Will chime in regarding both this and djc's recent posts regarding usage.
A few mitigating factors with my responses to both, which come via my Dodgers save. In it, I am using v25 in a heavily orchestrated MLB timeline with historical minor league players coming in but my own MiLB structure, currently just AAA but about to get an A-ball comp. There's also a smattering of fictional players in this universe.
I'm not seeing any real "overheating" of NeL players. Here's the career stats of all modded pitchers thru May 1924:
Ignore the W-L, which work against these guys on the whole with them playing for expansion clubs that struggle for sustained success, and is only ever a meaningless situational stat when it comes to analysis. The other metrics look absolutely fine in my book. I will be very interested to see if this holds for the next wave, which of course includes Satch. But also Willie Foster (already in here), Ted Trent, Ray and Barney Brown, Hilton Smith et al. A bunch of top-flight arms.
I shared this with Lans a while back and am happy to do so here. It's about as scientific as I get, just my self-designed tracker for the retired modded players' performance in this timeline:
SIM is their WAR total in the game; IRL their WAR (rWAR for pitchers) as it appears in their game avatar; MLE their allocation in the final version of EC's work; IMA the average of IRL and MLE; DIFF is SIM v IMA; SP is Symmetrical Performance Difference (maybe Normalised, I can't remember now).
All this really tells us is you win some, you lose some. But it does somewhat reinforce that none of the pitchers' results are outrageously OTT on a WAR basis. Again, this all might change in the post-1920 era.
The non-modded NeL guys are another matter altogether, and this segues nicely into djc's post elsewhere regarding usage.
Certain among the non-modded pitchers are definitely coming in a bit warm. But only a bit. Square Moore, Hulan Stamps, the Bills Force and McCall to name a few - these guys were pretty decent players, many of whom would have been in the next 20 or so that Lans and Garlon would have added to the mod in an expanded version. Still, they are doing somewhat better than I'd expect had they been given the chance IRL. But who can say for sure? I'm just happy to see them in this universe and will take what I get within reason.
No such problem with hitters, few of which appear. I'm not really seeing anything silly with the non-modded pitchers' usage given the ratings some are being given. Not sure if 25% is a number with any statistical value or just arbitrary. I have no idea what the percentage is in this timeline, but I don't see it as egregious.
Hope that helps.
G