A creative offseason.

Back in the pandemic days, I was still writing in a more corporate blog environment, and I got a copy of Out of the Park 21, which I used to simulate the season that we lost. That old site pretty much burned all my old posts after I declined their generous offer of "only write about facts or gambling, or else" but I still have that copy of OOTP 21 (the Twins made it to the playoffs, and were swept by Tampa).

I had heard rumors about the evolution engine in the historical game play, and I was fascinated. I created 16 teams and placed them in random cities and have just been simulating, trying to see what would happen. For about 60 fake baseball seasons, the league expanded every once in a while, but it didn't see any teams relocate, which I thought was a little strange.

Then, I realized I didn't set the financials of the league to advance with time, or to carry over year to year, so I adjusted those, and completely throttled the league, because now, every team had a budget from one year, and salaries were about to match those of 60 years later. Free agents were not getting signed, and it was going to take time for all these teams to work their way up to viability.

And then, right in the midst of this slow transition, the league expanded, and two teams were added. These two teams didn't have the weight of the previous financial expectations built into their budget, and were basically shopping in the free agency market by themselves. For two seasons, now, these two teams have signed every free agent that has been signed. Every one of them.

For me, that is a perfect analogy to MLB if, say, the regional sports network model collapsed, and a certain subset didn't have the revenue stream they had had, and others in the league were unimpacted and able to spend, virtually unchecked.

Oh, that's exactly what happened! The Twins will have to set out of free agency, for the most part, as will other teams that lost the RSN revenue. With more teams looking to conserve payroll, the market for free agents is going to be severely restricted. And if that's the case, who is going to be out there taking on contracts? Some teams will be trying to cut payroll themselves, and others will be filling up on their own free agents, rather than trading for help.

Who is providing salary relief? The story of the Twins thee last couple of weeks is that they need to trim payroll before they add more players, but I haven't seen anyone ask if that's even possible, given the way the financial gulf between teams is right now. The Twins have said they will need to be creative to make their payroll work in 2025. Part of the creativity will involve finding any partner willing to make it work.