Playing the Devil's advocate:

One thing I have noticed is that many people use the argument that in a league where we fill rosters for 20 teams from a pool of 30 teams that you will naturally have stronger hitting, and therefore higher averages...

Hmmmm..... does that argument hold water?

By the same token, every baseball team we draft will also have stronger pitching.

The hitters in the REAL major leagues have to face extremely watered down pitching, and much of their "Batting Average" will be made up against pitchers that will never see the light of day in our league. They MUST face better pitching in our league.

So could I not then also argue that because the batters are facing stronger pitching, and do not have the benefit of hitting against many a scrub, that batting averages should be lower in the league??

Why was it decided that hitting should have the benefit (I'm not talking in regard to the game engine, but in regard to common excuse offered by many to the inflated hitting stats)? Remember, just as we have improved the hitting, we have also improved on a team's pitching core.

Does this mean if averages were lower we'd be hearing the argument that this is because we are building a pitching staff for a 20 team league out of a pool of 30 teams?

Many games split the possibilities of every at bat 50-50 between hitting and pitching. All I can say is that IF this is the case, should it not balance out? Should there not be the odd hitting inconsitency (higher averages) and the odd pitching inconsistance (lower ERAs) resulting and an overall average that is essentially in line with the major leagues? I read in one post that someone had taken the statistics from his league over the full year and offense was up 15%. There seems to be something a miss with that...

After all, we DO have better pitching staffs.

Just some food for thought...

R