Low batting averages

[ChrisG]

Is anyone else noticing low batting averages this year? Looking at some saves, it seems there are multiple teams by the end of 2026 that have starters hitting under .200. Anecdotally it seems like way more guys are regressing, sometimes by a lot, on the BA front than are improving.


Is anyone making adjustments that don't juice it too much? If so, what are they?


Could live start and slow IRL starts for some players be affecting things?

[Bagpipes5]

I've brought this up before in the past as well as low OPS across the board for the league. The realization or suggestion was dismissed I guess.

[Todd R]

Originally Posted by ChrisG

Is anyone else noticing low batting averages this year? Looking at some saves, it seems there are multiple teams by the end of 2026 that have starters hitting under .200. Anecdotally it seems like way more guys are regressing, sometimes by a lot, on the BA front than are improving.


Is anyone making adjustments that don't juice it too much? If so, what are they?


Could live start and slow IRL starts for some players be affecting things?

What is your league BA and R/G compared with real 2026?

[ChrisG]

Originally Posted by Todd R

What is your league BA and R/G compared with real 2026?

Well interestingly...on the saves I checked the league BA right in line with the real 24 and 25.


Perhaps it could just be that AI teams are less willing to bench or release guys who are putting up absolutely atrocious numbers?


In one save the AI Rays stuck with Cedric Mullins, who slashed .170/.240/.258. AI Cleveland stuck with Bo Naylor at .165/.270/.315


Or the outcomes may be more high-variance? Would turning down TCR a little help with that at all?

[fredbeene]

its just a random season. why would you want to play where it is the same outcome each time. 1 season with no report is not worth time looking into. OOTPB has not improved reporting, but you can at least easily doing BA

[Todd R]

Originally Posted by ChrisG

Well interestingly...on the saves I checked the league BA right in line with the real 24 and 25.


Perhaps it could just be that AI teams are less willing to bench or release guys who are putting up absolutely atrocious numbers?


In one save the AI Rays stuck with Cedric Mullins, who slashed .170/.240/.258. AI Cleveland stuck with Bo Naylor at .165/.270/.315


Or the outcomes may be more high-variance? Would turning down TCR a little help with that at all?

With the default settings computer teams rely more on rating than recent performance when making decisions. And they should because ratings, not recent performance, determine the outcome of the next PA. Performance might be an indication scout ratings are wrong when scouting isn't set to 100% accurate so some consideration is appropriate..


TCR could have an effect but I seriously doubt it could take 100 points off a BA. You could check a player's real ratings in the editor to confirm.


I don't know where the posts are but someone calculated the probability of a player substantially (perhaps unrealistically would apply) over or under performing and it was much higher than people would imagine. And if a real life player has a bad luck year OOTP counts that as ability not bad luck and randomizes around that so that player can be much worse in OOTP than in real life.

[Lukas Berger]

Originally Posted by ChrisG

In one save the AI Rays stuck with Cedric Mullins, who slashed .170/.240/.258. AI Cleveland stuck with Bo Naylor at .165/.270/.315

The default AI evaluation is 25% for the current year's stats, and even there, the full 25% won't necessarily kick in until players are at pretty close to a full season's sample size.

If you want the AI to react more quickly/strongly to bad seasons, you'd really probably want to boost that by quite a bit.

Now that being said, in both these cases, these lines are actually better than their rl numbers so far this year, and yet Cleveland and Tampa are so far sticking with both guys.

Now, yeah maybe they wouldn't if they go the whole year putting up numbers as bad as they have been. (though in Naylor's case, he's been putting up not dissimilar, though marginally better lines the last two years as well, and Cleveland has stuck with him the whole time).

On a more big-picture scale, if you look at 2025 batters in real-life MLB, there are a LOT of guys who got significant playing time hitting well under .200. This is just the current MLB environment. Guys hitting below .200 but still getting significant playing time is not really unusual.

EDIT: With all the above being said, I do think it's possible some of the lower expected BA guys in the roster set like Mullins and Naylor and Joc Pederson could use a very slight boost to their babip numbers to get them to a touch higher baseline. ZIPS and our algorithm were arguably coming in a little a bit too pessimistic on them (though again, given their rl life-numbers so far, maybe not). So we'll adjust them up very slightly in the future to make them a little less likely to bottom out in their worst seasons.

[ChrisG]

Originally Posted by Lukas Berger

The default AI evaluation is 25% for the current year's stats, and even there, the full 25% won't necessarily kick in until players are at pretty close to a full season's sample size.

If you want the AI to react more quickly/strongly to bad seasons, you'd really probably want to boost that by quite a bit.

Now that being said, in both these cases, these lines are actually better than their rl numbers so far this year, and yet Cleveland and Tampa are so far sticking with both guys.

Now, yeah maybe they wouldn't if they go the whole year putting up numbers as bad as they have been. (though in Naylor's case, he's been putting up not dissimilar, though marginally better lines the last two years as well, and Cleveland has stuck with him the whole time).

On a more big-picture scale, if you look at 2025 batters in real-life MLB, there are a LOT of guys who got significant playing time hitting well under .200. This is just the current MLB environment. Guys hitting below .200 but still getting significant playing time is not really unusual.

EDIT: With all the above being said, I do think it's possible some of the lower expected BA guys in the roster set like Mullins and Naylor and Joc Pederson could use a very slight boost to their babip numbers to get them to a touch higher baseline. ZIPS and our algorithm were arguably coming in a little a bit too pessimistic on them (though again, given their rl life-numbers so far, maybe not). So we'll adjust them up very slightly in the future to make them a little less likely to bottom out in their worst seasons.

Makes sense...thx Lukas