Starting pitchers... sure are frustrating. lol

[Qeltar]

Every other aspect of my rebuild is going well, except for this. I cannot find even two consistently good SPs that I can put out there without wincing with every pitch. I've tried many combinations of stats... and I have a few hopefuls that MIGHT be good enough to be considered #3 or #4 starters in the future.

But really good SPs are nearly impossible to find. FAs cost a fortune, and nobody wants to trade them. I don't blame the other GMs of course.

Even ones that seem good on paper on other teams often get shellacked. I was close to pulling the trigger on a decent looking guy but he's gotten destroyed (like ERA over 8) in virtually every start in ST. It's tough to give up a blue-chip position player in that situation.

This isn't a complaint about the game, mind you. That's how it is in real baseball too, so they have done a good job here. Just venting a bit I guess.

I think this is going to be the real test of my rebuilding farm system -- can I produce some viable starters. Not expecting the next Kershaw or anything, just.. guys who will reliably give me 5 or 6 innings.

The GM job requires much patience....

[Reggie]

It's the only position I will over pay for if I actually find a good one.

It's also the spot I have made the most long term mistakes...trying to sign a young guy long term at the first sign of brilliance only for him to nose dive a year later.

[Clavette]

Unfortunately you have to overpay for starters and there still isnt a gaurentee they will continue to pitch well for you

[Qeltar]

Yeah, I hear you.

I just can't afford what the good ones go for on the measly budget I have here in Miami right now. This is what's so funny about my owner wanting me to be competitive. He gives me a $112m budget.. meanwhile my friends in Washington are paying $71m a year just for two top starters. It's a bit of a challenge!

I've been doing a lot of bargain-hunting in the FA market and trying to work trades... but so far all I have is a big collection of replacement level guys, a couple that are barely above replacement, and a couple that will be a bit better than that IF they develop. But they may be 2-3 years out, I don't know.

This year my strategy is going to probably be "survive until you get to the bullpen and hope to outscore." The offense is in much better shape at least and I have a lot of good 'pen arms.

I do have an opportunity to trade my closer (who is better than the next 2 guys down the list, but not extremely better) and some bit pieces for a 3 star starter with 50/50/70 ratings. This isn't my preferred profile though, and this guy has had a brutal spring (1.87 WHIP, 6.65 ERA, and surprisingly, 4.3 BB/9, which you don't expect with those numbers).

It's a small sample size, and I probably should do it since I need a decent starter much more than another righty single-inning guy. But that closer has been nearly unhittable since I got him and it's hard to pull the trigger.... His stats are currently 85/60/50.

On the plus side he was a very respectable 10-6 with a 3.34 ERA in the majors last year, and he's got only 1 year of MLB service.

What do you guys think?

[Clavette]

Im in a similiar situation with my 2nd year marlins (dumpster fire save file). Offense is above average (castro nearly won batting title in 1st season) and my bullpen is stuffed full of good arms that i need to thin out before ST ends.

This season my rotation consists of tijaun walker who i aquired reasonably from arizona and a 15mil/yr guy that came to the mlb from japan. 55/55/60 my preferred type of "affordable" starter that didnt cost any compensation. The rest are 1/2 - 2 star starters. 6 guys going for 3-4 rotation spots. What ive done in the past while using tampa is find a starter a team has given an affordable extension to and work on a trade with them. If i feel i can compete for the playoffs i will toss in 1st 2nd 3rd round picks and a few reasonable prospects. The ai likes those higher picks and sometimes values them higher than i would if im picking in the 20s. Again theres never a gaurentee that a guy will perform as well for me as he has in the past. Risk vs reward

I have not had a great time developing top of the rotation arms in the past. Mostly just batters but many times at the same position that ill try and trade for better pitching

[Mets52]

My main problem is I can't find a lefty anywhere. They're even harder to come by once you get deep in a game, imo.

[Timofmars]

I was able to get Sonny Gray and Jesse Hahn from Oakland for a bunch of good prospects (4 around 60/80 potential, and a 74/80 potential SP). Very hard trading difficulty, neutral AI preferences.

