[BirdWatcher]

In my fictional league (see links in signature below) I certainly see some quality free agents go unsigned well into the early portion of the season, but it does seem like most of them are eventually signed. I know I was looking at free agents in my league recently- we are now in mid-September of the season- and there were perhaps 2 to 3 free agents who could be starters in the big leagues but the kind of veterans who could also find themselves not all that wanted at this stage of their careers.

So- I just pulled up the free agents list to check again- and what I am seeing is a 31-year old 3-star third baseman who is an Iron Man and has high intelligence. He is still a very fine defensive player and from his ratings does not look like a worthless hitter, but he did put up just 0.9 WAR last season.
After that there is a 32-year old fragile 2-star relief pitcher with very poor control. And a 34-year old 2-time All-Star, 2-time Gold Glove winning 2-star outfielder who is a Captain and an Iron Man. But he's only a 2-star player for a reason- his days of having a quality hit tool are long gone and he's only an average defender at this stage of his career.
Anyway, it's all downhill fast from there, with one 1 1/2 star player and then strictly 1-star or below players after that.

Now, I didn't monitor this closely as the season progressed so I don't know when other valuable free agents eventually signed or whether they signed minor league contracts or not. And I'm not sure why this decent third baseman is still out there and hasn't been at least signed to a minor league deal, but maybe he has turned down such offers.

Long story short- I don't have the length of history you do playing OOTP so it is hard for me to compare to older versions (I started with 18) but I'm not seeing anything in my fictional league that raises any red flags in my mind about how the AI is performing in this area.