Where are all the starters?

[kriscolic]

I started a new historical game in 1986. The minor leagues are bereft of starting pitchers. Below triple-A, no team has 5 SP. In the low minors, most teams have 0 or 1. A huge number of pitchers who were starters in real life in 1985 and/or 1986 are classified as relievers with minuscule stamina ratings (in the editor; I'm commish).

What settings are causing this?

Besides going through every pitcher in every organization and editing them manually, is there anything I can do to fix this?

Much appreciated...

[ALB123]

Originally Posted by kriscolic

I started a new historical game in 1986. The minor leagues are bereft of starting pitchers. Below triple-A, no team has 5 SP. In the low minors, most teams have 0 or 1. A huge number of pitchers who were starters in real life in 1985 and/or 1986 are classified as relievers with minuscule stamina ratings (in the editor; I'm commish).

What settings are causing this?

Besides going through every pitcher in every organization and editing them manually, is there anything I can do to fix this?

Much appreciated...

I wish I knew the answer to that. I started my saved game in 1981 and am currently in May 1992. I've thought the same thing. There have been many drafts where there were only 5 or 6 starting pitchers. I have no problem having a real-life decent pitcher start his minor league career in ootp in the bullpen. Heck, its part of the pitcher's profile page to list his current role and then his expected role by the time that pitcher makes the big league. However, like you've pointed out, I have never been able to develop a pitcher from RP to SP when their stamina is 25 on day one.

I have a few SP's in my organization (Adv. A leagues) who have 40 stamina, for example, and they can pitch just fine for 6 or 7 innings. I don't have proof, but it seems to me that pitchers like this take a longer time to rest up to 100%.

[kriscolic]

Originally Posted by ALB123

There have been many drafts where there were only 5 or 6 starting pitchers.

Yeah, that's a big problem too. I haven't played enough seasons to know for sure, but it seems to me that if the draft has too few SP for enough years you will eventually reach a point where there are, say, 100 SP for 30 teams.

[quillenl]

Originally Posted by kriscolic

I started a new historical game in 1986. The minor leagues are bereft of starting pitchers. Below triple-A, no team has 5 SP. In the low minors, most teams have 0 or 1. A huge number of pitchers who were starters in real life in 1985 and/or 1986 are classified as relievers with minuscule stamina ratings (in the editor; I'm commish).

What settings are causing this?

Besides going through every pitcher in every organization and editing them manually, is there anything I can do to fix this?

Much appreciated...

Not fixable. The engine is basing it's cut off on stamina on career stats. Heck, I am not certain it looks at games started at all... though it probably does. Players without much time in the majors will never have high stamina... and players with a low career IPs to games will also have a low stamina (Eckersley/Righetti). In a nutshell, when you are basing stamina off of career totals you will see a ton of guys who had a decent amount of career starts generate with middle reliever level stamina ratings.

Now, this is not a fix... but it will lower the amount of "fixing" you need to do...

Base Stamin Rating off 3 year totals. This will tend to set the rating based on when players first started playing (prior to these guys being relegated to the bullpen). You will still have to fix players like Phil Niekro... but you should have to fix far fewer.

For minors... well you are playing a historical league. Unless you are playing with Real Minors turned on you won't have enough players to populate several tiers of minors regardless.

[kriscolic]

Originally Posted by quillenl

For minors... well you are playing a historical league. Unless you are playing with Real Minors turned on you won't have enough players to populate several tiers of minors regardless.

Thanks for the info.

I do have real minors turned on.

I attempted the following remedy: I altered the entire Atlanta Braves system. I looked at the real world stats for each team in the ATL system for 1986 on Baseball Reference. I matched up the pitchers who started for the real life teams with the same teams in the game. I increased Stamina for every pitcher who should have been a starter and changed their role to starter. I then simulated the first month of the season. This worked to only a slight degree. Once the season began, the AI disregarded my role changes. Greenville, for example, had 2 SP in its rotation with an 8 man bullpen. (League settings for this league specify 5 starters/5 relievers)

This is ridiculous. I intended to play this particular universe for 30+ seasons. This situation with pitchers renders the game, in my opinion, unplayable. I can't imagine why it would have to be this way.

What a terrible disappointment.

