If there's anything this story has done for me, it's given me a team to root for. I haven't cared about a team this much in a sim in a while, regardless of the outcomes it's been fun to be invested in sims and less inclined to want the computer the screw up my team with really bad decisions that I could have prevented.
2043
I won't belabor this because nobody is reading this but me, but...we were able to deliver on our promise to get Philadelphia a championship.
I did not expect us to get out of the series against New Mexico, so when I pushed the "sim" button for Game 7, I gasped. The Galactic Series was anti-climactic by comparison. It was just a really well composed team that peaked that the right time. Immediately after the postseason was over, I knew several things 1) payroll wasn't going to go up dramatically and 2) we needed to figure out how to devise a repeat somehow without increasing salaries.
2044
The AI manager made a trade right after the season bringing
Mandla Ngclosi to our club for 25-year old outfielder Jordan Cruz. Ngclosi had gone 16-12 last year and had front line starter chops and we needed that if we were going to repeat.
I wasn't sure if he'd deliver, to be honest. But he did, going 18-6 in a walk year and winning the Pitcher of the Year award on his way out the door.
Unfortunately, despite winning 102 games for the 2nd time in three years, when the playoffs hit, it wasn't to be for us. In fact, this was the first season in the 12 years since playoff expansion that two wild cards made the Galactic Series. So it just wasn't a great year to be a division winner, though the solace is that both of those wild cards won 90 games, so we're not talking about a really bad team that got hot.
Letting the AI run free agency is disastrous, so I've restricted it only to signing minor leaguers and doing everything but major leaguers. I still don't manage the team during the regular season at all or the playoffs, though I pay attention for stupid moves.
The biggest move this off-season was off-loading
Joe Peters IX to New York in a 4-player deal. He was a solid leadoff presence, but his days as a potentially middle of the order guy on our team were never going to arrive, he was on a cheap contract given where the market is now (he was only making $11m/year) but I was afraid that his inconsistency might crater his trade value and so, while I felt like he had trade value to garner, I wanted to get something useful for him.
The Gothams get a middle of the order bat, his speed & hope he can propel them back to the post-season. In exchange, we get a front-line starter to replace one of the two we'll lose this off-season SP Justin Harris & Scottish OF Justin Harris, who was an all-star this season.
We'll see what 2045 brings. We're going to have more of the big contracts shedding after this year, but our core mostly remains intact, so it's not a make-or-break year. Still, we don't have much of a farm system, so our window of opportunity is really year to year when relying on older players as we are at core positions.
Once this era is finished, I am likely to go back and do more exhaustive recap of what happened. Right now, I'm just enjoying watching it play out after I make moves, seeing what happens and then doing it all over again.
That said, if this team only comes out of this era with one title I'm going to be pretty disappointed. I feel like there's at least one more ring out of this club, but...it's difficult with such unpredictable playoffs.
Honestly, after the way the Division Series went, I was considering expanding that Series to a best-of-7, but I like the symmetry of the playoffs right now, also things end before late October and I'd rather not extend the playoffs much longer. Alternatively, we could expand the Wild Card Series to Best-of-3 and that'd be a max of 6 games that wild cards would have to play to reach the Division Series.
Maybe we'll do that. The two extra games won't cause any rust even if it really existed.