach down to the level of scrub. Does OOTP treat its former stars the same way?
|