[NoOne]

it probably has an effect, but unless some major changes were made to the engine it's not a profound effect.

e.g. because of how it works, "take a pitch" is still a game-breaking cheat, eh? I havent' been around much for a couple years, so it's possible they fixed that, but it'd be really hard to do without changin how the engine works on a fundamental level.

the seed that is generated is generated once per plate appearance and it mostly dictates the succes/fail of a PA. errors are a separate part of that permutation. even if you get a good offensive seed value, X% of balls that are in play end in an error, regardless.

so, if you really want to win, spend the first 2 games of the series taking pitches until 2-strike count, lol. Then by the third game you get a nearly gauranteed win. this can turn a ".500" club into a ".600+" club. split the first two and win vast majority of third.

Their pitching staff will be completely exhausted by that third game, lol, and only barely reduces your win% in the first 2.. I don't say this to tell you how to cheat, but to show why what i said above is probably true.

they added defensive strategies on top of the existing engine. so it may have a forced effect like errors work, but you can't push that too far. the game generates random locations of where the ball goes in the field, but that's superficial stuff after the fact. if they really got those locations to be accurate and proper proportions, then you could probablay do some realistic stuff with the fielding options. no idea if that's the case though.