What are some things you do to keep franchise fresh and to keep coming back to it? I created a franchise spreadsheet that tracks the history of my seasons, keeps all stats and data, which players are chasing team records, transactions over the years, etc. I also only do trades that are realistic based off of baseballtradevalues.com. Its not perfect, but its more realistic than packaging 3 different 26 year old D minor leaguers for a B prospect, or packaging 3 fringe MLB players for an All star.
When trading, I also limit myself to teams that are sellers at the deadline. 'm hoping next year they add a team info page where teams have a buyers, sellers, stand pat setting.