Bullpen is absolutely horrible

[DaveT016]

I have a quick question about bullpens. Mine is absolutely terrible. Are there any tips or tricks for managing them.? When I sim games and watch, my relievers don't warm up in the bullpen first. Are they going in cold? does this even matter? I feel like I'm missing something.

Also, my relievers always seem to be tired. Is there anything I can do?

thanks.

[CBeisbol]

Originally Posted by DaveT016

I have a quick question about bullpens. Mine is absolutely terrible. Are there any tips or tricks for managing them.? When I sim games and watch, my relievers don't warm up in the bullpen first. Are they going in cold? does this even matter? I feel like I'm missing something.

Also, my relievers always seem to be tired. Is there anything I can do?

thanks.

How many games/innings/batters faced?
How good/bad is your defense/catcher?
What are their ERA+'s and FIP-'s?
What about them "sucks"?
What are their ratings?

If they are always tired (how tired), they are being overused. You need to extend your starters, or make sure you're not only using certain relievers while others don't play, or get relievers with more stamina.

The AI doesn't warm up pitchers (for your team or your opponent), they are warm when they come in (to the best of my knowledge)

[Boxcars]

I'm having a similar problem, but it extends to the starters as well. Just got the game, trying a quick season replay where I manage the White Sox during the 1977 season. The defense is horrible and the pitching barely adequate to begin with. The simulation generates WAY too many errors (even for this defense), which leads to many extended innings and the bullpen always being exhausted.

I've tried letting starters who are getting hammered stay in the game to soak up their innings but soon THEY are exhausted as well (needle all the way into the red) and the .180 hitters are tearing them up. What's a manager supposed to do? My entire staff is exhausted (despite just going through the All Star break). No innings anywhere. See screenshot.

Any help or advice on how to proceed would be greatly appreciated!

[CBeisbol]

I recently had the following

A 13 inning game in which my starter only lasted 4 1/3 innings
Followed by a double header.

After the 13 inning game, I subbed out a batter for an extra starter and swapped out my two optionable relievers for fresh ones.

After the double header, I sent the extra starter down and called up an extra reliever and brought up another couple fresh arms.

Sometimes things happen that wear out your pitchers.

I see you have a ten player pitcher staff. Maybe you need to go to 11.

[Maximum Jay]

You'll need to taxi squad at least 2 or 3 of your AAA RP's at points throughout the season - Especially when there are double headers, and in that era, you're gonna get hit with a couple of them a month, at least.

I'm in the middle of a 77 SF Giants season, and I've resorted to throwing a couple 35 rated guys out there when I need to, just to keep arms from falling off. It's not ideal, but bullpen arms are not super duper easy find with no budget in the mid 70's.

[Syd Thrift]

Originally Posted by Boxcars

I'm having a similar problem, but it extends to the starters as well. Just got the game, trying a quick season replay where I manage the White Sox during the 1977 season. The defense is horrible and the pitching barely adequate to begin with. The simulation generates WAY too many errors (even for this defense), which leads to many extended innings and the bullpen always being exhausted.

I've tried letting starters who are getting hammered stay in the game to soak up their innings but soon THEY are exhausted as well (needle all the way into the red) and the .180 hitters are tearing them up. What's a manager supposed to do? My entire staff is exhausted (despite just going through the All Star break). No innings anywhere. See screenshot.

Any help or advice on how to proceed would be greatly appreciated!

I wouldn’t expect this pitching staff to be that good, honestly. You don’t have any huge holes but you also have a lot of guys who are like 4th starter or middle of the ‘pen quality. On top of that, your rotation is dominated by finesse pitchers and you middle infield is a 2B playing out of position at shortstop and one of the worst defensive infielders of the 1970s.

If you really want to go with Orta and Brohamer up the middle, you either want to go high Stuff, accept that you’re going to give up a lot of hits, or a combination of both.

[CBeisbol]

Originally Posted by Maximum Jay

You'll need to taxi squad at least 2 or 3 of your AAA RP's at points throughout the season - Especially when there are double headers, and in that era, you're gonna get hit with a couple of them a month, at least.

This
There's got to be a couple of guys riding the shuttle back and forth.

One example, I just had a starter get hurt in his start. Gave the team 2.2 innings. So, the BP was on the hook for 6+

He's going to the DL. But, I don't need a starter for 4 more days. So, the team gets an extra reliever for those 4 days.

[Boxcars]

Thanks for all the great advice, everyone...it never occurred to me to call different players up. I haven't even looked at the minor league content yet. This is literally the first thing I dove into after installing the game. It's so addictive that I didn't stop until I'd reeled off (manually!) 80+ games in a little over a week.

Totally agree this team (can't help it, that was my local team growing up!) is hell on a simulator. They're way out on the end of the distribution on several variables that expose any holes in the model. The GIDP's are killing me also.

Looking forward to diving deeper into the unbelievable functionality in this platform!

[Cynical]

Originally Posted by CBeisbol

If they are always tired (how tired)

This is something I've had a hard time getting a feel for -- how tired is "tired"? I've noticed that on a 5-man rotation, my starters are rarely fully in the white, so I'm guessing that "don't pitch anyone in the yellow" is a bad policy; what should I be aiming for, in a vacuum? Obviously high-leverage in an important game is more "all hands on deck" and low-leverage in a regular season game is more "favor rested guy, but in a close regular season game, I'm not quite sure when I should say "nope, my high-leverage dudes need a rest, one of my lesser relievers will have to step in"; 50%? 70%? Higher or even lower?

