No LHP, not enough RHB, no catchers left with high arm and high ability.

[Wudl83]

Hello guys.

I have been playing OOTP 22 for some weeks and am familiar with OOTP since a few years back.

Only right now I realized a problem which somehow really hinders my joy of playing because I find it severely unrealistic.

Normally there should be about 30-35% lefthanded pitchers and about 30-35% lefthanded hitters on a major league roster.

In my current sim (2026) my best RHB (CF) walked via free agency and I started to look for someone who could replace him. Maybe I was blind the whole time but only then I realized that more than 50% of my MLB roster were LHB. In the minors it looked the same. Free agency showed that there were way more LHB than you will find in real life MLB, too. There were quite some teams with whole infields or outfields consisting only of LHB.

I like to platoon quite a lot and remember always having the problem when starting a franchise that I didn't find enough LHB to platoon them with a RHB - and now it was the opposite. Tons of LHB, but no RHB left.

But...well...why should I care about platooning anyway? Keep on reading...

It baffled me a little bit and I started to look at pitchers and was met with severe disappointment. Not only did the sim consist game-wide of way too many LHB, there weren't nowhere near enough LHP left on active rosters and 40-man rosters, either. Of course real teams don't carry tons of LHP on their roster, but not carrying a single one?

I like OOTP for its depth and realism. But when there aren't any LHP left or way too many LHB around, it takes too much away from enjoynment.

I tried a few different sims and it was the same in everyone.
After a few seasons I always had:
- too many LHB, not enough RHB
- too many RHP, not enough LHB

I am quite sure it has something to do with rookies and fictional players coming up.

Since there are more and more RHP on the rosters it is understandable that there are more and more LHB on the rosters.
But the teams don't counter that with more LHP (and more RHB vice versa).
They simply go on and stack their rosters with RHP. And therefore even more LHB come up.

The starting process seems to be in the minors.

I don't know why that is happening but RHP and therefore LHB seem to be valued much higher then their otherhanded counterparts. RHP and LHB prevail while LHP and RHB are sorted out way earlier.

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Another problem occurs regarding catchers.
At the moment there are 11 catchers (including minors and internationals) in the game with a catcher ability of at least 70.
But NINE of them have a catcher arm rating of 40 or less. The only 2 with an arm rating of 40 are Realmuto who is still playing at age 34 and Drew Romo of COL who is a rookie in the beginning.
All other players are generated.

[CobaltJays]

Regarding the lefty/righty issue, my fictional league is currently in its 130th season (it started in 2012 with OOTP 13) and in my experience these things fluctuate randomly. I checked the numbers for my league, and my major league is a bit lefty-heavy at the moment (36.1% of my major league hitters are lefties, compared to 27.6% of hitters in my baseball universe), but I don't consider that to be the norm.

For pitchers, my percentage of major league lefties is consistent with the baseball universe overall (25.8% in the majors vs. 27.1% in the baseball universe).

[Bobfather]

This is most likely irrelevant but in my league, I am the only human manager. In my first season, I loaded up on switch hitters, and/ or high base stealing. By season 5 all the AI teams had switch hitters and base stealers.