Can anyone explain why this game is so heavily slanted towards offense? It seems like pitchers almost always underperform and hitters almost always overperform. Admittedly, I mostly play progressives and maybe standard leagues are different, but I don't see why that would be the case.

Just wondering as this flaw is my #1 gripe about the site, and it would be a lot more fun if things were realistic instead of every game being played at the equivalent of Coors Field

1. pitchers fatigue in-game and thus are at less than 100% for some percentage of the game
2. some people use mop ups to stay in for 100+ pitches and get slaughtered to save the rest of the staff
3. some owners don't bother to carefully manage their staff especially if their team is bad and end up using tired pitchers
4. hitters who were aided by hitters parks aren't penalized, so their inflated stats are assumed by WIS to be their baseline and they get another bonus from being in a hitters park
5. probably other reasons i'm not thinking of

1. Pitchers fatigue in-game in real life as well, so their IRL numbers should be taking that into consideration.
2. I don't do that, and my pitching staff almost always underperforms by a significant amount
3. Ditto #2
4. Aren't some pitchers aided by their parks as well? Seems like there should be balance there, or if not, WIS needs to make a change because that seems like a glaring error.

Several years ago an adjustment was made shifting the game to slightly improve hitting. I don't remember the exact numbers....

Posted by mensu1954 on 12/24/2022 5:15:00 PM (view original):
Several years ago an adjustment was made shifting the game to slightly improve hitting. I don't remember the exact numbers....

That's nuts, since I have been playing this game for almost 20 years and hitting has always been better...why make it moreso? I'm going to take up this issue.

When I first started playing this game long ago it felt like you were playing in 1968.
A lot of that was due to exploiting the system where 1994 Maddux could easily pitch 400+ innings at 100%.
A lot of loopholes have closed so you can't do things like that anymore, you actually have to draft the right number of innings for the league you're in. I suspect most managers play it safe with regards to drafting innings, which lowers quality, rather than trying to push the limit and risk fatigue issues.

Posted by TulsaG on 12/24/2022 6:20:00 PM (view original):
When I first started playing this game long ago it felt like you were playing in 1968.
A lot of that was due to exploiting the system where 1994 Maddux could easily pitch 400+ innings at 100%.
A lot of loopholes have closed so you can't do things like that anymore, you actually have to draft the right number of innings for the league you're in. I suspect most managers play it safe with regards to drafting innings, which lowers quality, rather than trying to push the limit and risk fatigue issues.

I do remember some funky stuff happening with pitchers, but not to that extent.

I can easily get about 20% extra IP out of a pitcher without ever pitching them under 100%....but they will still almost always be a lot worse than RL numbers. And no, they don't pitch better when I limit them to their RL IP for the season...which makes sense because if the game says that they are at 100%, why wouldn't they be at, you know, 100%.

More than half of the outcome of the at bat is based on the hitter's stats. The pitcher will feel the effect more than how it impacts the hitter. That's just how the algorithm works...

Posted by sinatra on 12/24/2022 6:28:00 PM (view original):

Posted by TulsaG on 12/24/2022 6:20:00 PM (view original):
When I first started playing this game long ago it felt like you were playing in 1968.
A lot of that was due to exploiting the system where 1994 Maddux could easily pitch 400+ innings at 100%.
A lot of loopholes have closed so you can't do things like that anymore, you actually have to draft the right number of innings for the league you're in. I suspect most managers play it safe with regards to drafting innings, which lowers quality, rather than trying to push the limit and risk fatigue issues.

I do remember some funky stuff happening with pitchers, but not to that extent.

I can easily get about 20% extra IP out of a pitcher without ever pitching them under 100%....but they will still almost always be a lot worse than RL numbers. And no, they don't pitch better when I limit them to their RL IP for the season...which makes sense because if the game says that they are at 100%, why wouldn't they be at, you know, 100%.

how are you getting 20% extra IP while performing worse than real life without using them under 100%? this is a mathematical impossibility unless you are using high K modern pitchers against low K deadballers

Another thing is: Managing a pitching staff is a lot more delicate than a lineup.

With your hitters, just set the lineup and watch them go. The advanced settings if done correctly will provide a slight edge, but screwing it up isn't going to cripple you.
Where as with your pitching staff, if even one setting is wrong on the advanced tab it can be a total disaster. It's also often necessary to change things around with your staff where as the lineup can more or less stay as is.

Many managers will lack the skills and/or time to get the pitching settings right which is going to also inflate offense.

