What do you think?

Just a result of drafts and match-ups?

Or is it closer to the core somewhere?

I believe walks are determined by like hitters 53% and pitchers 47% for walks. So it makes sense that at high caps, with Ted Williams, John McGraw, etc. that there’s a lot of walks at high caps

For walks, the hitter influence is 56.5% to 43.5% for pitchers. As caps get higher, team walk totals will rise, so it makes sense that walks are more frequent at higher caps. I don't think it's anywhere near problematic, unbalanced levels though. It's still easy to find excellent BB numbers from pitchers even up to $255M. I'm in a $220M league where '08 Walsh and '08 Brown have BB/9 numbers in the low 2's, and '16 Kershaw is at a microscopic 0.84. In a different $182M league Walsh is at 1.85 BB/9 and Kershaw 0.87. Many years ago, it was totally normal to see even the best Joss and Maddux seasons with BB/9 numbers in the 4's and 5's at the highest caps.

Scoring at high caps is way, way down from where it was several years ago and prior, when I'd be thrilled if '15 Alexander or '08 Joss would have an ERA in the 5's or 6's. When I used to play $255M caps in Coors, my goal was for my starters to have ERA's under 9.00. Now we can see ERA's of entire staffs in the 4's or better.

Yeah, before we get into debating reasons, I'm skeptical of the entire premise.

1.) How frequent are walks at high caps? (And what qualifies as a high cap?)
2.) What is the evidence that this observed rate is "too high"? Too high compared to what?

Without looking at any data, I would expect walk rates to be significantly higher at, say, caps of 120M+ than at caps of 60-90M, because the quality of the hitters is so much better, and the greatest hitters in MLB history include a lot of guys who walked a lot.

From a recent $255M league (a blacklist league that probably played more like $200M):

Here are the guys on my team who finished with more than 300PA:

Player	SN	AB	BB	HBP	PA	SIM BB/PA		Actual BB	Actual PA	Actual BB/PA
Keeler, Willie	1897	758	30	7	795	3.77%		44	771	5.71%
Carew, Rod	1977	694	51	4	749	6.81%		69	699	9.87%
Boudreau, Lou	1948	649	62	3	714	8.68%		102	707	14.43%
Gehringer, Charlie	1937	627	76	2	705	10.78%		95	695	13.67%
Heilmann, Harry	1923	590	79	2	671	11.77%		78	659	11.84%
Thompson, Sam	1894	549	45	4	598	7.53%		51	605	8.43%
McGraw, John	1899	506	124	8	638	19.44%		136	590	23.05%
Clements, Jack	1895	427	18	5	450	4.00%		27	440	6.14%
Kelley, Joe	1894	288	52	2	342	15.20%		135	784	17.22%
Carroll, Fred	1889	259	52	3	314	16.56%		104	509	20.43%
TEAM TOTALS	--	5910	609	44	5976	10.19%		841	6459	13.02%

So walks for my hitters are down something like 25-30% compared to RL. How much lower do you think they should be, and why?