OOTP Feels Incredibly Random

I've been playing the game for years and tend to have 500+ legit hours in the game year to year. I love sports sim games. I also get it, the game is all about random number generators (I'm a developer, I fully understand what's going on behind the scenes). But something about this year's (and last year's) version feels way too random to be realistic. In the regular game, I basically fielded the same team 3 years in a row. Year 1 I made the ALCS. Year 2 I finished 20 games under .500 ball. Year 3 I won the World Series. In fact, I went back and simmed the 2026 season 5 times and the results are staggeringly different each time.

My top players are inconsistent year to year. There's no reason a guy with a 90/80 rating in BABIP and a 60/80 rating in AvoidK should hit .210 one year and .310 the other two years. Stats feel off. I'm fairly certain there's always been a "consistency" roll year to year for each player that affects the performance of said player.

I've tweaked the Talent Change Randomness, but it doesn't help. Consistency is still a problem even when players maintain high ratings.

I also find about every 5 seasons of in-game play, you get a year of really weirdly random free agency, where you can sign some pretty high caliber free agents for cheap (like 1/3 to 1/4 of what their real going rate should be). I'm not sure what the catalyst is here, just seems like it happens every few in-game seasons. And then my league becomes a cakewalk and I have to start over for a new challenge.