Very nice work with the 12 Giles example. A couple of other points I think some of the "underperforming" complaints miss:

1) A batter's performance is dramatically affected by the quality of pitching he faces. The way launch leagues are set up, with teams playing 80% of their games against only 4 other teams, a team has a very good chance of facing pitching that's way better or way worse than the league average. That's exactly what happened to me in LL11, where I was the grateful beneficiary of the .367/.742/.454 Brian Giles (AND overperforming Mike Sweeney's, Larry Walker's, Harold Baines's and John Jaha's - leading to 400+ runs scored). My division opponents all had relatively poor pitching.

2) There's nothing pre-determined or conspirational about a player's performance. I've heard owners complain about performance as though there's some kind of statistical override in the game - "OK, Giles is up to .280, better have him whiff a few times." My LL11 Timber, when facing tough pitching in the Circuit Round, put up only average runs (5-6 a game, versus the 9 we averaged during the season) and were bounced.