Player ratings regression

[BoConley]

Hello!

The TL;DR - I've been having a problem with hitter ratings consistently dropping on my team. Age range varies, but I've consistently had guys in their late 20s and early 30s regress pretty hard. Wildly inconsistent offensive production and this rarely happens to my pitchers. EDIT: Doesn't matter if it's a FA, player from my minors, acquired though a trade...they just fall off. It doesn't matter what the production is the previous year, the ratings just continue to fall off for all of my bats.

We play in a dome with grass in cold weather (which shouldn't matter since it's in a dome, I believe) and geographically speaking, there is another team in my league who is about 400 miles to the north who plays in a dome (on turf) and that team doesn't have this issue. Players get subbed out when they're tired, I'm not running anyone into the ground and I've changed up strategies (always run the same one for the season) but...again, same problems keep popping up.

The kicker is that this has happened over multiple versions of OOTP for me, 19 to 21. It hasn't happened in other leagues, only this specific one.

Any feedback or answers are appreciated. Even "get good" as, hell, I've been trying!

[Syd Thrift]

While tiredness will make a player less effective on the day they play and more prone to injury, I don’t believe it has any long term effects in and of itself. The two factors that contribute the most to aging are luck and injuries. Otherwise, generally players in their late 20s and early 30s are past their prime and that’s even more the case over the past decade or so than it was earlier in baseball’s past, although 27 has been seen as the “magic year” for a few decades now.

In general, yes, you’re going to see free agent signings regress. That’s the nature of free agent signings. They’re rarely worth it from a straight value for dollar perspective; ideally you use them to fill your last remaining holes on a near championship level team. The flip side of that is that if you draft well and acquire lots of prospects via trades, etc., you can finagle 6 of the best years of a player’s career at a premium price.

[BoConley]

Syd,

Thanks for the response! I understand the logistics and what not of free agency, the "magic year" and have a pretty good idea of how aging works.

The issue I keep running into is that I've never had this happen in any other league - online or off - and I've run basically the teams the exact same way. I'm not too sure I can fully wrap my brain around, "every player you got on this specific team has had bad luck while all of the other teams around you have amazing luck" as a potential reason for why this keeps happening.

I mean, I guess it's possible I've had an entire squad of bipolar players in this one league for all this time. I'm just trying to channel my inner Fox Mulder because I know the truth is out there!

[Syd Thrift]

I mean, even though it doesn’t seem like luck because it’s happening to you, it’s still just luck. You can smooth out aging curves if you want (I have in my league because I’m of the opinion that aging irl is less of a thing than older players having bad seasons and then losing their jobs because of the fear that it might be aging / hope that a younger, cheaper player will be able to take up the slack) but there’s certainly no AI controlled team aging vs player controlled team aging.

[BoConley]

Syd, so, if I'm understanding you correctly, the reasons the ratings are dropping for my bats - across the board on offense - is due to bad luck and some of the quirks of age and progression in the game?

I totally agree with you on the older players, I've found that guys in their 30s and older do a lot better and are more consistent.

[Brad K]

Players coming into FA for the first time are generally at their peak. There is no where else to go but down.

[BoConley]

Originally Posted by Brad K

Players coming into FA for the first time are generally at their peak. There is no where else to go but down.

Thank you, Brad for chiming in! I shouldn't have given a TL;DR, I expected people to read my mind.

It's not just FA bats (I'm going to edit this in the original post) but all of my bats. Doesn't matter if it's a FA, player from my minors, acquired though a trade...they just fall off. It doesn't matter what the production is the previous year, the ratings just continue to fall off for all of my bats.

My pitchers on the other hand don't have this problem Maybe one out of every ten have this issue.

[Brad K]

I've noticed many players drop during spring training from what they were the previous fall. Then they go up and down maybe half a star during the season. May be my settings. I have 3 year recal 100 TCR development yes.