Quote:
Originally Posted by JCarter93
4. Platoon your players (lefty batters vs righty pitchers and vice versa, and put righty pitchers against righty (and lefty vs lefty) batters when you can.)
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I have two questions somewhat related to this. These questions are based less on a lack of experience with OOTP and more on a lack of experience with baseball in general. (I enjoy sports sims. I don't watch sports. I'm strange that way.)
First the more general question. As I understand it, the rule of thumb is to stack your batting lineup so that the better hitters are near the top of the lineup and your worse hitters are at the bottom. Why? Since the lineup cycles through 1 through 9 and then back to 1, and doesn't reset at the top of an inning, how do you gain anything by doing this and not, for example, lacing your good and bad players together? Somewhere along the way in a game (frequently) you're likely to end up starting your half of the inning batting from position 5. That pretty much guarantees a crappy inning.
Second, the question related to the quote above. Since you can't adjust the lineup during a game except through substitutions, is that what you're suggesting with "platooning"? Because you're not going to know ahead of time what pitchers you're dealing with, especially if they get substituted more than once or twice. (I simmed a game where the opposing team felt the urgent need to cycle through three pitchers in a single inning.) Or are you suggesting more that you adjust your lineup before the game based on what you estimate your opponent's pitchers to be? (That is, you know the starting pitcher, and can vaguely guess who their relievers, closer, etc. might be.)
Although I love OOTP, I still feel like Scientist Dog ("I have no idea what I'm doing") whenever I tweak lineups, etc. I tend to rely on the AI manager/bench coach to get that stuff done for me, though, which seems a waste, since apart from that I'm not really doing anything at all...