[Spanish Lefty]

Very interesting changing the settings depending on the month, but I would forget jaja.

These are my settings:

- Scouting report updates: season start and end. (forces you to request a scouting report if it's trading deadline, for instance)
- Scouting accuracy: very low (varies a lot for prospects, not so much for veterans)
- Player actual ratings: none
- Player potential ratings 2 to 8 (be careful with youngsters)
- Other player ratings: 2 to 8
- Overall and potential rating: none displayed (makes a huge difference in difficulty)

- Injury frequency: high (realistic modern day)
- Batter and pitcher aging speed: .300
- Batter and pitcher dev speed: 1.350
- Talent Randomness: 170 (160-180)

- Trading difficulty: very hard
- Preference: Heavily favor prospects
- AI Settings: 25 / 50 / 20 / 5

Just for fun, every year, when the World Series ends, I go to the financial tab under "league settings" and multiply every cell by x1.03 to x1.05. Sometimes x1.02... others I leave it the same. Because, you know, inflation. I like to see how contracts are every year a bit higher, like in real life.

Concerning the aging and dev speeds, I wrote this in another post:

If you leave aging settings on default... Rookies will be about 24 and will go as low as 22. We can see that is not true nowadays, with players being promoted younger. With "1.300 development speed" you get a bunch with 22-23, a few with 21 and one 20-year player every now and then (Correa, Osuna, Rougned Odor, Bryce... types).

With "aging speed" you have to be much more aggresive. If you leave it with the default setting, David Ortiz and A-Rod are pieces of meat immediately. After running several 30-year simulations, .310 was the most fair approximation (always with high frequency injuries). You get many real situations:

- Average player, durable or iron man, getting to 38-40
- Average player, fragile or wrecked, getting to 32 years, then struggling through the minors with some ML appearances
- Future hall of famers when 30, struggling with injuries, retiring at 35 and not becoming HOFers.
- Very good players, durable or ironman getting to 42-43... (rare, but possible)
... etc.

In the same 30-year simulations, the player which retired the oldest was Trout with 44. Most of the players still retire at 36-38.

The game becomes more real. With the default setting and high injuries everybody retires at age 38-39 MAX and there are no +4 WAR players over 32-33 years.

I just ran another simulation with .310 aging speed and 1.300 dev speed until 2027

Oldest players in ML (and probable similar players)

- 42: CL David Robertson (closing, Mariano Rivera) and RP Tony Watson (above average, LaTroy Hawkins)
- 41: Matt Carpenter (after a -0.3 war season, Ichiro)
- 40: SP Carlos Carrasco (after a 3.9 war season, Bartolo Colon), RP Adam Liberatore (Joe Nathan), 1B Buster Posey (0.6 war)
- 39: 1B Brandon Belt (3.1 war), CL Zach Britton (still closing), RP David Carpenter, RP Aroldis Chapman, RP Zac Rosscup
- 38: RP Madison Bumgarner, RP Patrick Corbin, C Yasmani Grandal, CF Starling Marte, RP Michael Pineda, SP Jose Quintana, 1B Anthony Rizzo, RP Chris Sale

38 or above - game: 19; real life 2015: 25
40 or above - game: 6; real life 2015: 7

It adjusts pretty well. Perhaps we could try a slower aging speed (.290). I tried once .250 and didn't work.

Youngest players in ML (all unknown, so I won't put names)

- 20: 1 ; real life 2015: 3 (Correa, Osuna and Castro)
- 21: 6 ; real life 2015: 14
- 22: 20; real life 2015: 56

So perhaps we have to increase the development speed, from 1.300 to 1.400 and see again

Active players with +500HR: Giancarlo Stanton (588 with 37yrs), +400HR: Joey Gallo (485 with 33 yrs), Mike Trout (466; 36 yrs), A.J.Reed (405; 34 yrs).

HR record breaking chance:
- Joey Gallo if he belts 40HR for 7 more seasons from 34 to 40
- Thomas Johns. 285 HR with 29. 43HR per season for 11 seasons until he's 40. But made 54HR/year last 3 seasons.

Just for fun...

+4 WAR players 30 or above

- Pitchers: 2029 - 3; 2028 - 4; 2027 - 4; real life 2015 - 4
- Batters: 2029 - 17; 2028 - 12; 2027 - 13 real life 2015: 9