Posted by 06gsp on 12/24/2022 7:56:00 PM (view original):

Posted by sinatra on 12/24/2022 6:28:00 PM (view original):

Posted by TulsaG on 12/24/2022 6:20:00 PM (view original):
When I first started playing this game long ago it felt like you were playing in 1968.
A lot of that was due to exploiting the system where 1994 Maddux could easily pitch 400+ innings at 100%.
A lot of loopholes have closed so you can't do things like that anymore, you actually have to draft the right number of innings for the league you're in. I suspect most managers play it safe with regards to drafting innings, which lowers quality, rather than trying to push the limit and risk fatigue issues.

I do remember some funky stuff happening with pitchers, but not to that extent.

I can easily get about 20% extra IP out of a pitcher without ever pitching them under 100%....but they will still almost always be a lot worse than RL numbers. And no, they don't pitch better when I limit them to their RL IP for the season...which makes sense because if the game says that they are at 100%, why wouldn't they be at, you know, 100%.

how are you getting 20% extra IP while performing worse than real life without using them under 100%? this is a mathematical impossibility unless you are using high K modern pitchers against low K deadballers

It is incredibly easy. For starters, you just pitch them every time they get back to 100%. You will squeeze 10% extra IP at a minimum out of them and I have gotten up to 25% in some occasions. I got 302 IP out of 1988 Rick Mahler (249 RL IP) in a progressive. He never pitched tired and won 25 games. However, whether or not you do this with pitchers, overperforming happens FAR LESS than does underperforming.

The only time an SP starts below 100% for me is if I forget to pay attention and juggle the rotation. In my active team (Atlanta Braves) that's about to end the season, it was on the lower end since I knew the team would suck (down year in a progressive) and didn't manage it as closely. I still didn't pitch anyone under 100% and almost everyone underperformed by a ton.

If you think that somehow my guys are getting overworked (which would mean 100% fatigue doesn't really mean 100%), I point you to Tom Glavine on my active Atlanta Braves team. 3 IP over his IRL numbers. Started every game at 100%. Didn't have high pitch counts. Sim numbers: 7:71 ERA and a 1.94 WHIP. RL numbers: 4.28 ERA and a 1.45 WHIP. I didn't think he would be good, but he shouldn't be historically bad. It's a progressive, so it's impossible to construct completely insane lineups. And this kind of stuff happens all the time. I mean, look at several other pitchers on the team. Nobody pitches tired, almost everyone is way worse than RL number. Look at the rest of the league and you will find the same. Some of these owners don't know how to manage fatigue, but that's certainly not everyone.

You're missing something though:
MLB in 1990 has 26 teams, if your progressive has only 24, that'll make the lineups he faces a bit tougher. What stadium are you using? That could matter a lot.
So again assuming you are talking about 1990 Glavine, his pitching stats also aren't going to be normalized in his favor, where as the hitters it will be. His stats for 1990 were pretty poor, those numbers might have looked better in 4-5 years when there were two new teams and steroids were a lot more widespread, but the league just hadn't gotten there yet

Posted by TulsaG on 12/25/2022 4:15:00 PM (view original):
You're missing something though:
MLB in 1990 has 26 teams, if your progressive has only 24, that'll make the lineups he faces a bit tougher. What stadium are you using? That could matter a lot.
So again assuming you are talking about 1990 Glavine, his pitching stats also aren't going to be normalized in his favor, where as the hitters it will be. His stats for 1990 were pretty poor, those numbers might have looked better in 4-5 years when there were two new teams and steroids were a lot more widespread, but the league just hadn't gotten there yet

I used Fulton County. In progressives, you pretty much always use the stadium the team played in IRL. Anyhow, on average the hitters in a 24 team progressive will also face better pitchers (since we can leave the dumpster fires out, just as one can with offense), yet they suffer no negative effects.

It makes zero sense for there to be a "normalization" factor when every player in the league is from the same season. At any rate, I certainly don't notice a bias towards pitching in progressives that take place in heavily offensive eras. Just wrapped up a 2001 Progressive. My team hit .299 (including Robert Fick and Craig Counsell both hitting 40 points above RL AVG) and all five of my starters had ERAs over their RL numbers, some significantly (Matt Morris 4.44 vs 3.16 RL, Jason Johnson 5.86 vs 4.09 RL). Pitching ALWAYS underperforms, hitting ALWAYS overperforms. It's a fact of the game.

WIS themselves essentially admitted that excessive offensive is a problem. I submitted a ticket and got this:

"The game code is a bit older and pitching is one of the more difficult things to manage in the game. We plan on working on a rewrite of the game in the near future and hope to look into some issues with how the game simulates. I'm sorry for the unexpected outcomes with the players performances."

Normalization absolutely will matter.
If you play a progressive with all 1894 players, normalization is going to tone down the hitting and help out the pitchers significantly.
If you do the same in 1968, the opposite will be true.

Yes there is a lot of offense in general, but I think there's a lot of factors that play into that.