Option 1 Part B:
This time Player Gen set to 22-33 for Majors, and 17-21 for Minors.
Chonqing:
Got a 5-star 33yo SP, a couple of solid relievers, and some other good pieces here and there. It's kinda weird seeing a 33 year old on minimum though, that's the only thing we'd have to change, giving each player their rightful value of contract. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem there's an easy option to do this (you can set fictional contracts, but it hits all players), and the more work OU has to do the less appealing an option seems. The easiest way would be to give the older guys service time and then give them an arb contract, but again, that's potentially 50 players OU may have to do that for. Their team rankings at most positions is worse than tenth, other than 7th place in RF. Strangely have much higher levels in the full organizational ranking, despite no top prospects (See below). So we'll see when I actually sim.
As for their minors, 17-21 didn't change much, but it's a little better than last time. They actually have zero top prospects (because everyone on their team is older than 23 pretty much, so their system is temporarily last. So yeah, draft help probably needed.
Saitama:
Got a little better draw. Their 2B and 1B are 4th and 2nd on the league positional rankings, at 29 and 24 years of age. Three solid SP, and a bunch of good relievers too. Rest of their lineup is again under 10th at their positions, but if they can shore up some of that in FA, They should be able to compete in the East Asia League.
Pre FA Thoughts:
Saitama in a much better position than Chonqing Imo. This alone is kinda worrying, one team can randomly get two guys of huge value and the other guy just gets a 33 year old SP and not much else. Saitama also got two players in the League's Top 20 Batters/Hitters to Chonqing's one. We'll see how they progress but for now it looks lopsided to one of the two expansion teams, which seems a bit unfair.
Free Agency/IFA:
Since I'm solely testing random gen, I'm not giving them a week in advance and thus not controlling which players go where. Every other scenario will use that so not to worry there.
Chonqing was very active in FA, Grabbing 4 key players, a lock down closer, a 35 year old 4 star SP, One of Seoul(this league's Amsterdam minus actual titles)'s old players, and a 4.5 star international 2B. Saitama picked up Tseng, a 35 year old SP who just won the Shampionship with Guangzhou last year while throwing a 160 ERA+.
In terms of Positional Strength, Both teams improved fairly well. Chongqing grabbed the 2nd best 3B in the league in FA, and other players to bump up some of their categories into league average. They sorely lacked in other spots though, such as CF and C. A real human doing FA here would've prioritized different, of course. Saitama were quoted for the best 1B, 2B, SS, and Rotation in the league. While Seoul did lose a lot of players this offseason, this is still pretty surprising. We'll see how the actual season plays out.
Chonqqing did spend big in IFA, Blowing over 15 million in bonuses alone, but they grabbed two very good SP prospects in the process. Before the draft, 5 of their Top 7 guys have come from IFA. This was a normal IFA generation, and not the crazy IFA Draft I have planned for a different save, so that's a good sign that they can build their systems this way. Saitama chose to spend lightly in IFA, grabbing two scrubs and not much else.
The draft is on Opening Day, so I had a chance to see ST. Saitama were in fact the best team in the league, while Chongqing were dead last. ST only means so much, but interesting to note so far. Chongqing did have an injury to their marquee FA, but he's back for opening day.
Draft:
I have no idea how I messed it up but I did, the draft order is kerplunked. There is a giant supplemental round and everything. Since I simmed to draft day, I can't change it. Oh well. Not a problem for us mechanically since we draft offsite anyways. This actually crashed my game, I'll see if I can fix it. More to come.