I'm currently in the midst of the 2028 season, having played since 2016. I have four main gripes and am wondering if there's anything in the settings that can be done to adjust these issues:
1) Catcher Offense
I noticed this in OOTP16 as well. There are far too many outstanding offensive catchers. Take a look at these stats from my last season:
That's like 6 Mike Piazzas... and this is an every year occurrence. In real life, hitters this good are generally moved off catcher early on in their development (ie. Bryce Harper, as one recent example).
2) Injury Distribution
It's been my perception that injuries are not distributed realistically across positions. Catchers and pitchers should deal with the most nagging injuries, and pitchers the most long term injuries. Catchers seem to be able to consistently catch 140 games a year for many years. Those should be few and far between. Pitchers certainly do get hit with long term injuries, but I don't think they get hit with enough of the short term nagging injuries that cause them to miss some starts. Outfielders, on the other hand, seem to be a super injury prone bunch. There's a ton of great outfielders in my league that can just barely scrape up 400 plate appearances each year. This might just be my perception, but it's a pretty strong feeling and I haven't been able to find any settings anywhere to control injury frequency on a positional basis...
3) Reliever Decisions
Closers specifically, and other relievers to a lesser extent, receive way too many W-L decisions. In real life, closers tend to get maybe 5-6 decisions a year on average. In my league, that's more like 14. Too many closers with records of 10-6, 8-8, 6-12, etc.
4) Pitcher Usage
What I mean by this is the frequency with which pitchers are switched between roles, specifically starter and closer. A lot of pitchers move from closing to starting and vice versa, and sometimes back and forth over the course of a couple seasons. This happens in real life but is relatively rare and generally a decent size story, whereas it's almost the norm in my league. To a lesser extent, this applies also to how the AI handles the closer position in general - keeping players there despite 7+ ERA all season (with 50% AI weight given to current season stats), moving players out of the role over the offseason for a worse player despite great performance, etc.
Any tips, ideas, thoughts, etc. on these issues would be appreciated!