[Pelican]

Well first thing, Atlanta is not a small-market team. They are one of the wealthiest franchises in baseball, and in fact virtually bought a World Championship a few years back, at the trade deadline, acquiring a new outfield. Small market teams cannot or will not do that.

Second, I agree with the posts that question whether long-term contracts for pre-arbitration players at modest (by comparison to post-arbitration) amounts can backfire badly. As a Phils' fan, I was totally in favor of Kingery's contract (in his case, after a tremendous Spring Training, and before his rookie year) as a smart investment. And people forget that his second season, in 2019, was very solid [.258/.315/.474 with 34 doubles, 19 HR, 55 RBI, and 15 SB]. But since then the Fightin's have been paying him to play at AAA.

I think the best thing teams with limited funds can do is offer long-term deals to their existing players, not just those who are pre-arbitration, in the hope of retaining them and building around them. The Pirates have done this.

One thing you might try in OOTP financials is to give a team like Oakland or KC or Miami the payroll of Atlanta or the Mutts or Yanks - or yes my Phillies. It's all good. They can compete for the best free agents, they can pump money into player development, they can risk long-term contracts, they can give huge bonuses.

I know I sound like a baseball socialist; but the best way to parity is to give all teams the same amount of money to spend. You can try to reverse-engineer parity with schemes like salary caps or luxury taxes, but teams will work around those. Come on, at the blackjack table you wouldn't let one player start with three or four times as many chips!