[Pelican]

My absolute favorite challenge in OOTP is to take a bad team and try - through trades, free agent signings, international players, promotions from the minors, to shift the paradigm. I've done this with, for example, the 1911 St. Louis Browns (although I shifted the team to Baltimore as the Orioles, 43 years early, even signing a couple of early black players, to break the color line 36 years early!). I've also experimented in present day with the 2023 and 2024 Pirates, the 2024 White Sox, and about to work with the 2025 Rockies. Some would call this masochistic, and they would not be wrong. But there's nowhere to go but up!

The basic approach is, what if these lousy teams, that have in common low payrolls, spent money on salary more like the wealthy teams with high payrolls? In modern terms, not necessarily Dodgers money or Mets money, but at least an average payroll. At the very least, retaining young stars, rather than trading them before other teams wave money at them as free agents.

Part of my motivation is to tackle the lack of competitive balance in baseball, which can be traced to teams spending vastly different amounts of money on salary, particularly long-term deals, as well as player development. Is is true that giving the Pirates a blank check would make the team competitive? Would something like a payroll floor (rather than a salary cap), force teams to compete?

My preliminary answer, small sample size, is a big, but qualified yes. It's relatively simple to spend money to plug holes, add depth, and thus make a bad team into a mediocre (.500) team. 81 wins is better than 52 wins. But it may take more than one year and a few deals to make that team truly competitive. Ultimately you are going to need replacement players from the farm system. You can't ignore player development. And in OOTP like IRL, that requires steady investment in a farm and scouting system, that won't pay dividends right away.

I am going to publish by way of example the kinds of off-season changes I have been able to make in Pittsburgh (actually a franchise move to New Orleans), the Chisox, and the Rockies. It's a work in progress, as I simply cannot resist managing game by game for these teams. But the results are promising, even if the economics are daunting. (Will the Buccaneers draw enough new fans in the Big Easy to offset the huge new payroll? How much more can I charge for tickets, when the team starts winning? How much patience will the new owners have?)

Approaching the competitive balance issue from a different angle, is there a way to trim the sails of the dominating teams, without imposing a salary cap? There is. Expansion. At least, an expansion draft with firm (low) limits on the number of players retained by the established teams. [I keep the existing rule that players with less than three years MLB experience are exempt. I only allow teams to protect twelve additional players. And I don't allow teams to claim an additional protected player for each guy drafted.] My approach leads to reasonably competitive expansion teams. And it has the effect of "the rich get poorer and the poor get richer". Dominant teams that are stacked are motivated to trade guys they won't be able to protect and keep. Guys with huge contracts who have underperformed are exposed to the draft, and often not taken. It's a more humane way of bringing in new teams, and the pennant races are legit.

I'm curious if others have similarly experimented with the MLB financial system, or with individual team spending, and/or with expansion in this fashion. We need to throw out a lifeline to MLB and the Players Union, to suggest how to avoid another prolonged lockout or strike.