[CBeisbol]

Originally Posted by Cynical

This is something I've had a hard time getting a feel for -- how tired is "tired"? I've noticed that on a 5-man rotation, my starters are rarely fully in the white, so I'm guessing that "don't pitch anyone in the yellow" is a bad policy; what should I be aiming for, in a vacuum? Obviously high-leverage in an important game is more "all hands on deck" and low-leverage in a regular season game is more "favor rested guy, but in a close regular season game, I'm not quite sure when I should say "nope, my high-leverage dudes need a rest, one of my lesser relievers will have to step in"; 50%? 70%? Higher or even lower?

Starters are typically good to go after 4 days rest.
Usually after 3 days rest they are around 67% which is "slightly tired", which is yellow.

I play it conservative in the season. I try to avoid pitching anyone who's "slightly tired". I especially try and avoid using my more important pitchers when they are slightly tired assuming that pitching when tired increases the possibility of injury. If Joe Schmoe blows up his arm pitching tired in July, I can more easily replace them than if Chris Closer does.

I can't say with any certainty at all how much tiredness effects performance. Though it certainly does. If a player is tired to 50% are then they expected to give up twice as many runs? Twice as many runs accounting for some baseline? No idea.

Managing a bullpen isn't for the feint of heart. ESPECIALLY when using the warm up rule.


One last thing
I typically try to avoid having too many "pure relievers" (35 or lower stamina) in my bullpen.
My second best reliever is my closer
My best reliever is a stopper
I typically have a LOOGY
Maybe another pure reliever

Then the rest of the staff is made of starters and former starters.
Starters who never developed a 3rd pitch make great middle relievers.
AAAA starters - also middle relievers
Near MLB ready starting pitching prospects - spend some time in an MLB bullpen

Aside from my top starting pitching prospects, all my starters spend time starting and relieving.

Here's a typical look at my AAA staff

[Cynical]

Wow, that's a lot of "almost starters" in the bullpen. Looking at Astros rosters, the 2019 opening day roster had a 7 man bullpen, with two "almost starters" (Josh James and Framber Valdez) and five pure relievers (Osuna, Pressley, Rondon, Harris, Devenski). In 2018, with an 8 man bullpen, it was similar; two almost starters (Peacock and McHugh) and six pure relievers (Giles, Devenski, Harris, Smith, Rondon, and Sipp).


I use the Astros as my example because they're the team I'm familiar with, but I assume most MLB teams are similar.


I looked up some stats, and found that top "pure relievers" tend to pitch in 50-70 games a year. That's roughly 1-in-3, maybe a bit more some seasons or less in others. In OotP, that would put most of them in high "yellow" status a lot of the time, probably around 70% rested based on what I've seen.

EDIT: Also, you mention staying a starter down/reliever up when a starter gets injured until the injured starter is due up next. Is there any easy way to tell the AAA team "skip this guy's next start so he's ready to slot into position on the major league club's rotation" without managing the AAA games yourself?

[CBeisbol]

Originally Posted by Cynical

Wow, that's a lot of "almost starters" in the bullpen. Looking at Astros rosters, the 2019 opening day roster had a 7 man bullpen, with two "almost starters" (Josh James and Framber Valdez) and five pure relievers (Osuna, Pressley, Rondon, Harris, Devenski). In 2018, with an 8 man bullpen, it was similar; two almost starters (Peacock and McHugh) and six pure relievers (Giles, Devenski, Harris, Smith, Rondon, and Sipp).


I use the Astros as my example because they're the team I'm familiar with, but I assume most MLB teams are similar.


I looked up some stats, and found that top "pure relievers" tend to pitch in 50-70 games a year. That's roughly 1-in-3, maybe a bit more some seasons or less in others. In OotP, that would put most of them in high "yellow" status a lot of the time, probably around 70% rested based on what I've seen.

EDIT: Also, you mention staying a starter down/reliever up when a starter gets injured until the injured starter is due up next. Is there any easy way to tell the AAA team "skip this guy's next start so he's ready to slot into position on the major league club's rotation" without managing the AAA games yourself?

This sim is in 1989 - so starters are pitching a lot more innings. But, I have a smaller bullpen. I also do similar with modern day sims.
My relievers are on track for 67, 54, 52 and 48 games.

It takes a bit of planning to make sure you're not bringing up a pitcher who just threw 100 pitches in the minors. In the player game strategy you can Bench a player for an indicated number of days. So, if I know in advance I'm going to need a reliever then I bench them. Otherwise, I just pick from whoever is the most rested.

My 40 player roster has a lot of pitchers on it.

[Cynical]

1989 explains a lot; I've read elsewhere that older leagues are coded to have pitchers show less fatigue, mirroring how everyone went a lot longer in those days. In 2020, IME, if your starter threw 100 pitches, even on four days rest he'll still be "slightly tired" when his next turn comes up.

EDIT -- I'm curious, how do your starters look after three days rest? In the late '80s, and even as far as the mid '90s, there were still a lot of teams running four-man rotations, and I'm wondering if your guys would be "fully rested" or "slightly tired" generally on that kind of a workload.

[CBeisbol]

Originally Posted by Cynical

1989 explains a lot; I've read elsewhere that older leagues are coded to have pitchers show less fatigue, mirroring how everyone went a lot longer in those days. In 2020, IME, if your starter threw 100 pitches, even on four days rest he'll still be "slightly tired" when his next turn comes up.

EDIT -- I'm curious, how do your starters look after three days rest? In the late '80s, and even as far as the mid '90s, there were still a lot of teams running four-man rotations, and I'm wondering if your guys would be "fully rested" or "slightly tired" generally on that kind of a workload.

As I said, I do the same with modern day sims.
I rarely let my starters go over 100 pitches and the are fine.
And my reliever situation is similar. But, I have more reliever spots.

They are definitely not ready to go after 3 days rest. They'll be in the yellow at like 66%