|
I created a 1974 quickstart with these changes: I removed Rudy May from CAL and placed him on the NYY roster. I gave Bill Singer of CAL a CEI. I created three Mike Marshall "clones" and added them to the LAD roster. Then I simmed the season a few times. The changes hit CAL pretty hard. They no longer seem like much of a division title contender. LA improved its team ERA, predictably enough. But CIN still put up a fight for the division title each time. These changes made a noticeable difference.
Another observation: As I said before, the teams with the lowest ERA in real life still do not put up the same low ERA when I sim the '74 season. I noticed that each of these teams -- LA, ATL, OAK, and BAL -- also had the lowest DefEff ratings (see baseball-reference.com). So I'm guessing (again) that defense doesn't have enough influence on the outcome of games. Of course, this assumes that the OOTP engine assigns the proper defensive ratings to players. (Garlon's working on that problem, I think.)
|