[actionjackson]

Haven't played regularly since 21ish or 23ish, but back then I would use the "Select Year" dropdown feature, and select "1984" the day before Opening Day every year. It worked remarkably well for me. The 1984 RL BABIP was .286, which I found turned out stats that were a bit hot, so I wound it back to .283, and it worked very well for my purposes. Things may have changed since then, but I found those settings by tinkering, and I'm sure you could find what you want by tinkering as well. Start with that basic method and go from there. Merely keeping the stats the same may result in some drift (it did back in the previous versions I played), I think towards offence, but again that may have changed.

I uncheck pretty much all the auto-import, or auto-adjust boxes, except for the auto-import historical rookies. That includes auto-import historical player-creation modifiers (not because it's necessary for a historical game, but because it tells me that my stats are definitely in 1984 at a quick glance, as those settings are burned into my brain by now), league strategy, financial settings (I manually import those on the first day of the offseason because they might change my league strategy settings [can't remember], and I want them to stay the same), league total modifiers (because I'm using the select "1984" method for them). I don't use lock league total stats, or control in-game engine either. This method's always gotten me what I want, in terms of league total stats. You can also find your own way by testing and tinkering until you get what you want. I also use 162 game schedules throughout.