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I have a pro-rel system of 10 leagues each with 12 teams. Teams are apportioned among the US states and Canadian provinces based on population. Each team's market started off based on population weighted by distance from the ballpark and per capita income. Yes, I can be obsessive. Market sizes ranged from 3 to 13 to start. Market sizes at the top end tend to drop fairly quickly, but they don't increase at the lower end very fast.
Ticket prices are fixed and all stadiums at all levels are the same size (not exactly realistic but it keeps things a little more fair).
The top 4 teams in each league go to the playoffs and the top 2 teams get a 1-game advantage in the first round. The league winner is promoted. the worst team in each league gets demoted (there is no playoff at the bottom because it's a pain to manually schedule that every year for 10 leagues).
There is 1-round draft but that's only because I like the draft classes for player creation. Players are immediately free agents as soon as the play a game in any league, so you basically try to sign your draft picks to extensions as soon as they are drafted. The draft is the only source of new talent.
There are no minors, just a 10 player reserve list.
It's quite fun and fairly hard to advance. Since markets only change slowly over time, it's not easy to keep advancing. It's also pretty hard to retain players as they get better, so the lower level teams tend to act like independent minors developing talent for the top tier teams (although they don't sell players because the game doesn't have a great mechanism for that).
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