Thanks again everyone for the very beneficial advice.
I'm having a great time so far.
I originally started out with a small fictional league just to get a feel for things, basically letting the AI manager make most of the hard decisions and all of the game-day decisions.
Slowly I've felt my understanding improve to an extent that I'm taking over more functions and assuming a more hands on role in things like roster management (promotions, demotions), line-ups & draft and trades.
I'm playing the odd game or two myself as well, with some good results and also some not so good.
I then set up a fictional Historical league starting in 1936 and have done really well over the course of 4 seasons(with albeit a fair bit of help from my AI manager) winning back to back World Series in 38 & 39 with the Dodgers. The success has emboldened me to try assume more control for my next season.
I even watched my first game of baseball (Giants v Phillies) in about a decade yesterday on my day off from work. Not sure I gleaned a great deal from it that I could immediately extrapolate to playing OOTP(and being an Aussie I still would prefer to watch 5 consecutive days of cricket!!
).
One area that I do feel is holding me back some is my nil to limited understanding of most of the statistics (other than the basic ones) and their correlation & significance to strategic or tactical decisions that I as a manager should be making based on my interpretation of the data.
As a result until I can get a better understanding of how to process the data, I think I am going to have to rely on the AI manager to make a fair amount of the decisions.
Anyway, once agian thanks for time you have all taken to help me along the steep learning curve, it's greatly appreciated.