But beyond the GM AI issues, pitchers in
OOTP are just overall not well-designed. Very few pitchers should be able to stay in the league if they can't maintain a K/9 ratio over 4.5. But
OOTP makes Control and Movement too good across a career (again, we've been able to see this on the Tango charts for quite some time), so you've always been able to find quite a few good pitchers who can't strike anyone out in
OOTP leagues. A few is great, mind you...but...well, you get the idea. The problem here is not that Ks drop too fast, but that HRs don't drop fast enough and BB are just too good across the spectrum.
Here is a chart with ERA vs. K/9 plotted in one of my test leagues (with aging/development adjustments). You can see a lot of pitchers with these gosh-awful K/9 ratios are pretty successful when measured by ERA. 43 of the 73 pitchers involved in this chart are 30 yo or younger. Of those 43, 20 have ERA under 5.00.