Most REALISTIC Settings for MLB

[PSUColonel]

Originally Posted by bly08

The way I see a heavy ratings weight is that the AI will essentially be judging the players the same way as you do. This applies even if you play with stats only, unless you ignore all scouting reports. For example, I play with ratings, and there's no case where a player's previous and 2 year old stats could have anywhere near the same influence on my judgement than his ratings and history of rating changes. I'd say my own human settings would be something like 70/25/5/0.

I just started a new game with the Marlins using your 55/25/15/5 with hard/neutral, and it's virtually impossible to fleece the AI even with scouting turned off (I use average). This is perhaps the most balanced trade setting combination I've used since starting OOTP, if not a bit on the difficult side. The AI will emphasize ratings regression in the same way and ignore short term trends. As to whether this is the most realistic, I would think not, but it's the most fair.

On realism, one of the biggest contracts on the Marlins is Chris Johnson, who finished second in the batting title race a few years back with the Braves then got paid. He then managed to produce negative WAR every year since. There are two OOTP interpretations for this, either he did indeed have good ratings but experienced an immediate dip via talent change, or the Braves placed much more weight on current year stats than what we do as OOTP players and normally use for AI eval settings. I would think the latter is the better explanation. So the most realistic setting would probably emphasize stats more, but then you can't allow yourself access to rating changes as comprehensive and immediate as the OOTP system, but then stats only doesn't really work for MLB.

See what you think with average (default) trade difficulty.