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I set the trade difficulty to Very Hard and heavily favored prospects.
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Just to rewind this a little... did you then end up trading some of your prospects away? Because yeah, if you skew the game so that the AI drastically overvalues prospects, that's going to make some weird things happen, and in turn make it easier to find and exploit loopholes.
(If anything, I'd say the default trade AI overvalues prospects already... once a player hits 30, teams are willing to trade him away unrealistically cheaply, even if he's a core part of their roster, and even if he's not overpaid/you're requesting that the team pay part of his salary.)
Ultimately, you have an advantage that real GMs don't have -- you can ask every AI GM the relative (perceived) value of every single player in your organization and every single player in their organization, in every combination, as often as you want. You can tweak deals over and over again to find the exact combination of second-tier prospects/partial salaries/etc. that will allow you to pry loose the guy you want.
If you want to make the game tougher, try to put a limit on the number of revisions you make to a trade offer. (One thing that might help: an optional patience meter for AI GMs, the way there is for draft bonuses/free agency. The more times you try to tweak a deal, the harder a bargain the opposing GM drives. Eventually, they just hang up on you. That kind of thing.)
And as some other people have said, another thing you can do to increase the challenge is to play as a smaller-market team with less talent to work with. The Marlins or the Orioles, for example... or what I like to do is spend 3-4 years playing as an overseas team, then jump to the weakest available MLB squad (by combined revenue/roster talent/prospects).
The above is a temporary measure (I wish there was a way, or at least an easy way, to prevent budgets from increasing), but nothing's preventing you from repeating it -- e.g. "I've been at the helm in Miami for 8 years, I've made them into a dynasty, and now I'm leaving to fill the vacancy in Pittsburgh." And then you don't just have to start from zero, you have to beat the old team you built, and do it without the bargains (in terms of AI value) you found when you ran that team.
Playing as a minor league affiliate, or as manager only rather than GM, can also be challenging, though obviously that takes an interest in in-game management.
For more drastic measures -- how about removing or reducing minimum contracts and/or arbitration? If you're a small-market team,
and you can't keep your guys for 6 years without paying up, that makes things tougher.
(Personally, I don't mind any of this. I focus on bolstering my players' careers, trying to get them to the Hall of Fame, that kind of thing. Obviously I also try to win, but that's a side effect if anything.)