I want to love Manager mode but it's killing me (MLB The Show 19)

[Last_Light]

(Sorry if this ends up being very long winded. I need help lol)

I've always been a big fan of "coach mode" in games. But in recent years it feels like every modern game has been moving away from offering or even just completely removing that feature from their games (FM aside). I know there's deep fantastic text based options but I NEED to be able to actually watch the game play out.

Enter MLB The Show 19. I'd been feeling that itch the last couple of months and realised I had actually gotten the game for free on PSN. Having heard good things about it I downloaded and started playing. Did a fantasy draft and I was off.

At first I was loving the game. Had a great start to the season. Really fun, intense games and just managing to keep my head above water staying above .500. Even the games I lost felt really fun. However as I kept playing more games I started to worry about something, it felt like possibly player ratings didn't really mean anything. Pitchers in particular. But the sample size wasn't large so I just chalked it down to 70ovrs just apparently having career games against my squad.
Because managing each of these games takes a solid 2+ hours I realised I probably wasn't going to end up going too many seasons deep into this thing so I decided to see what the trade value was for the A and B prospects I had accumulated as well as my starters who were underperforming. Turns out a lot. I won't bother listing out all the players I got but I'll mention that among them the Twins (fantasy draft) were willing to part with Mike Trout. Who was leading the league in just about everything, understandably.
My team now sported the #1 team in Contact, Power and Defense. As well as 2nd in pitching and 20th in speed.
I actually felt guilty about how OP my team had become on paper so I saved the game as a separate save just in case I didn't find it fun. Turns out that was a good idea because I'm not finding it fun at all. Not for the reason I thought though. My hitting now sucks. After adding objectively much better batters in every category (not just attributes but statistically on the season too focusing on OPS etc) through 20 more games my team is averaging 2 hits per game (and I feel like half of those are bunts ). Not runs, hits. And all the stars I picked up as well as the ones I already had are plummeting in every statistical category. Now I don't mind losing, that's not really the issue here. I'm not suffering through blowouts every game. The opposite, every game has been boring. With my opponents struggling somewhat as well, just nowhere near as badly. My team with stacked batting attributes averaging 1 hit per 1 hour played is just becoming unenjoyable to watch completely. Watching Mike Trout go 0 for 35 in the last few games against the murderers row of SPs whose overalls have been 72, 75, 85, 82, 72, 70, 71 is mind numbing. But it's not only Trout, all these pitchers are easily making it deep into games, 7 or 8 or even 9 innings because of the aforementioned 2 hits per game my team is putting out. Even a handful of extra innings games isn't helping with that average. No one in my starting lineup has an ovr below 80 except one and he has the 2nd highest on base percentage of the lot. Insanely the only games my batters seem to show up for is when I face the Kershaws of the world. On top of that every single pitcher I seem to face whether they have 15 years of mlb service or 1 all seem to achieve their first hit of their careers. This could just be AL pitchers now being on NL teams. But along with everything else happening something just feels fishy. Also while I'm here I'll add that I'm seeing multiple double plays per game which is also getting a little ridiculous. Seeing the only hits my team actually get on base just turn into double plays half the time is painful.

Is there a team chemistry attribute I'm not seeing that I've messed up completely by doing 20 trades?
All my coaches have A or B overalls with the only negative being a -3 from my A overall manager in power. Just about everything else is positive. I'm also very vigilant with player stamina. I don't really allow players to get much lower than 50% and I'll rotate cold streak players in and out of the lineup and I've also tried shuffling the batting order using real world metrics and also old head sentiments. Surprisingly all of the 25 man squads morales are ecstatic or at least good too so I'd assume it's not linked to that.
I should also point out I didn't just grab power hitters or something ridiculous like that too lol.
I did at some point change the user settings from Beginner to Experienced as I realised the beginner setting had things like injuries turned off. I'm not sure if that's related at all. It was before all the trades and the earlier games in the season had much more realistic stats/scorelines and were just all round more enjoyable while the setting was still set to beginner. So maybe that did alter things.

Should I play another 20 games investing another 40+ hours in the hopes that this is just some insane slump?
Someone please help me. Does this game mode require extensive sliders? Is it just broken? Should I give up? The time investment to watch my star players bat under .200 is telling me maybe I should. I really want to love this mode. But at this point I genuinely feel like if I went in and edited all my players stats to full 99 in each attribute, somehow we'd still only get 2 hits a game and commit 10 double plays off those two hits somehow

[tessl]

I can't answer everything but just a few things.

Put the game on fast play and turn the countdown clock off. That will speed up games. You still get the full at bats but without all the stuff in between. Games won't last more than an hour unless you go to extra innings.

Resist the temptation to rob the computer in trades. I have strict self imposed trade restrictions I can post if you would like. When you acquire a player don't get caught up with overall. Look at attributes. For pitchers I like sinker ball pitchers with good stamina and H/9 BB/9 K/9. Combine that with a top defensive shortstop/2b.

What version are you using? If it is still 19 you might want to upgrade. A few years ago - I can't remember exactly when - the developers acted on a poor suggestion and made balls down both foul lines start curving foul. It ruined that year's game because balls that used to land fair for a hit became a foul ball and the at bat subsequently resulted in a out most of the time. In mlbts 20 the balls still curve foul but he seemed to compensate by adding more offense elsewhere.

Coaching attributes matter - and they stack. I currently have a staff of +8 vision and +7 durability. I'm considering revising it to focus on contact instead of vision. Durability helps your players avoid injury and recover faster. When you hire coaches have a strategy. If you stack contact or vision you might see better results. This website explains attributes briefly. Plate discipline also helps batters get deeper into counts and tire out the opposing pitcher. Pitcher confidence plays a role in the game. If an opposing starter gets good confidence he can be difficult and you want to get to the bullpen - and the last time I checked the option to turn off pitcher confidence was still broken. You might try turning it off but it has always been broken for manage mode.

https://www.reddit.com/r/MLBTheShow/...ats_in_mlb_15/

Sometimes players for whatever reason don't perform the way you expect. I traded Starling Marte for Mallex Smith because I like to manage for speed, defense and pitching and I figured Smith would be the ideal leadoff man and his contract wasn't as big as Marte's. He is great defensively but only hitting around .220 - don't ask me why. I ended up using a player I drafted in CF and he is better than Smith.

I can't speak for mlbts21 because I'm waiting for a ps5 before I get the game and I've stopped playing my carry over franchise because I can't continue it for 21. The developers did say player morale no longer impacts performance in mlbts21. It only impacts contract negotiations. That's all I know about 21.

I've probably played as many games in manage mode as anybody. Easily over 1,000. I only sim when my team is eliminated from the playoffs. My 2020 team played 157 games.

Maybe this will give you some ideas. If you ignore everything else definitely go to fast play and turn off the 6 second countdown clock between pitches. You can still make manager moves you just have to be quick on the controller. 1 hour games are much better than 2 hour games.

[jeffy777]

Are you playing with default sliders? As good as this game is, it becomes even better with slider adjustments. One of the easiest and best of which is to drop Fielder Run Speed and Fielder Reaction both down by 1 notch. It makes the game more realistic and the best news for you is that it will increase your hit variety and your offensive stats a bit. Be advised: it works both ways so you'll see a few more hits drop in on defense as well, but again it's more realistic. Plus, since guys can't cover quite as much ground, you'll see more diving plays that either result in web gems or bobbles, so it adds more excitement to the game as well.