They still have a good pitching staff, with all their SPs rated at least 40/80, so they had a lot of depth there. They may be part of why they were willing to trade, since giving up a 70/80 pitcher only reduces them down to using a 40/80 pitcher instead of a 20/80 one, so maybe try looking for teams like that to trade with.

Or you can brute-force it, like going though good MLB pitchers and trying to trade for them. Just throw your 4 best players and prospects into a trade deal (preferable the ones everyone seems to always want in trades) and see if the "make it work" button even works. If they are interested, you can remove players 1 by 1 from the trade, clicking the make-it-work button each time to see what else they'd take instead of your top players. Usually you'll get at least some more options for players you can stand to lose.

It's hard to know what players the AI will be willing to give up for a reasonable price. You just have to try each one. Don't think that just because it was impossible to acquire one highly rated player no matter what you offer that it necessarily means you have to look for a much lower quality player to have a chance. I've seen teams willing to trade a top player, and other teams unwilling to give up much weaker players for the same price.

[Clavette]

After my post yesterday i was looking at some of my top (#80-160 in top prospects) prospects. I had a recent scouting discovery of a 17yo RF with bad work ethic and intelligence. Shopped him around and was blown away with the 1 for 1 offers. Was able to get chris archer with tampa retaining 100% of the next 2 years salary + 11mil year 3 option and 12.5m in cash

I was shocked with the offers. Made the trade and archer has been great. Rest of my team is atrocious this year and were 17 games under .500 in june. Guys hitting under .200, bullpen guys that threw sub 3.00era are up over 5.00. Killing me

[Qeltar]

Trading away prospects is a good idea and approach but it depends on the team. I think as a player, I at least get carried away with wanting to win nownownow and forget my long-term plan which is to rebuild this franchise. I have to be really careful about giving away too much.

Most of the time even for a 3* SP the other GM wants an established all-star position player plus a top prospect, my first born and a kidney. I have trading difficulty on "hard" (I had it on average the first year but it was getting too easy so I roleplay this as the other GMs getting wise to my trading gimmicks) and it is definitely much more difficult now.

I covet my good players so I mostly bargain-hunt and look for "undervalued assets" that have a good chance of becoming 3* in a year or two. But that means probably putting up with another year or two of "sigh, will you PLEASE throw strikes" and "not ANOTHER home run!"

Bullpen I have never had a problem with. IME the AI grossly overvalues established closers and undervalues mid-level to setup-level arms, many of which are perfectly good enough to do closer by committee and occasionally one is good enough to close on his own. I did end up trading away my current closer (plus some filler) for that SP. It's a bit of a gamble but the closer is 27 and I have numerous 23-25 pitchers close to closer level, so I figured the SP was more important. I will miss his lights-out innings though, and I'm sure I'll lose a game or two in the ninth that I wouldn't have..

[Shoeless' Socks]

The gulf between aces and other SP on 19 is IMO too big. It doesn't mimic real life. MOST pitchers in MLB have ERAs in the 4.00s, high 4.00s if they are 'not great'.

Your 'not great' SP in OOTP 19 will have ghastly ERAs.

[Timofmars]

Originally Posted by Qeltar

Trading away prospects is a good idea and approach but it depends on the team. I think as a player, I at least get carried away with wanting to win nownownow and forget my long-term plan which is to rebuild this franchise. I have to be really careful about giving away too much.

Yeah, I didn't really give away anything I needed. I had a glut of prospects from trading, I traded away 2 SS (one was almost at his peak), 2 C, and an SP. Playing as the White Sox, I already had Tim Anderson at SS, and I had a better C prospect I didn't trade. The SP was valuable, but still was a risk as to whether he would fully develop, while the 2 pitchers I received were already very good and the only thing my team really needed. That gave me 4 good pitchers and pretty good 5th pitcher that had high potential.

[Qeltar]

Gotcha. You mentioned tossing around best prospects and I only have a few. I see what you mean now.

