Story time, because I'm bored...
After a successful 9-year stint in a big market with lots of money to spend, capped by back-to-back series wins, I decided to take over one of the expansion teams that the league was adding. Being an occasional masochist, I accept a job offer at the one with the lousier financial outlook, below average market size and financially controlling owner.
Initial budget is in the lower 1/3rd, 160M, but fine to start with. We do quite well year one, 78-84, and make my stingy owner a chunk of change in the process. Flip over to the offseason, budget remains the same. Fine, we'll deal with it. Year 2, finish 82-80, make more money than year one, get rewarded by having the budget cut by 12 million.
Year 3, make the playoffs at 95-67, lose in 7 in the division series, but get that juicy 10M in extra revenue combined with the great attendance figures from the year, owner rakes in even more cash. Budget the following year? Cut by a further 10 million.
Thankfully that ends the reductions, as years 4 thru 7 see the budget flat line at 138 million, despite my best efforts to make Scrooge money while winning games.
Frustrated, it's time to go into shenanigans mode. Heading into my 8th season, with a nice supply of minor leaguers ready to go, I decide to go all-in on making money. I slashed payroll, getting as much cash as I could in trades, and cut scouting and development to the minimum. Won games, made the playoffs, made over 110 million in profits.
The jerk cuts my budget by 16 million.
Ok, that didn't work, so I hit the reset button and went back to the start of the previous offseason. Time to go the other way. This time I spent every possible dollar I could. When it came to September it was time to stick it to him. I signed a handful of free agents to minor league contracts with majors options on them to bypass budget restrictions, each of them for $100,000,000 (worth 12M or so pro-rated through the end of the season). I promoted them to the majors and immediately released them, adding somewhere in the neighborhood of $60 million in additional payroll expenses. I lose lots of money and Scrooge ends up having to kick in about $40 mil out of pocket to cover the losses on the year.
As a result of this insanity he
increases my budget for the following season by 24 million dollars.
I will continue to blow his budget up out of spite until he either fires me, or I find out just how high my market size and his stinginess will let me go.