Game Rewards for Actually Playing

I get it - the vast majority of time spent on this game isn't actually spent playing the game, it's grinding. And a big reason for that is that the reward system for actually playing the game is an absolute joke. It honestly feels like something they threw in at the end of development and never bothered trying it out to figure out if there was any point to their playing reward system. I'm about mid-way through Silver, and my rewards for completing a game are most commonly: $200 cash (lol) or a Late Round Draft Pick (now what tf am I gonna do with a late round draft pick this far into the game). I get $125 cash for actually playing an inning (which you don't get if you autoplay). It takes a minimum of $10000 cash just to upgrade one level out of a combined hundreds. To afford one minimum upgrade, I'd have to physically play 80 innings. At a reasonably conservative 3 minutes per inning played, that's 4 hours of game play. It makes no sense. You have completely disincentivized anyone from ACTUALLY playing the game, or at least so if they expect to get any kind of benefit from it. I am suggesting you greatly revamp the reward system for playing games