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It's the (multiple levels of?) normalization going on under the hood. In the early going, Cy Young was everyone's desired ace. He could be counted on to win 20+ and compete for the pitching triple crown at the lower levels. Then there was Hack Wilson, who hit 70 home runs and drove in 210 for one of my teams.Both are long gone, sold to fund further missions.
Why? Cy's ratings were high relative to his contemporaries in PT terms. He was the best or nearly best pitcher at initial release. However, with the release of more and more pitchers, his movement rating especially is now inferior, and he won't be even serviceable above Silver level. Everyone has moved on to Koufax, Maddux, and Randy Johnson. The ratings of the batters being faced has also increased. Since everything is normalized, Cy Young has gone from being Number One on most teams to being a 9.99 ERA if he's still on your active roster and facing staffs with those guys (and Clemens and Spahn and Carlton etc.).
Wilson's avoid K is terrible compared to those who were released afterward, and his center field defense has gone from below average to disastrous. Where he once struck out 100 times while leading the league with 50+ home runs and not costing you too much in center field, he's now just another guy on the reserve roster, replaced by one of dozens of subsequent-release players who are far better. Since he's competing with those others, and since the stats are normalized, he would be one of those Mendoza Line hitters with occasional pop, and most of that against lefties.
You have to face the fact that next week's or next month's new releases are designed to make this week's stud player ordinary by next week and this month's stud replaceable by next month. That's the way the system works in PT: if you don't move forward, you're moving backward (all motion being relative).
The good news is that not every player has either the time, money, or commitment to field a Diamond level juggernaut. It's not too, too difficult to assemble a competitive Silver level team. Beyond that, you're largely competing against the moneyed and the motivated (and the players who started early, saved all their cards, and thus got a lot of instant mission completions when new missions dropped).
There are what, 900+ missions to complete? My best team has completed 863 of them and routinely thumps the competition at Gold level (all accomplished without spending a dime). Of course, they get to Diamond and they're lucky to survive for three weeks of 82-80 seasons, but that's an accomplishment given the ever-changing player card landscape.
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