What setting do you have trading on? I've found that since I bumped it to hard, my ability to snag good deals has gone down significantly. But I felt I had to turn it up because before I was just taking these guys behind the wood shed.

I'm also still recovering from the mess I inherited -- everyone knows Miami's MLB team was gutted, but I had no idea how bad their farm system was too. Most of what they got in their fire sales is rubbish, and all my minor league teams were filled with scrubs, no leaders, bad morale. It was a total mess.

I also didn't realize how badly using the default scout would lead me astray in the amateur draft and trades. I don't think any of the top 20 guys I picked on his recommendation is going to make it to The Show. Maybe none at all. I traded away a couple of good guys, including one who is now a top 10 prosepect, because of bad scouting.

So far this season I've had 4 starts, of which 1 was very good, 2 were awful and 1 was merely bad. These guys aren't that bad so I'm just writing this off to rust and small sample size for now.

Though I get very frustrated when I specifically choose to put in starters with 55 control rather than the guy with 40 control and higher stuff, specifically because I hate all the walks with the low control guys.. and then it's a walkathon anyway.

But I have a lot of fruit ripening. My AAA rotation is almost as good as my MLB rotation in terms of potential and even current ratings. The two best guys there could be on the MLB roster but I want them to get some wins in the minors.

On the plus side, I have vastly improved our offense this year.

Baseball is a funny sport though. My leadoff guy, a Rule 5 slap hitter I got to fill a hole at 2B, hit 2 home runs in the first game. My #2 hitter, not a power guy, has 3 homers. Meanwhile, 4 games in, my three big hitters are collectively below the Mendoza line with 1 homer between them. This includes Machado's .222/.222/.278 out of the gate.

[jerichoalar]

Originally Posted by Shoeless' Socks

The gulf between aces and other SP on 19 is IMO too big. It doesn't mimic real life. MOST pitchers in MLB have ERAs in the 4.00s, high 4.00s if they are 'not great'.

Your 'not great' SP in OOTP 19 will have ghastly ERAs.

I think this is because OOTP 19 generates too many flyball pitchers and lacks any sort of coordinated way to teach young pitchers new pitches.

MLB SP are throwing more and more ground ball pitches every year and teams are shifting more and more to enable easy ground outs on those ground ball hits, which is driving down era by a few points.

Add to that the still relatively rapid decline of pitchers and it's easy to find minor league tier talent holding down middle of the rotation roles in fictional OOTP seasons, simply because reliable starters don't last long enough for every team to have some of them.

[stiffy]

Originally Posted by jerichoalar

I think this is because OOTP 19 generates too many flyball pitchers and lacks any sort of coordinated way to teach young pitchers new pitches.

I agree, they need to update how pitches work in general. Players learn new pitches at a higher rate than they do in OOTP and if they have a pitch that isn't working, they'll drop it (this doesn't happen in OOTP). Here's a solid article on how some modern-day pitchers develop a new pitch from scratch. Here's another about the effectiveness of each pitch type and the situations they're best used in.

And the type of pitches that players learn in OOTP tend to not make any sense when looking at their pitch mix. A lot of the time they'll add something like a knuckle curve (when they already have a curveball) or screwball. If they don't have a slider, that is almost certainly the next pitch they should learn, as the modern slider is the best pitch in baseball.

Also the effectiveness of pitches fluctuates as pitchers lose and gain the "feel" for their pitches. Some players have pitches they throw 20% of the time early on in their careers and then use less and less of it until they ditch it altogether.

[jerichoalar]

Yup, and nearly every starter pitcher in modern ootp has a four seam as their best strikeout pitch, while the trend for the last five years has been starters using breaking balls for strikeouts and two seam fastballs (sinkers) to increase GIDP and minimize the risk of homeruns.

Elite four seam starters (Scherzer, arrieta) still exist, but nowhere near the numbers that ootp generates them at.

[Qeltar]

It is rare that I even see a pitcher who has a sinker in OOTP.

Anyway, I am sure they'll use this feedback to improve things in the future. Dev teams seems pretty responsive.

