[SteveP]

There is no need to rehash the problems with excessive PH/PR – and related fielding substitution problems -- in OOTP. However, my study of real 1960 games vs. my 1960 league did produce some useful insights related to this subject.

Some time ago, I adopted a practice of adjusting the League strategy setting for PH for position players to “Very rarely,” and the related setting in all team strategy pages near to the “Never” end of the slider. It’s clear now that these settings do produce reasonably authentic gameplay in OOTP. There is the side benefit that fielding substitution problems are greatly reduced.

I hit on a good metric to use in calibrating PH frequency. IRL, pinch-hitting for two position players in the same inning occurred seldom or very seldom (post-season play being a possible exception, as well as the rare manager who liked to pinch hit a lot for L/R matchup reasons). Pinch-hitting for three position players was about as rare as triple plays. I don’t believe this is era specific, but so far I’ve only studied 1960. My conclusion is that if you are seeing pinch-hitting for two or more position players in an inning happen fairly often for several teams, you should consider reducing the team strategy settings. With one exception, mentioned below, there’s not much you can do in OOTP to fine-tune this.

Because I like some variety in how teams in the league make gameplay decisions, I have many team strategy sliders set to one notch above “Never,” with some set to “Never” (which actually gives pretty authentic behavior compared to many teams IRL). I may have one or two teams set to two notches above “Never,” which this only works for teams that don’t fall easily into fielding substitution problems.

I also set pinch-running in Team strategy pages pretty much as I do pinch-hitting, again with some variation from team to team. This not only produces a frequency level that is reasonably authentic, but it greatly reduces the tendency of the AI to bench a fast baserunner for one that is slightly faster.

IRL, managers displayed a variety of behaviors as to when they would use pinch-hitters and pinch-runners. I don’t think there is any way to duplicate this variety in OOTP. So, I am satisfied if I can get the frequency per inning (which mostly means the 9th inning and sometimes the 8th inning) close to authentic.

There is one other setting that may affect the frequency of pinch-hitting. This is L/R matchup preference in the Team strategy pages. It appears to me that when this is set toward “Don’t care,” there is a slightly greater frequency of pinch-hitting per inning, whereas the opposite occurs if it is set toward “Prefer.” Logically so, I think. So, this may provide a tool for fine-tuning AI decision-making about frequency of PHing as well as matchups. Don’t overlook it in your own experimentation.

FWIW