[SirMichaelJordan]

There have been too many times where the AI would give long term contracts to players clearly on a decline while playing with pure ratings. They would bench, trade away (for peanuts), demote and even DFA players who were having a great year (despite his developing ratings) in favor of playing a guy whose batting .230 with poor OPS and WAR because his current ratings look nice.

In my experience, individuals skills are more important that what a player's OVR says. The idea of going heavily stats was because of the bone headed moves the AI would do (funny that pure ratings are the default and non of the AI complaints that happen every year are non existent in my save, except of course the legacy issues like subs) so I have to respectfully disagree with luk on this one even though he knows way more about the game than I do.