In terms of actual gameplay, what is driving me nuts right now is that the behavior of my pitchers doesn't seem to correspond to their stats. I traded for a high control guy who keeps walking people, guys with high movement get slammed for homers, etc. I know, small sample size, but boy is it frustrating.

I'd switch to just GMing but my team always underperforms when I do that. lol

Doesn't help that Mr. Miami left all his bats in spring training.. heh.

[NoOne]

expect inconsistency and injuries, too. unless they are ~max stuff and ~61+/100 movement and control -- and even those guys can have below average years. preferabbly one of the 2 much higher than "61"

maybe 5-10 pitchers in a 30T league can be consistently amazing with good health. their dips merely stay above average but still have dips.

movement isn't the only factor affecting a HR/9 rate. even control has some other factors invovled that add up to a bb/9 rate. the types of pitches used will heavily factor into the hr/9 result and a lesser effect on bb/9 (think control has a very heavy weight, but do see ~same control with different large sample results)

want to win more? start taking pitches until 2 strike count. by third+ game they have no pitchers and a near guaranteed win... plus a ~normal chance in the first 2 games of series. the proverbial dice are only rolled once at beginning of PA. it only has a very minor negative impact, if any, on the first 2 games of a series.

[Timofmars]

Originally Posted by Qeltar

Gotcha. You mentioned tossing around best prospects and I only have a few. I see what you mean now.

What setting do you have trading on? I've found that since I bumped it to hard, my ability to snag good deals has gone down significantly. But I felt I had to turn it up because before I was just taking these guys behind the wood shed.

Very hard, neutral trading preferences. Some people say Favor Prospects is harder, but I'm pretty sure that would help me currently, since I'm usually using prospects to try to get ML players.

Often, my trades are like finding an okay initial deal, but then asking for a 2nd slightly less valuable player to be added to the trade, and they usually don't need much at all to accept this addition. That's probably where most of the extra value comes from.

Also, to try to get quality instead of quantity, I'll add 4 weak players to a trade (but good enough that I think "make this work now" should show me a fifth (kinda) weak player I can add to make the AI agree. So I select the most worthless one, then one by one I'll remove the other 4 players, each time clicking "make it work" to see what even weaker prospects they might accept instead of that player. This can give you 1 better player for 5 pretty worthless players.

[ihatenames]

I try to sign long term injured (2-7 months left injury time) months pitchers in January or February to one year deals when rebuilding. Then I try to flip them at the deadline for prospects. You can often get them for fairly cheap 1-2 million dollar deals.

[Qeltar]

Originally Posted by Timofmars

Also, to try to get quality instead of quantity, I'll add 4 weak players to a trade (but good enough that I think "make this work now" should show me a fifth (kinda) weak player I can add to make the AI agree. So I select the most worthless one, then one by one I'll remove the other 4 players, each time clicking "make it work" to see what even weaker prospects they might accept instead of that player. This can give you 1 better player for 5 pretty worthless players.

This makes sense, and I try to do this too. I probably just lack your experience in deciding what is "worthless." I'm a bit of a hoarder and afraid of trading away anyone good in case I underestimated them or they surprise, so I quickly run out of guys I feel comfortable losing.

I have quite the stockpile of decent potential guys now.. so I probably just need to play out the season and see what (and who) develops... as opposed to constantly hunting for new guys to trade for.

I do think the AI tragically undervalues good bullpen arms. I just snagged a not-closer-grade-but-very-nice arm (70/45/50 potential, GB pitcher, 3 solid pitches, but with some platoon issues) for almost nothing. I have had pretty good success "flipping" some of these guys or rotating out slightly lesser arms over time.

ETA: I need to detach myself from the gameplay a bit. I find I am not enjoying playing out the games because I get frustrated when the players don't perform (like the game I just lost due to the idiot pitcher throwing to second on a bunt and being too late and then giving up a home run, and the game later ending with the bases loaded on a called third strike.) I need to remember that there's very little I can actually do to influence on-the-field play, it's just a computer simulation playing out and accept that a lot of times my guys are just going to not deliver.

Anyone else ever feel this way? Or maybe I am just too uptight.