[Raidergoo]

There's a couple ways to attack the issue.

The best is to get good GM's, and encourage low turnover in the league.

Let's stipulate for a second the sole issue is draft pick trading. What can you do?

You can turn draft pick trading off. That ends the problem, period. GM's who take over an established team hate missing their picks. Draft pick trading is prohibited by MLB.

The trouble with turning it off is that trading picks in an established league is fun to do. What is more important? Realism? Fun? Ensuring new GM's can get their club back on its feet quickly? Once that question gets answered, a solution will come to the forefront.

If draft pick trading is allowed, there are some ways to regulate it. You could allow only picks in the upcoming draft to be made. You could limit draft pick trading to the part of the season between Opening Day and Draft Day. You could have a draft review board that would review each trade proposal to ensure that the league's competitive balance is maintained. You could have a rule that a team must have a pick in either the first or second round in the draft, so they cannot trade away both.

Yeah, I cheated a little bit and copied these ideas straight from the eMLB rule book. Then again, this league has been around since 2001, so maybe you could draw on its experience. Yes, some of the ideas are hard to implement in practice. But, the payoff is pretty good.

If you're having an issue with ridiculous low extensions being accepted, you could more heavily weigh contract evaluations to current year stats, then prohibit the offering of contract extension offers until after the All Star Game, or trade dead line. Often, clever GM's will submit a couple offers trying to feel out the absolute minimum a player will take. They will spread offers out over a long period of time, as to not irk the player too much by lowballing him. If you make the time period for negotiations shorter, it makes gaming the AI harder to do.