For experimentation purposes, I've swapped out half a minor league team that was losing and is 'feuding' with overage AAA/AAAA type vets with good leadership and not only have I been unable to improve team chemistry by doing so, but the vets all underperform and the team doesn't win. Also, there seems to be a negative feedback loop that can get pretty ugly. OOTP does get the winning and losing driving chemistry part mostly right, but there do seem to be players that exist that just torpedo team chemistry. The stuff in OOTP is entirely unnecessary and by virtue of the fact that there is nothing from real life to model it after, is entirely made up. And that when teams are losing the 'bad apples' act out more (or reporters tell more stories about their bad behavior because it comes to light when the team is losing but is overlooked when the team is winning).

The only thing that has ever been demonstrated in real life is that winning teams have good clubhouses and losing teams have bad ones. Players that were cancers on one team go on to be leaders on others. No one has ever shown any cause-effect relationship of chemistry or personality types in real life. That's my problem with the whole OOTP model. And that's the way it is in real life, too. I always thought that winning was what really drove the team chemistry more than anything

Ootp baseball improve chemistry