I was wondering if anyone has played any of the other online Baseball Simulators.  I like SimLeague, but I wonder if there are some better games out there.

A few things I've noticed that I do not care for about SimLeague. 
-Performance history for a player sometimes does not mimmick what the player is like in real life.  For instance, it seems that Mariano Rivera often gets crushed in SimLeague, and we are talking about the best closer in baseball history.  More than 4-5 blown saves in a season from Rivera is just not realistic.  An ERA over 3.00 for this guy is not realistic. But I've seen it happen again and again.
-Technical support is pretty slow and often not very helpful.  I don't know if SimLeague is being run by a bunch of college buddies in between taking bong hits in the dorm, but I've had issues that took forever to get a response out of.  And then when I did get a response, it then took even longer to get the issue resolved. 
-Setting up Theme Leagues is not user-friendly.  There has got to be a better system of setting up leagues.  There are a lot of options that could easily be made available but are not.  Couldn't the computer system, for instance, negate other teams from drafting a player with the same name so that only one instance of Babe Ruth or Walter Johnson is in one league?  I would think that would be easy to do.  But there is no way to do this.  Commissioners have told me the only way they could do that is to check each team out after everyone has drafted. It would be nice to look on the leader boards and see your player and not have to confuse him with 12 other Babe Ruth's.  I'm not saying everyone has to run a league this way, but it would be a nice option for a theme league.

So, just curious what other Online Baseball Simulators people have played and your impressions of those simulators. Are they much different than SimLeague?

Do you know how Rivera was being used when he was being "killed"?  Was he being pitched tired?  Was his pitch count set too high?  Was he being used as a starter?  You can't blame WIS for a player's unrealistic stats if he's not being used right.  I see 2008 Rivera, for example, showing a worst season with a 19.78 ERA in his performance history.  I strongly suspect whoever owned him was more at fault than WIS for those results.

Also, Rivera is going to blow more saves in the sim than in real life because at WIS his team usually has the same approximate salary/worth as the opposition.  You don't find many leagues here where one team clocks in at $200M and another at $40M.

Why do you believe Rivera's performance at 80M is not realistic?

An 80M team is better than the WS winning team most years in MLB - meaning if you loaded most recent WS winning teams into WIS, they would have a total salary of less than 80M.

An 80M team put together by an owner who knows what he's doing could compete with most of the very best teams in baseball history.  If Rivera were facing that kind of talent in real life every day, what do you think his numbers would look like?  At best all you can say is "I don't know" because he has never faced that level of competition over a sustained period of time.  My opinion is that there is no pitcher in baseball history who would routinely put up a sub-3.00 ERA against this kind of talent.

Then you have to factor in several other things when you look at performance history:
(1) what parks has he been used in (if Mariano in real life were pitching in AFCS, Coors, Hilltop, or other high offense parks all the time, his numbers would not be as good)
(2) how has he been used?  I looked at several of his performance histories in which his "worst" season was clearly used either by an owner who didn't know what he was doing, or was screwing around.  If you try to pitch Rivera as a starter, or make him throw 150 innings, or routinely run him out there for 2+ innings at a time, his performance deteriorates.  All it takes is a couple of screwed up seasons and his entire performance history will look way off.

I'm not saying you're wrong - maybe you're right - but you can't just pick a player, check out his performance history, and claim the SIM is not realistic. 

I kind of like the idea of players not alwasy dominating. I own the 5 mil Gagne in 2 leagues and he can once in a while take a beating, which to me is realistic.  Then there can be another pticher who does not have a big name or salary that dominates in a season.  I understand what you are saying, but eventually  Rivera will put up the numbers you expect....also antime any pitcher goes up against a Ruth or Cobb so many times his era is bound to be a little higher.

Nice to see 3 of us checking in at about the same time with similar arguments...at least we're consistent :)

I just checked Rivera's lifetime ERA against some of the best clubs during his career:

Rivera's ERA against Boston: 2.89 (doesn't include post-season; this number would higher if post-season stats were included)
Againsts LA/Cal/Anaheim: 3.43
Against Atlanta: 3.27
Against the Mets: 3.18

His overall ERA against those 4 teams is 3.10.  The average WIS team at 80M is better than those teams.

Against teams with a winning percentage of less than .500, his ERA is 1.88.  Against teams with winning percenages of .500+, his ERA is 2.65.  The average 80M team in WIS is going to substantially better than that.

Load a real life historical team into your draft center and see how much they're worth.  It's generally in the 65M range.  A 100M team blows that away.

And my great-grandpappy seen the Georgia Peach in his prime and he told me that ain't no pitcher born coulda gotta him out once in a row, never mind three times.

Look, the Rivera you mentioned with the 8.44 ERA has pitched 5.1 innings.  There's also a Rivera there with a 1.08 ERA (after 16.2 innings).  These are extremely small sample sizes to be commenting on. 

I'm not sure what you mean by "So I do not believe the argument that he faces tougher talent in SimLeague"

If you mean that you don't believe that an average 80M or 100M WIS team is better than an average MLB team, then I'm at a loss what to say.  A 100M league means he's facing the equivalent of the 1927 Yankees every game.

If you mean that you don't believe Rivera's performance would deteriorate against talent of that caliber, I would say the burden of proof is on you.  I just posted several numbers above showing that Rivera's performance deteriorates significantly as he faces better than average MLB competition - and there ain't none of them teams as good as the 1927 Yankees.

crazystengel's sample size post points out another problem, but it's a math problem, not a WIS problem.  Relievers are extremely susceptible to a couple of bad outings.  You have 2 or 3 outings where you give up (say) 4 runs in 1/3 of an inning, and you're never going to get the ERA below 3.00.

If you drafted all of the 1927 Yankees (hitters and pitchers) it would cost you $98M (about $60M of that for the hitters).  I guarantee you that any fairly experienced owner here would be able to put together a significantly better team with $100M. 

The hitters on the team that's first in your division had a real life OPS of .905; the 27 Yankees had a real life OPS of .872.  Not all teams at $100M will have a better offense than the 27 Yankees, but chances are they'll at least be in the same ballpark. 

Most of the teams in this league did not spend $50 million on their offense.  With that said, Rivera is the best closer in the history of the game.  I'd take him over any other closer in the the game against an offense with a payroll of $75 million.  We can agree to disagree.  I just don't think your argument holds any salt.  The starting pitchers in our league should be getting hammered too at the pace Rivera is getting hit around. But they are not. 

1. Small sample size.  If you had a 27 Ruth who went 1 for 8 with a single to start the season, would you also call out WIS over it?

2. You're really not grasping how much better $100M teams are than real life teams.  Ever team at that cap is a powerhouse.  A lot of the batters Rivera faces in real life are guys like Eric Hinske and Jhonny Peralta.  At $100M Rivera is seeing very few easy outs.

3. If you want realistic results, try single-season progs or 60M leagues.