[uruguru]

Originally Posted by Pelican

I confused how the new teams will find 150 players for their organizations, with no expansion draft, no amateur draft, only free agent signings. By simple arithmetic, there will be 200 new major league roster spots (8 X 25). Suddenly there will be 600 “major league” players, where there were just 400 in 1960. Where do these 200 new major leaguers come from, exactly? Presumably they will mostly be AAA players. As the Continental League teams sign free agents, established major league teams will need to fill out rosters with these AAA players. In a perfect world, with the AAA guys spread evenly among 24 teams, that would mean 8 or 9 AAA guys per team (active roster).

This is a valid concern. Thanks for asking!

Keep in mind that this is a full-minors save. The existing 16 MLB teams had a 2950 total players in their organizations, which meant they needed to shed 550 players to trim down to the new roster sizes (most franchises had more than 4 minor-league affiliates).

With the incoming rookie class, there are now 4177 active players, of which 2054 are free agents.

24 teams can carry 150 players each = 3600 players

That leaves the remaining 577 players to fill the independent leagues (which were formally BC/Rookie leagues). And with auto-retire turned off, the number of players should grow over time. We might have to add more independent leagues over time.

So, if I’m the GM of the Houston Colts, I could make offers to Mays and/or Clemente and/or other MLB roster free agents, at least until my money runs out. And take a look at more fringe MLB players who are not under contract. What about AAA and AA guys who are not on the active roster of an MLB team? Are they fair game to sign with the Continental League? Is this war?

No. AL and NL teams tried contractually lock up as many of their stars as possible, but there were too many holes in the dike and not enough fingers. In the face of broad player mutiny and to avoid challenges to their anti-trust exemption, the Continental League is now officially part of MLB. However, there is no expansion draft. The teams will have to find and sign their own players.

Also, the save starts with the player not employed by any team yet. So you can play the Buffalo Bisons if you'd like.

I would have an accurate scouting setting. Finding a dependable head scout is hard enough, without the worry that he will be doomed to failure.

Actually, this is the style I prefer when running historical leagues with the engine. High TCR keeps me from meta-gaming, and that high TCR renders scouting pointless so I set it to 100%. However, the save will come with Scouting at Very Low in case a player wants to keep it there and lower the TCR instead.

How will you handle the money available to the 24 teams for all these free agent contracts? Same budget for each team? Salary cap? Use the existing 1960 budget framework for the established teams?

I don't have salary cap or revenue sharing turned on, but they can be easily. The way I do "revenue sharing" in my saves is to set the ticket revenue sharing at 50%, up from the default 20%, and include season tickets in the sharing. That is really effective and encourages teams to be good enough to draw fans on the road..

And/or I could have a house rule, not to take advantage of then-unheralded future greats

Every time I've tried this house rule my save would always eventually go up in flames because 'Willie Stargell?!?" or something like that was just too irresistable.