9 out of 20

[Frozen Stiffer]

Out of the top 20 players with the most home runs in my other fictional association, 9 of them have more walks than the leader. The leader, my 1st baseman, has 59 home runs while the next up has 48; it's enough of a difference to make him a threatening hitter. However, he has been walked 58 times; the 9 guys who have been walked more often than him have done so between 63 to 79 times. So this makes me wonder...

...does the AI learn?

I ask this because I could swear I have seen the AI calling for more pitch-outs when a particularly notorious base-thief was on. It was a runner of mine who owned a respectable speed (high 70s), and though not the fastest in the league I was especially aggressive with him. It started to look to me as if the AI thought "Uh-oh. It's that guy again. Let's change our tactics..."

So if they seem to have learned there, why haven't they learned here? Why isn't the leading home run hitter being walked more? Asterisks and steroids and HGH and BALCO aside, Bonds was a dangerous hitter, so he was walked an almost embarrassingly large number of times. Why isn't the AI doing that here?

For the record (literally) I'm glad they haven't. The previous single-season HR record was 52, so it's nice to see he will have a place in the record books, but I need to be fair about things- deliberately ignoring possible AI oversights for the sake of my players' personal gain and my personal enjoyment, does not an honorable person make.

[Bustoff]

I have a player in a fictional association who is very fast (88 speed), and in 74 games he has 104 stolen bases. (He also has 42 walks.) I rarely see a pitchout on this guy, even after he has already stolen 3 or 4 bases in a game. He's only been caught stealing 10 times. If I were the AI and this guy was on first, I'd pitchout a lot.

[Frozen Stiffer]

I guess then that I should rename this thread to "Does the AI Learn?"

[&:]