First time playing every game- noticing too many HRs allowed and other things

[redbaron123]

I'm playing every game of the season for the first time after simulating most games for hundreds of seasons. My save is around 500 years old, but I rarely play games. I play some playoff games, and occasionally a couple regular games. But this time, I decided to play the entire season by myself for the first time. I am in the 148 game mark right now.

I don't know if this is a OOTP 25 thing, but some things seems different from the game being simulated.

This season, my team did not change that much from my previous season.

Most of my starters and good bullpen pitchers are 3-5 star players.
Starters are all 4-5 star. Bullpen: 3-5 star. However, they don't really feel like 4-5 star players.
My team ERA when I play myself is higher than simulated games. This applies both to my starters and bullpen pitchers. My starters have somewhere around 3-4 ERA, (usually when I simulate games it's around 2-3 ERA), and they simply seem to underperform compared to their ratings, or the simulations from before.

My 70 stuff & 70 movement (75 HRA) pitcher allowed 4 home runs in a game.
One time, my 5 star starter allowed 3 home runs in 3 innings, against a team with bad hitters (their best hitter hit .270)

My 1st starter seems to not be impacted that much.

My 2nd starter (5 star, 65 stuff and 65 mvmt 65 HRA) allowed 26 HRs in 168 innings. He used to consistantly only allow 17-20 HRs a season with 200 innings pitched. His ratings have not changed.

My 3rd starter (4.5 star, 65 stuff, 65 mvmt including 70 HRA, 60 ctrl) this year is a player I acquired mid season. Before the trade, he allowed 11 HRs in 126 innings. After the trade (with my team), he allowed 13 HRs in 68 innings. What the hell. His ratings also have not changed.

My 4th, 5th starter also allowed more HRs than before. Not a big tick, but an increase nonetheless.

My 4 star relievers are also getting hit harder. They seem to allow more home runs and hits than they usually seem to do. One of my 4 star relievers allowed three home runs in a row.

My team has players with good defensive capability. All players have at least 60 defense, and my SS, 2B, CF, C have great (70-80) defensive capability. This has always been like this when I simulate games. Even my backup players have good defensive capabilities.

However, my team was only around 29th out of seventy something teams in terms of defensive efficiency. When I simulate games, we are usually in the top 5 (110 game mark). Around the 148 game mark, this has improved a bit into 5th. So I guess that is going back to normal.

Hitting seems pretty consistent, I have to say. My players hit well, as expected. Pretty similar experience with simulated seasons.

Is this happening because I am simulating every game? Am I the only one that is seeing some noticeable disparity between simulating games and playing every game? Or is this an OOTP 25 thing?

I do not employ manual defensive shifts (I let AI take care of defense)
I rest my players when they are tired. Both pitchers and batters.
I always warm up relief pitchers. I only let a starter pitch when his rest status is 100%. My pitching coach is also excellent.

I tend to make my starters pitch around 100-115 pitches, depending on their stamina. I never quick hook starters.

I rarely ever use the 3 key when I pitch - Hit to Contact.
I always use a mix of the 1 and 2 key.
This also has nothing to do with the ballpark since I've been playing the same team for hundreds of years.

Strange.

[Dijon-Main]

No it's not cause you are playing out the games. It's because baseball is a more random game than almost any other sport and seeing "outlier" results is in the nature of randomness.

[LansdowneSt]

There are variations of this response from OOTP with each game's release. This is just the one that came up in my keyword search first:

https://forums.ootpdevelopments.com/...3&postcount=58

I don't expect the answer to be different this year.