[joefromchicago]

This is a problem in both historical and fictional leagues. As quillenl points out, in historical leagues the game dings pitchers who don't have a lot of IP, so even pitchers who started in the minors get low stamina ratings if they didn't pitch a lot of innings, and low stamina = reliever. In fictional leagues, my experience is that the game simply doesn't create enough starters.

The fix in fictional leagues is easy: just create more starters. In historical leagues with minors, I imagine you just have the game start relievers if there aren't enough starters. Someone has to be in the rotation, and if the entire staff is composed of relievers, then some relievers will have to start. I don't know if they'll develop into starters or if their arms will fall off as a result, but it's at least something.

[kriscolic]

Originally Posted by joefromchicago

In historical leagues with minors, I imagine you just have the game start relievers if there aren't enough starters. Someone has to be in the rotation, and if the entire staff is composed of relievers, then some relievers will have to start. I don't know if they'll develop into starters or if their arms will fall off as a result, but it's at least something.

Hilariously, the answer is "sometimes". That Greenville team I mentioned: Those 2 SP didn't start every day, but they regularly started on 2 or 3 days rest. Relievers started all other games. Either way, the entire staff became exhausted in short order.

Again, ridiculous.

[kriscolic]

Originally Posted by joefromchicago

This is a problem in both historical and fictional leagues. As quillenl points out, in historical leagues the game dings pitchers who don't have a lot of IP, so even pitchers who started in the minors get low stamina ratings if they didn't pitch a lot of innings, and low stamina = reliever.

What's amazing to me is that the AI refuses to use certain pitchers as starters even after I've manually maxed out their Stamina.

[Markus Heinsohn]

I will look to tweak this for the upcoming patch. In general, please keep in mind that the pitch arsenal also plays a big role if the AI considers a pitcher to be a capable starter, depending on the league. In the low minors 2 pitches and enough stamina sometimes are enough, at higher levels you need at least 3 decent pitches. Also, if you have 3+ decent pitches and a stamina of 25+ (out of 100) you can be used as a starter.

[Timofmars]

What happens if you do start a pitcher who has less than 25 stamina? Will there be a different effect between starting a 24 stamina guy versus a 25 stamina guy?

Sometimes in the minors I have an under-25 stamina pitcher with like 4 roughly equal pitches, while the high stamina guy might have 2 good pitches and some extremely undeveloped 3rd pitch, so I'll sometimes set the low stamina guy as the starter to try to get better combined performance out of the 2. Is there some penalty for doing this?

[kriscolic]

Thank you Markus!

FWIW, I was able to work around the issue by bumping up the Stamina of all pitchers in the minors. Is this something you'd consider altering in the future? It's a little counterintuitive that a pitcher who threw significant starter innings in the minors in real life, but few or none in MLB, should have a sub-starter Stamina in the game (I assume that Stamina is based on MLB stats?).

[ALB123]

Originally Posted by Markus Heinsohn

I will look to tweak this for the upcoming patch. In general, please keep in mind that the pitch arsenal also plays a big role if the AI considers a pitcher to be a capable starter, depending on the league. In the low minors 2 pitches and enough stamina sometimes are enough, at higher levels you need at least 3 decent pitches. Also, if you have 3+ decent pitches and a stamina of 25+ (out of 100) you can be used as a starter.

That's great to hear!

Markus makes a good point. I don't know if I would want to start a 25 -35 Stamina pitcher, however, I have used 40 Stamina Pitchers in starting roles when I've had a bad string of injuries with one of my minor league teams. Those 40 Stamina guys pitched just fine. I probably didn't get any complete games out of 'em, but 6-7 innings is totally fine for me when they're only a temporary starter.

One of my decent prospects is 21-year-old SP Pat Mahomes. He's in High A and his Stamina has never increased since I drafted him. It's 50. In 7 starts he is 6-0 with 61.0 innings pitched. Only 2 innings shy of 7 complete games. His ERA is 1.48 - he's no chump.

The best thing about Pat Mahomes is that he is going to supply 50% of his DNA to a woman who will eventually give birth to a decent NFL Quarterback named Patrick Mahomes. One day Pat's son, Patrick, will sign a fairly good contract which should provide a bit of financial security for him and his family.