surprising pitching stats - pitcher ratings and settings

I just finished an 80s league and had some pitching results that were at first very surprising in comparison with the revealed years, but looking in more detail became only somewhat surprising. I pitched Calvin Schiraldi, '86 and Joe Niekro '87 for an entire season. Schiraldi is S5/R3 while Niekro is S7*. Schiraldi's '86 real life numbers were 1.41 ERA and 1.00 WHIP and his card is absolutely stellar and easily one of the best amongst the 80s starters. Niekro's '87 real life numbers were 5.33 ERA with a 1.49 WHIP in his last full year in the majors, and his '87 card is terrible. For my team, Schiraldi started 28 games and finished 11-12 with a 4.81 ERA and a 1.39 WHIP while Niekro went 13-9 in 29 starts finishing with a 4.48 ERA and 1.41 WHIP. They each faced 470 lefties while I managed starts so that Niekro faced 413 righties compared to only 306 for Schiraldi (Niekro '87 is 5R while Schiraldi '86 is 5L). The hitter/pitcher roll ratio was slightly greater for Schiraldi. Based on these statistics, Niekro's superior performance looks at first like an absolutely freak result. However, looking back at a few games, it did look like Schiraldi did much worse after he tired and I did have Schiraldi set to F8 slow hook. So, that and his S5 rating probably led to a worse performance than I would have expected based on his card. Still an unusual result but partly explainable by the ratings and settings. Finally, I have a paranoid and unfounded suspicion that HAL discriminates against S/R pitchers that are exclusively used as starters.

Interesting post and analysis!