Free agent shortage?

[ossyoos]

I'll start off by saying I love this game, it's incredibly addictive. However i've had the same problems with every version of ootp17 and i'm looking for help. My playing style is GM only, pure day-to-day sim. No in-game at all. I want to control the system from the top down, and maybe look at every few days box scores.

Here's the problem.
By the end of July in a standard MLB only (with full minors) season, the FA pool usually contains around 900 pitchers and 200-350 offense players, the large majority being catchers and old outfielders.

Here's what I did to test.
Fresh install of 17.9.60.
I started a standard game MLB with minors, I turned off baseball cards,
I am unemployed and on do not disturb mode.

I then saved the game so I could return to test again without the whole wait for creating a league. I manually end the ootp process so it doesn't save changes.

Simulations:
All sims start on 4/1 with these sets.
577 batters, 579 pitchers.

sim 1 (control)
I did a full sim to 7/31.
260 batters, 950 pitchers.

sim 2 - setting 35 player limits to Apa league, Pio league, AZL, GCL.
7/31
384 batters, 804 pitchers

sim 3 - Setting 35 player limits to pio, azl, gcl
7/31
321 batters, 930 pitchers

sim 4 - setting 35 player limits to azl, gcl
7/31
303 batters, 910 pitchers

sim 5 - setting 35 player limit to dsl
7/31
240 batters, 1041 pitchers


As stated before most of these batters are catchers or outfielders.

I ran one control sim in ootp16 and this is what i came up with.
1900 total players in FA, 1200 batters, 800 pitchers.
7/31
650 batters, 900 pitchers.

My conclusion is that 2016 and 2017 have the same aggressive batter FA signings, but in 2016 the opening pool is much larger so there are still many batters available.

I have come to a few conclusions on how I could fix this game myself.

1: Set every minor league level to some form of player limit. Maybe 30-35 for lower minors, 25 for higher minors. This would mean I would have quite a time after the draft releasing players, or having my assistant gm take care of that, but potentially release a bunch of my reclamation projects.
Certainly this would work, but it would make my season sims take longer. It takes a few hours a season as it is. An alternative is to change my style of managing, which I don't want to do because this game lets me do exactly what I want to do.

2: Change settings to introduce a lot more indy free agents. This is good but takes from the realism of the game using real people. Alternatively I could create a ton of free agents using the creator in the FA pool.

Questions:
Is there something else that be set to reduce the aggressiveness of AI FA signing of batters?

Is there a way to introduce more real free agents? I was thinking I could create a game with all the indy leagues and then delete all the teams creating a much bigger pool.

Is there a size limit for FA pools?


Is there a bug, or is the game working as intended? Its a bummer that right after the trade deadline there are almost no infielders left and very few outfielders?
It seems the AI doesn't care for pitchers as the pitcher pool seems to grow throughout.

I know if I finish the season the pool gets much bigger once again, but the problem will show up again.

Do you have any suggestions for me if this isn't a bug?



edit
I started fresh with US indy leagues. Deleted the leagues once in the game and then simmed. 1200 batters left by the deadline.
It might be unrealistic but having no infielders also seems unrealistic.