iCloud Backup Wiped My Recent Sims Progress

My Mac was running out of storage space so I thought I would try to optimize and delete items on my machine so I'd have more free space. I selected the option to backup iCloud Documents and Downloads thinking it would pull that info up harmlessly. A little while later, I happened to check my Sims game only to find that it completely wiped all of my progress for the past 7 months!! The only save files available were several from November 2019 and all of my mods were wiped. I also quickly noticed a 15GB storage demand increase between the before and after backup games which was shocking. I tried to unselect the Documents and Downloads upload feature as a previous forum post described success doing this but to no avail - the game is still showing only the saved files from 2019. 

Obviously this is very frustrating and disappointing as I don't even know what happened and it seems like I've lost a lot of game progress. I'd love some thoughts on what is happening and how I can fix it! 

Thanks!