Quote:
Originally Posted by One Post Wonder
There may be reasons why the AI selects player A over player B in a given situation. Maybe the wind is blowing out at Wrigley and the pitcher they're bringing in is a groundballer who doesn't allow home runs. Or maybe it is a mistake and that's OK. Even in real life, especially if you go back 20-30 years, you'll see a lot of occasions where a mediocre player is getting too much playing time at the expense of someone better.
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The problem is that right now you could put 100 box scores in front of me, 50 from actual MLB games and 50 from an OOTP simmed season and I can pick out which is which at a much greater than 50% chance to be right. MLB managers don't do double switches in the ninth inning in order to bring their closer in unless they need to replace another player in the lineup due to injury or for defensive purposes. They never do it so the pitcher comes up later in the lineup like the OOTP AI does. You also almost never see a manager pinch hit for a better hitter in the lineup while letting the "no hit" defensive infielder stay in when behind. OOTP will take the one good pinch hitter they have and use them late in a game the first time they see that pinch hitter as a better option than the current hitter instead of looking at the entire lineup for that inning and trying to make sure that the three or four best hitters possible get to the plate. In other words, the sixth batter stays in and the guy in the eight or nine hole gets pinch hit for with that awesome bench bat you have. And then just basic things like pitcher usage. Had a game yesterday I watched where the starter had a shutout into the ninth in a 7-0 game, got the first two guys out but apparently because he crossed the 100 pitch threshold, with no established pitch count maximum, he gets removed. I would look at that box score and assuming no injury noted, would pick it out as not one from MLB. The same kind of thing happens all the time in OOTP where a pitcher is going along, gets the first batter out in an inning and then is replaced. It isn't that this never happens in MLB, but it certainly doesn't happen such that your lefty starter faces a righty batter, gets him out and then gets replaced by a righty reliever to face the two lefty batters due up. Every time I see that it breaks immersion.
As good as this game is, it can be improved as computer AI gets more sophisticated. I will be satisfied the day I do that 100 box score example and it becomes basically a coin flip as to whether it came from an actual MLB game or was generated by a simmed OOTP game. Because at that point it should also mean that I won't have a huge advantage over the AI when playing a game out. As it is now, I feel compelled to not play them out because of that huge, in game advantage.