[joefromchicago]

Tom: Welcome to the OOTP community! I can address a few of your points:

Originally Posted by TomStone123

1. Are there any factors that I should make sure are turned off, so that each season I run each team has everything equal -- besides the talent of their players, their home ballpark, etc? I see things like Team Chemistry / Morale? Does that impact player results? I kinda don't want such extra factors involved in my simulated seasons.

I'd turn off trading (of course) and injuries. Trading is under the League Settings/Rules tab. To disable injuries, go to the Global Settings/Players & Facegen tab.

You'll have to make some sort of decision about team strategies, unless you're running all of the teams yourself. I'm not sure how gamers make that decision when they're running an all-time league like you're doing. Someone with more experience with this sort of thing will have to weigh in on that.

Originally Posted by TomStone123

3. The biggest statistical anomaly from my teams is seemingly too many hits / too high of a batting average. What could I tweak to lower this? The overall league average was .290 which is rather high, though I'm OK with Tris Speaker batting .395 as the league leader. The league leader in hits was George Sisler with an amazing 271, and 8 players had 240+ hits. Some teams had no batter with over 200 hits, and that is fine. I think one issue is that some teams have SO MANY good hitters in these lineups, that they are getting a LOT of at-bats because they are scoring a lot of runs and just batting around the lineup a lot -- even against the really good pitching that these All-Time Teams also have. So what levers in the sim can I pull to even this out a bit?

Well, there are a bunch of factors potentially at play here, some of which you've already identified. For instance, are you playing 162-game seasons? If so, that gives players from the pre-1960 era eight additional games worth of stats, which will boost their numbers.

Not sure how to make HOF-caliber players less likely to produce HOF-caliber stats. Setting up a league composed of all-time greats will lead to some strange results. It's not like Stan Musial is going to bat like Mario Mendoza just because he's facing great pitchers all the time.

Originally Posted by TomStone123

4. Related to this, too many runs are being scored, so pitching ERA numbers are far too high. The overall ERA was 4.86, which is like the PED-era. Only three qualifying starters were below 3.00: Pedro 2.25, Mathewson 2.50, Gibson 2.93. Those three being best is fine, but only three below 3.00 is my concern.

What are your pitcher settings? You say you have five-man rotations. How many bullpen pitchers do you have? What are the settings for relievers? Most of that information can be found in the League Settings/Stats & AI tab.

Originally Posted by TomStone123

5. Perhaps one issue is that the number of strikeouts also seemed a bit a low. There were only 5.61 per game, which compared to real-life baseball would be the lowest since 1989. Only seven SP had 200+ Ks, with only Pedro having 220+ (253). Granted, I'm using 5-man rotations, so I can't expect to see a lot of 250+ K seasons, especially against great hitting lineups -- but again, the results just seemed low to me.

If you're only drawing players from the 2000s, that number would indeed be low. If you're drawing players from all eras, though, that number sounds about right. Batters didn't strike out a lot in the early days of baseball. Babe Ruth had a career K total of 1330, and he struck out a bunch compared to his contemporaries. Rob Deer, I think, struck out that many times in one season.

Originally Posted by TomStone123

7. On a related issue, how do I tell the sim to not just use the five starters and never use an "emergency starter"? Would that only happen if I turn on injuries? It was just odd to see every single team have all five SPs pitching 33 or 32 games, with none of the extra starters doing anything except long relief. I see I can have a six man rotation, but what I'd prefer to do is stick with 5-man rotation, but in some cases have the 4th or 5th guys skipped in favor of a 6th or 7th guy to give them a start here or there. I say that because I don't want Walter Johnson or Bob Feller getting fewer starts because of a 6-man rotation. :-)

You can use either the "start highest rested" or the "strict rotation, occasionally highest rested" settings for your starting rotation mode (League Settings/Stats & AI tab). In my experience, though, using either of those settings with a five-man rotation won't spread out the starts the way you want. I'd suggest a six-man rotation instead.

Originally Posted by TomStone123

One issue though with HR... is that some guys with very little (historical) power hit way too many HR. Like Nap LaJoie had 25 HR and Pete Rose had 25 HR also. Those are not realistic results. Does the Gap Power setting impact HR at all? Or does that only impact doubles and triples? I might just need to lower those guys', and a few others', power ratings. Many others who shouldn't hit a lot of HR were fine -- like Tris Speaker hit 3 homers, things like that. But there were some really odd exceptions I don't want to see happening.

Gap ratings don't affect HR totals, except possibly for inside-the-park HRs. You have to remember, though, that all the ratings are supposed to work together. Lajoie has a high power rating because, for his era, he was a power hitter (he led the AL in 1901 with 14 dingers). But the pitchers in that era also have really high movement ratings, so it all averages out. But if you put Lajoie up against, say, Fergie Jenkins, all of that pent-up power is going to be released.

Originally Posted by TomStone123

10. Lastly, the SB success rate % seemed really high for this first simulation season... it was 79%. Is there anything I can adjust to lower that a bit across the board, or is it just a factor of the runners ratings and the catchers ratings in each instance? Some guys had like 50 SB and 2 CS, so those extremes really jacked up the overall %... and almost no catchers had a better than 30% rate at throwing runners out, even though the league has all the greats like Ivan Rodriguez, Johnny Bench, etc.

It may have to do with your strategy settings, it may have to do with the number of players you have from the deadball era - not sure what's going on here.