New to the series - question about injuries

[Unlucky 13]

Hey guys. After pondering getting the game for a long time, I finally jumped in about a month ago when it went 75% off. I've enjoyed it for the most part, and have figured out a lot of the nuances. However, there's one thing I still can't get past.

I have probably simulated through 20 to 30 seasons now (all 2019-2021) in different franchise restarts. And weirdly, the same thing keeps happening in nearly every season. During the year, I suffer what I would consider to be a normal amount of injuries. Most of them for a week or so, some maybe longer. However, once I get to the middle of September, my pitchers start dropping like flies. I would say in at least 80% of the seasons I sim, I lose at least three important pitchers for the year once I get to the final two weeks of the regular season, meaning I don't have them in the playoffs and get rocked because of it.

In my most recent one, it was outrageous. My #1, #2, and #3 starters, my closer and my setup man were all lost for between two months and twelve months within the span of a week. So despite sitting there with one of the best records in MLB and my division title locked up, I was toast.

Is there a way to combat this? I already hire the best doctor/trainer possible at the start of each franchise. I set common injuries for about a week. Anyone else deal with this?

[KBLover]

Re: New to the series - question about injuries

In my most recent one, it was outrageous. My #1, #2, and #3 starters, my closer and my setup man were all lost for between two months and twelve months within the span of a week. So despite sitting there with one of the best records in MLB and my division title locked up, I was toast.

Is there a way to combat this? I already hire the best doctor/trainer possible at the start of each franchise. I set common injuries for about a week. Anyone else deal with this?

Like in real life, there's no sure fire way. Normally, with highly-rated trainers (with injury frequency on High), I usually avoid having a lot of injuries. But I think that threshold is very, very high and may also require the trainer to focus on Prevention.

That said, my manager usually pitches guys about 5 innings a game, sometimes six or seven, barring special events like going for no-hitters, or if the pitcher has been efficient and is going for a complete game on 100-110 pitches.

So I'm guessing innings-load is a factor. This might be why it happens more later in the season (a lot of my pitchers go down later in the year as well when I get pitching injuries). In my case, it's often my relievers because they are pitching more with the shorter starters.

I also set a global pitch count to 100. I picked that not just because it's a round number, but I remember reading years ago before it was a "thing" to worry about short starts that around 100 pitches injury risk goes up for that specific outing in a pitcher and wears on the arm over time (again going back to maybe why later season injuries are more common for pitchers). OOTP could be trying to emulate that, maybe not with 100 pitches, per se, but total pitches thrown over the course of a year (including spring training and any time that pitcher throws in a game).

This is just my thoughts/guesses based on what I've seen/done in my franchise. It will be interesting to see this year because my new manager has a different usage pattern, based on his tendencies. He has a slightly quicker hook for starters and is VERY slow to take out relievers. Granted, tendencies are based off the league tendency, but I might be seeing even shorter outings from starters? Will be interesting to see and if it impacts injury rates.