Account Question

[Ham-fisted_Tawat_PSN]

A parade of stupid questions here, no doubt. I played 20 and now 21. I am not a huge gamer, so I believe that I only played using my platform account. At least I do not recall making a special MLBTS account. However, when I come on here I cannot see any of my MLBTS stuff from signing in with my platform account. What I can see here is that my avatar from MLBTS is also my avatar in this forum, so there has to be some kind of connection, right? Basically I would like to be able to come on here, see my pack pull results, and access the market. Currently not seeing any way of doing either. So the questions are...

Would I have needed to create an MLBTS account to play last year or this year?

What happens to this year's progress if I create an MLBTS account now?

If I did create an account when I bought the game (not ruling out that possibility), and now try to reset my password, what happens when I try to log into the actual game on my console?

The answer in the Wiki was pretty vague regarding linking. If you link from the platform you keep your progress, but if you link from the game account you don't? Can someone unpack that for me a bit?