Big market teams Dominating?

[Sowega]

In my Ootp18 dynasty w Braves, I’ve advanced thru the 2023 season. After some rebuilding years, I won 101, 101, 105, and 94 games finishing 1st or 2nd each year. I’ve used a lot of the tips from this board to build a strong farm and made good trades, and signed mostly productive free agents. I did have the random good fortune of Aaron Blair of all people randomly developing into one of the Top 3 SPs in MLB!

But I’ve noticed a trend where over time certain big market teams are winning big and also beating me in the playoffs consistently. Specifically the Yankees, Dodgers, and Cubs. The Yankees have had the best record in AL every year since 2019, winning 97, 95, 103, 108, and 98 games in that order. Very good but somewhat understandable i suppose given the strong mlb and farm team they began 2017 with.

More troubling is the Dodgers, and also the Cubs. The Dodgers won the division 6 years in a row averaging low 100 wins, peaking at an absurd 112 wins in 2021 aided by their singing Mike Trout. The Cubs had some good not great results before signing Bryce Harper in 2021 and winning 103 games and 110 games last year (2023).

Basically, these teams are signing the best free agents each year and are stacked. These win totals of 110, 112 games just seem unrealistic and it polarizes the league into haves and have nots. There are very few good pennant races in most divisions.

Is this normal for these big market teams to dominate over time and are there any settings you can adjust to curb their free agent hogging all the elite players?


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[Sowega]

I’ll add that I played on pretty much out of the box settings. Ie didn’t adjust the financial settings any, normal rules, don’t exploit the AI in trades.


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[jdw31158]

That's pretty much how baseball actually is, but in league settings, in the financial tab, on the bottom right corner you can set up a salary cap.

[TheMaus2]

salary cap will prevent you from having European soccer like competitiveness

[Winnipeg59]

You seem to be struggling more with the signing of "elite players" (big names) than actually winning games, given your win totals each season. Nice problem to have!

Just keep playing. When the "Trout's" retire, then you will get over the names and, with your track record, you should remain competitive.

[Sowega]

I suppose It’s more I would rather not see these “super teams” emerge and keep things more balanced and unpredictable. It’s not all bad. The Rockies have finished second to LA most years and just won 109 games with a killer lineup and Chris Sale. The Nationals (sans Harper!) won the pennant finally and beat Boston for the title. Despite the regular season dominance of LA, NY, and Cubs, none of them have a monopoly on World Series wins. The Yankees have 1, LA has 2, and Chi has none. Oakland and the Mets snuck through for 2 “dream” seasons with upset wins.

I’ve won just 1 pennant, losing 4-2 to NYY 2 years ago before falling to wild card due to several crippling injuries. But I’ll get over hump eventually I’m sure.

I may tinker with salary cap in my next sim.


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[MisterTidster]

Having simmed close to 90 seasons, it goes in cycles. Big market teams will be strong, but the AI will inevitably overextend and they bottom out, but will reload a few years later after their payroll issues reset.

[TGH-Adfabre]

In the league settings there is a Cash Max option, what is yours set to? The top market teams can amass a ton of cash and outspend their budgets. This option will curtail that a bit.

[TGH-Adfabre]

There are simple ways, they may take 3-5 seasons, to close the range between top teams and bottom teams if you want to spend a little time adjusting financials.

[jimmysthebestcop]

Some files Cody hits like 70 HRs every year for the dodgers. And if they keep Kershaw and if he doesn't decline oh and if they sign Harper then yea Dodgers can dominate.

But AI is constantly making trades so you don't know if their farm system will ever drop out. I see Pitt every now and then grabbing 1st over the Cubs.

[Timofmars]

I think maybe you could play with the financial settings for "Super Star Quality Player typical Salary" and the other salary settings, and make top player more expensive. I think the AI depends a lot on these numbers, and perhaps it can fix the issues with rich teams dominating.

For example, in my game in OOTP18, the Dodgers let Kershaw go to free agency after his 33m contract ended while they had like over 100m in extra extensions money. The Super Star salary setting was 20m. So it seems to me that the AI determined that Kershaw was overpaid based mostly on the 20m typical salary game setting, and their large amount of spare budget wasn't as big of a factor. They wanted to re-sign him as a free agent for something closer to the 20m figure. I was able to outbid the Dodger to sign him for 6 years at 26m per year.

So you can see a bit about how this typical salary game settings affects things. It is probably the main factor about whether a player is allowed to go to free agency (assuming the team could afford the contract in the first place). I think it may be a main factor for what players will ask for initially in contracts, at least until they are forced to come down due to lack of interest from teams.

Now look at what happens in the game. Low budget teams may be often forced to allow players to go to free agency because they don't have enough money, even if the player's salary demands are fair according to the typical player salary settings. Rich teams only let players go if they are overpriced according to the salary settings, or maybe also if they aren't needed because of better options available on the team (or perhaps doesn't happen, and instead those good backup players will tend to be traded since the AI should be more willing to trade them because they value them less).

If good players go to FA, and small market teams don't have the money to compete in the bidding for those top players, free agency becomes more of a way for top teams to get discounts on top players whose extension demands were getting high.

If all teams have less money for FA signings, then maybe the first few free agents signed may eat up all the money, and then remaining free agents will be forced to lower their contract demands until some team can afford them. This would give low budget teams a good shot at getting good players at a good price.

