The first time I did this, I had a bunch of players in the league which were slightly worse than what you'd find in the Majors - so, similar to Korea or Taiwan. The second time, I sat down and literally worked out all the variables, including things like population density and the like, and came up with a somewhat realistic distribution of baseball talent in my model country.
The second works really well, much better than the first. In fact...it's too good.
The players are simply not up to the talent level from the majors. In the first, retired players or high-level minor leaguers who never made it could fit in in the island league and do well. In the second, basically the talent is completely one-sided - the local players on the island are bench guys at best and will never hold a job in the majors for any reason.
I'm still wondering what to do about the fact that I made it too good...
On another unexpected note, I'm playing the Orioles in my OOTP Go league. (That's the mobile phone version.) They finished the 2021 season at 73-89, which isn't good, but is a hell of a lot better than in real life (52-110). I of course traded like a rug merchant to get that far, and in one of the experimental "whaddaya-think" tries I did during the Winter Meetings, I somehow swapped Trey Mancini (and a good minor league prospect) for...Shohei Ohtani.
Okay, he isn't quite the world-beater that he is in real-life, with a 4.20 ERA last year, but by damn he is still SHOHEI OHTANI. I immediately got huge bonus points and a note saying that my fan base went from "disinterested" to "ecstatic".
Just have reached Christmas and will be hopefully signing a deal with a Korean pitching prospect from Bucheon who absolutely destroyed his country's league last year and is looking for a big payday. Given that he's 22 years old and has a fastball he can throw through a filing cabinet, I'm quite willing to open up the vault.
