Reserve-clause majors with free-agency minors?

[joefromchicago]

I'm trying to create a world that approximates the pre-farm-club era where minors operated independently of major leagues. I have a major league, operating under reserve-clause financial rules with an independent minor league that operates under free-agency rules. The major league is set for no long-term contracts and no guaranteed contracts, but it seems like all of the free agents coming out of the minor league are asking for long-term guaranteed contracts (and the AI is agreeing to those terms).

Is this just an inevitable disconnect between two incompatible financial systems, or is there a way to make the minor leaguers drop their free-agent demands that are incompatible with the reserve clause?

[Le Grande Orange]

Originally Posted by joefromchicago

I'm trying to create a world that approximates the pre-farm-club era where minors operated independently of major leagues. I have a major league, operating under reserve-clause financial rules with an independent minor league that operates under free-agency rules.

Just wondering, but why have the minors without the reserve clause? In real life the reserve clause applied to both the majors and minors.

[bwburke94]

Originally Posted by Le Grande Orange

Just wondering, but why have the minors without the reserve clause? In real life the reserve clause applied to both the majors and minors.

Presumably for balance reasons.

[joefromchicago]

Originally Posted by Le Grande Orange

Just wondering, but why have the minors without the reserve clause? In real life the reserve clause applied to both the majors and minors.

It's the only way that the major league teams will attempt to "buy" minor leaguers. Otherwise, the minor leaguers don't have any way of progressing to the big leagues unless they're traded. Granted, it's a work-around, but it's the closest approximation, I think, to the way that big league clubs purchased talent from independent minor league teams before the advent of farm systems.

[Le Grande Orange]

Understood. Though I'd point out that major league clubs having a minor league affiliate is almost as old as major league baseball itself. It's just that the system didn't become regularized and popularized until the 1930s.

[joefromchicago]

I agree, although I believe it was rare for a major-league team to own a minor-league club outright prior to the advent of the farm systems in the 1920s and '30s. Instead, major-league teams had working relationships with minor-league clubs, and much of it was on an ad hoc basis. I'd like to see a simulation of that type of system (e.g., players on the reserve roster playing on a triple-A club), but that's well beyond the capability of OOTP at present.