Better hitting = automatically crappy pitching?

[Effington]

I know it feels like everytime you have a big inning, the computer comes back as well, but I've been looking at the aggregate, and it appears that's actually how things have been shaping up: if you hit well, your pitchers suffer the consequence.

In season 1 with the Cubbies, my batting was pretty decent, I think I was 15th in the league in RBI's. I had two hitters (Soto & Ramirez) who were MVP & Silver Slugger, but Soriano was out for 2 months, Lee was mediocre, and everyone else was pretty average. My pitching was great: Rich Harden won 20 games and the Cy Young, and all of my pitchers had fairly good years. The only change I made to the original rosters was signing Curt Schilling, who missed 2 months anyway, I think he was like 11-8 on the year. In the end, I lost the World Series, so decided to go on a spending spree.

In season 2, my team is ridiculously stacked. I signed Brandon Webb, Brian Roberts, Mark DeRosa, Ivan Rodriguez, Rafael Soriano, JJ Putz, then traded Milton Bradley & Ryan Theriot for Ryan Braun. I also have Josh Beckett. My entire team are all-stars.

These guys hit like mad. Soriano, Braun, Soto, Ramirez are the top 4 batters in the league, Soriano leads in HRs and Braun is 2nd. My team is 1st in RBI's/runs scored, they're a powerhouse.

However, I can't say the same about my pitching. JJ Putz has an 8 ERA, Rafael Soriano is over 10, Heilman is 5+ (when he had 1.0 last year!), Gregg is 11+, my entire bullpen sucks. My starters are mediocre, all of them in the high 3's or low 4's, but considering my rotation is Webb, Beckett, Harden, Dempster, Zambrano, that's high.

I turned over my entire bullpen and with newly acquired all-stars, my pitching managed to get worse? It really has to be some sort of programming in the game that says their batting gets better if they're losing. Granted, my record in season 2 is much better (.750 winning percentage through ~40 games) but it's definitely not my star-filled pitching staff that's winning games.

[MIKEY93]

i'm always careful with my pitchers. even though i played my first season game, i managed to pitch a great ball gam, getting out of jams, etc. i managed to get a 4-2 win. but i got owned by the offense before. maybe it's the comeback A.I.:
http://www.operationsports.com/forum...ai-thread.html

[mmorg]

I think it's all a mental game for you. Also Wrigley field is a very offensive field. Play in Petco Park and see what type of stats you get.

[GoBucs09]

Isn't this related to the rubber band AI that most have noticed. I think the rubber band was tightened too much.

[BigWilly]

You didn't change any sliders or the difficulty level?

It's an interesting find. I posted a month ago some stats based on 40 games that showed that as I scored more, so did the CPU. I haven't thought about it since, but who knows, maybe there could be something to it.

What's your Team ERA this year vs last? Just curious.

[moemoe24]

Im not seeing this in my franchise. I've played 10 games...I'm 6-4 with only 1 save. All the other games, I've won by 4 or more runs. I'm not seeing the rubberband AI.

[Effington]

Didn't change the difficulty, my ERA went from something like 3.0 last year (I think I led the league) to 6+ this year.

[BigWilly]

Yeah, that's a huge change in ERA, contrary of what you'd expect given the trades you made. I checked my runs for and against at the exact same point in my Season 1 vs Season 2, and I'm scoring more runs in Season 2 but giving up virtually the identical run total. But I'm also using basically the same team though I did call up two AAA relievers.