[Pelican]

Good start. To really rein in the financials, you need to eliminate the arbitration system and free agency. Having a year off is a really good idea. I tried to do something of the reverse - limited free agency in 1961, with the Continental League a third major league - and it was pretty chaotic at first.

What do you do with guys that have long-term contracts? I mean, I guess they get paid, but the next generation would earn far less, without arbitration or free agency as an option. It would be weird.

In my frustration with the current state of things (lack of parity, rich and poor teams), I have experimented with a hard salary cap (doesn't work the way you would expect - doctrine of unintended consequences) and floor (better but hard to implement). But my favorite is to have wealthy investors buy up the teams that won't spend money on free agents, pumping up their budgets almost to Dodgers/Yanks/Braves level. That makes those weak teams competitive real fast; but the total salary numbers go through the roof, with all that new cash flying around.

But my favorite way to restore parity is expansion, preferably with four new teams. Want to level things? Allow teams to protect twelve guys on the roster from the expansion draft. (The draft program in OOTP by default will exempt guys with less than three years MLB experience, so this isn't quite as radical as it sounds...) This approach totally penalizes good teams. They keep their best guys, but lose the depth pieces and the bench/bullpen. They try to shed bloated contracts by leaving those dudes unprotected.