400 seasons and counting (OOTP18)

[Young Drachma]

Mario Correa is a 27-year old free agent. He's a 3 time former MVP at his age and he wants to be the highest paid player of all-time. So far, that honor went to the recently retired Dusty Washburn who signed a 10-year/$470m contract with the San Bernardino A's in 2269. His highest salary was $50m and that's back when only one guy was getting $30m a year.

Salaries have bumped for elite players in recent years (I bumped those averages) but still no one has broken $50m yet, mostly because Washburn turned into hot garbage after he signed that contract.

Here's league salaries by team (At the start of FA) and Top 20 salaries. Salary cap is currently at $200m.

[Young Drachma]

Rather than intervene in the Mario Correa sweepstakes for the biggest contract in league history, I'm just simming to the pre-season and will let the AI do the whole process without me. I'll be super curious to see where he ends up, ultimately.

[Young Drachma]

In the end, it was all smoke. He signed a 5 year deal with Milwaukee with a option after 2 years.

[Young Drachma]

So here's the deal, my work laptop is going to be going away soon -- i'm changing jobs -- and so I'm going to let this storyline die when I give it back. Alas, I'm at Season 493 (2293) and I'm about to take over the San Diego Marlins, a team that's only existed for 7 years and move them (shock, I know) because they've only made one playoff appearance since their inception and I think 5 teams in California is clearly proving to be too much.

The team will go elsewhere and we'll play out at least one season with the intention that this is the last year of the franchise, but in reality, I'll probably (try) to play out until Season 500 if I can manage it before the laptop has to be wiped and returned.

Next week, I'll probably spend the Thanksgiving time going through the history books and telling interesting stories about franchises, players, teams and stuff that I just generally remember from playing things out.

But it's finally time to let this one go, it's been a LONG time coming.

[Young Drachma]

This is the last weekend of this dynasty. Mostly because I'm turning this machine in on Friday and the file is so unstable because of all of the seasons I've run it. We're in 2296 (Season 497) so we'll get to 500 easily.

I'm not quite sure how to end this, exactly. I mean, I've done historical retrospectives before. Maybe I should go through and do more? I'm kind of tired of taking over teams at this point, though I'd be interested to see if I could see sustain one last season with a club but I keep saying that and then it doesn't get very far.

One of the experiments I tried this past off-season (2295) was to sign a bunch of Japanese exports who are top players in that league and putting them onto a big league club to see if they could transform a team and turns out -- as probably expected -- they weren't able to have the impact to put a club into the post-season on their own.

After a hot start, the Oakland Oaks and their 6 Japanese imports are under .500 and probably not going to rally into a post-season spot.

I'll do some searching for storylines from history maybe? I dunno if you stumble into this and have ideas, I'll take them.

[Young Drachma]

Going to do my Top 100 players of all-time. Not all of them are all-time greats, but it's just players that I remember and that I really liked over the years. I'm sure it'll lead me to other stories.