Hello,

I think HBD should ad an option for league settings by commish to enable or disable a league option called small market vs. big market teams.

I know most suggestions may not taken seriously so I am not putting much time into any of my math or balancing because I am suggesting the system alone.  I think it will improve the game if players wish to be a part of such a rule set.

I suggest this because the bottom half of the world will have a number of teams who have the payroll to go after a star or field a few quality major league players, but do not so they can convert payroll into prospects. This is not an anti- tank suggestion, but it may help in some respects in addition to other rules that should be developed for that.

If your payroll for the year at the time of expanded rosters is below 80m, and your player payroll obligation is less than 60% of your budget, you are labeled as a 'small market club' 2 seasons from now. So if your payroll is 70 million, you must have 60% in payroll at 42m or better to avoid being a small market club. This essentially lets people still spend 10m on a draft, 30m on international prospects, but not much more than that.

Penalties for being a small club, would be;

1. Budgeted payroll can only increase by 4m per year.
2. Increased chance of signing failure by amateur draft picks anticipating a 1st or 2nd round, also large increased chance of failure against international signings. These kid's agents know you aren't a club who will pay big money and give their players what they are worth. Your a small market team, you can't afford it. There's no future with your club. (roleplay text)
3. Coaches leave at a greater frequency.

I hope this will also discourage avoiding decent free agents to have a crappy record, then flooding prospects to the big leagues and simultaneously increasing payroll drastically to buy up everything all of a sudden.

Big market teams could also play a roll, but I haven't considered any penalties. I would say if you want to keep a 110m+ budget you are already sacrificing enough.

Doing things to further penalize poor teams is almost definitely going to make things worse for the team and the world.

Micromanaging beyond a min ML win requirement and some minimum requirements for MinL teams (so the money has to be spent there) doesn't seem productive.

If you purposely tank to the point you can't average a min number of wins, or the 55+ increase win model a lot of worlds, then you don't get to stick around to enjoy the benefits of your tanking efforts. Why make it harder than that?

My average allocation to prospects over the best 9 seasons in No Quitters has been 36M, with 3 of those seasons breaking 40M (which means I transferred over 40M). Over those 9 seasons, I've averaged 94 wins and made two WS appearances. Worst seasons was an 87-win season that saw me just miss out on the second wild card.

Now, I guess I would not technically qualify as a small-market team under your scenario because I have averaged a starting payroll of 95M (transferring down to an average of 63), but in 3 of those seasons I had less than 60% of my allocated payroll actually pay to player salary. One of those years I played in the WS.

There's lots of different ways to field a good team. I don't see how limiting creativity in playing the game makes the game better.

Anything that makes it tougher for bad teams to improve isn't good for the game.   Once an owner is hopleless, he gives up the team and forces someone else to fix it.  

Just play in worlds with a MWR and you won't have problems.