Starters throwing Way too many pitches....
 

I posted this in general discussion, but got no helpful responses, so I will try here.

I imported a 6.5 league and everything went over smoothly, I began to play and am over a month into the season and have noticed that almost all the starting pitchers are throwin well beyond 100 pitches and sometimes reaching 150 pitches. The originally setting on fatigue was low, and I have changed it to very low, but it doesn't see to affect anything. I have 5-4 games where both pitchers throw 130 pitchers and both get CGs with an endurance of 71/100. Is it a bug? A bad league conversion? Something I can fix? Any help would be appreciated :)

I haven't been playing for very long in my league yet, but I've noticed the same thing on my minor league team. I started by managing my Rookie League team so I set my fatigue to Very Low, not wanting my pitchers to throw a lot of pitches plus get my relievers some time. My starters are almost always throwing complete games with pitch counts of 130+ or at least going deep into games with pitch counts that are way too high. This is with starters that have endurance ratings ranging from 84 down to 56 (1-100 scale). I finally had to set pitch counts for all my starters just so I could get my relievers into some games. This worked fine for me until the AI decided to change my entire pitching staff (but that is a problem for another post).

I do have a problem with using pitch counts on my starters to reduce the number of pitches thrown. If my pitcher is throwing a great game (no-hitter, shutout, etc.), I would be more willing to leave a guy in the game, but setting a pitch count means he will come out once he reached his pitch count no matter what the situation. The fatigue setting needs to have more of an effect on the number of pitches thrown. I don't think it should be a set number of pitches, but at least a guideline to use, something along the lines of:

Very Low - 80
Low - 95
Normal - 110
High - 125
Very High - 140+

These numbers could be used along with a pitcher's personal endurance setting to determine approximately how many pitches he should be good for each game. Then the AI will just need to evaluate how the pitcher is throwing throughout the game to determine whether he stays in the game past his approximate pitch count or comes out before it.

EDIT: This league was started following the initial release of 2006.

So basically you are having the same problem that I am? I don't have a problem setting a pitch count, but this won't fix the problem. And the problem just isn't on my team, it's every team. I could set my pitch counts, but this doesn't change the fact that every other team will have their pitchers going very, very deep into the ball games. It changes the whole outcome of the games, a lot of relievers are rarely used, and dominate pitchers become even more dominat when they don't get tired until the 130 pitch count mark. I have a lot of starters with 5 CG, and most of them only have 5-6 starts so far....

There are actually 2 topics over there covering the same thing as this. I posted the links below.
Mine (second link) originally started out with horrible AI decisions in letting 2 starters get rocked so hard the opposers have no chance of ever tying the game. But has gone to this topic... as I posted in each of those, once I get further along in the season I'll do a more in depth look at these 100+ pitch pitchers...

http://www.ootpdevelopments.com/boar...d.php?t=124284

http://www.ootpdevelopments.com/boar...d.php?t=124598

It seem to me -- at least with imported leagues -- that pitcher endurance has more to do with recovery time that it does with how many pitches can be thrown per game before tiring or at least becoming ineffective.

It's April 17 in my league.
196 Major League games so far.
237 times starters have thrown 100 or more pitches.
134 different pitchers.

Since 100 is usually the pitch count that have managers hoppin' and itchin' those numbers are too high... especially for only the first 3 or 4 starts of the season.

There have been 894 ABs against starters in the 7th and 115 runs scored.
569 ABs in the 8th and 71 runs scored.
155 ABs in the 9th and 17 runs scored.

When the game is close those ratios improve:
667 ABs in the 7th and 91 runs scored.
400 ABs in the 8th and 56 runs scored.
54 ABs in the 9th and 8 runs scored.

The away pitchers stayed in longer (ie faced more batters in the 7th 8th and 9th) and gave up more runs in the 8th and 9th... except when it was a close game the home pitchers stayed in FAR longer (8th and 9th, again by batters faced) and gave up FAR more runs in those innings.
8th inning:
home: 237 with 21 runs scored
away: 332 with 50 runs scored
9th inning:
home: 46 with 6 runs scored
away: 109 with 11 runs scored
8th inning close:
home: 243 with 43 runs scored
away: 147 with 13 runs scored
9th inning close:
home: 51 with 7 runs scored
away: 3 with 1 run scored


The home pitcher:
9 times they gave up 3 to 5 runs in a close ball game. Twice it was no longer close when he was done working his magic. Obviously the other times it was close in the opposite direction.
8 of those times it was the 7th, 1 time it was in the 8th.
Only 6 times were those pitchers taken out that inning.
2 of those pitchers (the worst offenders, 4 and 5 runs given up) went on to pitch another inning.
15 times pitchers gave up 2 runs in a close game, 9 of those finished their inning, 4 came out for another go round.

The away pitcher:
7 times they gave up 3 to 6 runs in a close ball game. 5 times it was no longer close when he was done skillfully pushing men across the plate, once he actually helped make it into a close game.
3 times it was the 7th, 4 times it was the 8th.
5 of those pitchers were taken out that inning.
None of them came out for another round.
14 times pitchers gave up 2 runs in a close game, 13 of those finished their inning, 5 came out for another inning.

With relief usage the way it is today, these numbers are just not good.

Just watched a game, the pitcher threw 127 pitches. He ran into trouble in the 2nd and gave up 4 runs... but came back to strike out 7 in a row... throwing only 5 balls out of the zone to those 7 batters.

The pitcher didn't lose any effectiveness, the game just decided that 127 pitches = too tired to go on.

Check out the starter for Dallas in my online league...

http://ootp.oldredboat.com/reports/b...e_box_101.html

Thats crazy, league settings would probably be appropriate to post, just because a 6 endurance (1-10?) should not throw 192 pitches in any era but "insano world", right?

5 man rotations. Pitcher endurance was set to normal, closer usage and bullpen usage to very often. I've since changed endurance to very low, so we'll see.

It was on a 2-8 scale so 6 endurance is pretty good, but still...

It won't. I set pitcher endurance to very low and have the exact same problem.

How does this look now?

If there are issues, what sort of league are your using (eg Lahman import, fictional, 6.5 import . . .)

We have a new rule that states that Tech Support threads wherein we have not received a response within 7 days will be closed.

This one meets this criteria, so I'm closing this.

If you want to discuss it again, just PM me with the thread link, and I'll re-open. (Don't just say "Hey, reopen my thread." I need to know the URL, thanks!)

Steve