Quote:
Originally Posted by David Watts
That's the impression I've been getting along as well. That's why I said I think what folks may want is for Markus to add another role (maybe called modern stopper) patterned after how the Indians used Andrew Miller down the stretch and in the post season. As the game is programmed now, I really can't see how the stopper and closer roles could coincide. The stopper is the closer.
I think it's going to be interesting to see if what we seen last year in the MLB is a new strategy that more and more teams use or was it just the Indians dealing with a ton of injuries and the Cubs being managed by a cat that hails from his very own universe.
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Miller is a middle-reliever and was used primarily as such in 2016 by both the Yankees and the Indians. He got one save in the postseason and he won a game in which he entered in a non-save situation. Cody Allen is the closer for the Indians, and he was used as such in the postseason, where he recorded six saves.
But postseason strategy is different, and both Francona and Maddon used their closers (Allen and Aroldis Chapman) in ways that they didn't use them in the regular season. Allen, for instance, pitched more than an inning six times in the postseason - he did that only seven times during the entire regular season.
So I'd be happy if the OOTP AI would use relievers differently in the postseason. I'm sure that would be extremely complicated to program, but it makes more sense to do that than to introduce a mythical stopper/closer combination.