For my historical league, I make sure everybody on the real-life rosters for a given year gets into at least one game, to the point of "force feeding" certain relievers by playing out games for teams other than my own. I also make baseball cards for every major league player every season, even going so far as to make a card for each team a guy played on if a player played for more than one team in a season. And, of course, real-life transactions. Not to mention real-life minor league teams, complete with historical uniforms when I can find pictures of them.
No wonder fictional leagues take so much less time for me than historicals...