Weird AI personnel decisions

[Art Deco]

I'm doing a save where I manage the Rays, and I'm on to the 2021 season now. Have no issues on my end, some of the AI trading is a bit weird at times, but when isn't it?


Anyway, I always check the box scores and transactions from the other MLB teams and the AI has made quite a few questionable moves as to player usage. Keston Hiura, for example, hit .295 with 31 HR in my 2020 sim and is generally regarded as one of the top young hitters in the NL. Yet here in 2021 the AI has him riding the pine behind Brice Turang and Luis Arias (neither of whom are lighting the world on fire) and he's basically been relegated to pinch-hitting.


Meanwhile, the Angels splashed out for a big free agent contract for James Paxton in the offseason yet are using him exclusively in middle and long relief, while the Dodgers who re-signed Kenley Jansen then went out and added every FA closer under the sun (Kirby Yates, Liam Hendriks, Alex Colome and Trevor Rosenthal) and are using Hendriks as the closer with Jansen in a setup role despite an excellent 2020 from him. Same with the Astros who signed Dellin Betances as a FA and then made him the closer over Roberto Osuna despite the latter's 38 saves the year before.


Can I (should I?) go in under commissioner mode and fix these wacky decisions or will they just revert back to what it is now when I toggle it off (I only want to really control the Rays)?

[jimmysthebestcop]

Nope forget about the AI teams. The AI teams will always AI. Some people do change the settings which regulate how players are scouted aka "Player Evaluation Settings" under AI settings under game settings.

I have mine set to
Ratings Weight- 10
Current Year Stats-40
Previous Year Stats- 25
2 Years Ago Stats - 25

The Default modern MLB settings almost everyone who has played multiple versions of OOTPb will probably universally hate. Everyone might not agree what the best settings are but almost everyone will agree the defaults are out of whacked.

Example the default fictional settings the game auto sets up are:
30
50
15
5

While the default modern MLB setup is:
65
20
10
5

As you can see the fictional defaults are a lot better then the mlb defaults. No idea why the defaults are completely different. My guess would be for players going modern mlb who want the so called "named players" to be prevalent in their universe.

The fiction defaults I think are way better then the mlb defaults I however like to modify them slightly. Just because I don't think the AI should rely upon ratings and I think 3 years of stats make a good baseline judgment. I necessarily don't like how the eval settings are categorized. I would like something like ratings, 3 year avg stats, current year stats, projected stats. That is much more inline with with say fantasy sports and media like fangraphs etc. But we can only use what we are given.

I have thought about using something like this as well
Ratings Weight- 10
Current Year Stats-45
Previous Year Stats- 35
2 Years Ago Stats - 15

[RBI Baseball]

Funny, I just played a 3 game series against the Brewers in April 2021 and Hiura sat all 3 games behind Luis Urias (Freddy Galvis at SS). Yet when I checked what they wanted for Hiura in a trade, they wanted another high end player added to Wander Franco.

[jimmysthebestcop]

Originally Posted by RBI Baseball

Funny, I just played a 3 game series against the Brewers in April 2021 and Hiura sat all 3 games behind Luis Urias (Freddy Galvis at SS). Yet when I checked what they wanted for Hiura in a trade, they wanted another high end player added to Wander Franco.

The trade logic has its own extra settings. You can set trade difficulty and what type of players teams favor. So its like an extra step after eval settings for trades.

[Scottiedog43]

Good stuff gents thank you

[Art Deco]

Originally Posted by RBI Baseball

Funny, I just played a 3 game series against the Brewers in April 2021 and Hiura sat all 3 games behind Luis Urias (Freddy Galvis at SS). Yet when I checked what they wanted for Hiura in a trade, they wanted another high end player added to Wander Franco.

Yep, that was my first instinct upon seeing this (he'd be an upgrade on Brandon Lowe) and figured if they're not playing him they must not want him but I got the same response in trying to trade for him.