So I think if you increase the typical salary setting for the best players, it would mainly affect the big budget teams, and they would end up paying more for their stars and would have less ability to just buy everything they want. Small budget teams would be more likely to acquire top superstars at a discount, while they wouldn't have the money to acquire them at full price, and then they would only let them go when their initial contract ended and their asking price returned to normal.

[Cowboys3356]

Originally Posted by Sowega

In my Ootp18 dynasty w Braves, I’ve advanced thru the 2023 season. After some rebuilding years, I won 101, 101, 105, and 94 games finishing 1st or 2nd each year. I’ve used a lot of the tips from this board to build a strong farm and made good trades, and signed mostly productive free agents. I did have the random good fortune of Aaron Blair of all people randomly developing into one of the Top 3 SPs in MLB!

But I’ve noticed a trend where over time certain big market teams are winning big and also beating me in the playoffs consistently. Specifically the Yankees, Dodgers, and Cubs. The Yankees have had the best record in AL every year since 2019, winning 97, 95, 103, 108, and 98 games in that order. Very good but somewhat understandable i suppose given the strong mlb and farm team they began 2017 with.

More troubling is the Dodgers, and also the Cubs. The Dodgers won the division 6 years in a row averaging low 100 wins, peaking at an absurd 112 wins in 2021 aided by their singing Mike Trout. The Cubs had some good not great results before signing Bryce Harper in 2021 and winning 103 games and 110 games last year (2023).

Basically, these teams are signing the best free agents each year and are stacked. These win totals of 110, 112 games just seem unrealistic and it polarizes the league into haves and have nots. There are very few good pennant races in most divisions.

Is this normal for these big market teams to dominate over time and are there any settings you can adjust to curb their free agent hogging all the elite players?


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I know what you mean. I have averaged over 130 wins for the last 10 seasons and have won the WS 16 out of the last 20 seasons (all in Challenge Mode). I did all this using the Yankees and it is beyond easy. I have all the money and can sign any player I want and trade for any player I want. Money is power!!!!

[itsmb8]

One thing that could really help make things more realistic is to adjust market sizes for teams at the beginning. PSUColonel created the idea and it really helps the AI and finances.

Originally Posted by PSUColonel

10 Yankees

9 Dodgers, Red Sox, Cubs, Giants

8 mets, Angels, Phillies, Rangers

7 Braves, Astros, Cards Jays, Nats

6 Tigers, D-Backs, Twins, Rockies, Mariners

5 Orioles, Pirates, White Sox

4 Marlins Royals, Reds, Brewers, Indians, Padres

3 Rays, A’s

[Sowega]

I am going to re-start a new dynasty soon, and there are some good suggestions. A lot of this will depend on what any dynasty owner wants to accomplish. Is the goal to mimic as close to real MLB finances as possible? Bc in real life the big market teams DO have financial advantages over others, and outspend them and generally acquire more highly ranked / expensive players. This tends to make their records better, but not always. So OOTP our of the box settings and results aren’t necessarily out of the norm per se.

I think what I have realized is I’d like to tinker with some financial settings to try and “level the playing field” somewhat in the game. Meaning, the big market teams SHOULD still generate more revenue/cash all things equal. BUT...it shouldn’t shift towards these extremes over multiple seasons. The top 5 free agents should typically sign with bigger markets but the next few tiers of players the mid market teams at least should be in the mix.

A big factor in this is also the trade logic. If the smaller teams aren’t making good trades to acquire high potential prospects it’s not going to enable fair competition. In real life that’s an important part of the lower tier teams keeping pace. I don’t have a factual basis to opine on how well that trade logic is working. I will say that as of the start of 2024 ( my 8th season), the top farm systems did mostly belong to smaller market teams.

Long winded way of saying I think small financial tweaks will make my sim what I want, and the out of the box settings are still pretty good!


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[dkgo]

I'm also in 2023 at the all-star break, challenge mode with no changes to financials besides 1-2% inflation

dodgers are 40-51 with a 260m payroll

yankees 39-49, 200m

cubs are 40-47, 216m. they owe cody anderson 120m over 4 years as a long reliever

meanwhile baltimore, white sox, and miami are all 8 or more games over 500 with payrolls under 90M

[NoOne]

it is possible for a small market on default settings to have some dominant years. when they have good luck and good manager/scout they may even have several strong teams over ~20 years or so.

unfortunately, the reality of baseball is that small market teams do not do as well over time. even with excellent management it is difficult to sign or afford marquee FA. having that extra bullet in the magazine can supplement other avenues of procuring talent. so, it increases the %s of winning.

a correlation -- check out per team records... few have the pedigree of the yankees and the effect we speak of is more predominant only since advent of FA. even before, it was a factor, obviously. (excluding a rare eccentric billionaire out in the sticks)

if you want a marquee organization that wins more than others over time, definitely keep a range of markets. all sorts of ground between that and stock car racing. you could make certain of a minimum revenue for any team, while having some richer than others.

i have been enjoying a hard salary cap, for a while now. i think it reins in costs a bit, and it's probably slightly higher than any 1 team can reach. that might make signing players for a small market human team a bit easier --> more often see a silver slugger quality guy for reasonable superstar prices. fwiw, all that might just coincide with a change they made when i started doing this, lol, but if true, a simple thing to apply with no repercussions outside of salary demands per quality of player.