Archive of SportingNews.com's old SOM Baseball forum

Down 2 games to 1 in a Semi Final game 4, after 8 innings and leading 4-3
HAL replaces Willie Hernandez after 8 innings and having completed 1 2/3 IP with 0 hits, walks & runs with Johny Murphy who goes out and allows in a run.

What manager would take Hernandez out for Murphy leading 4-3 after 8.

By the way, for the uptenth time a starting catcher gets injured in the playoffs.

closer rating... a few leagues ago I would routinely have Hernandez lifted for Todd Worrell, and I vaguely remember a link on the old boards explaining how Willie would often getter fewer saves than a Worrell or Eastwick type when put on the same team. Very frustrating indeed...

TSN claims that the closer rating is turned off for the ATGII game engine but I can almost certainly tell you that it is not. I once spent the 3 bones for Rollie Fingers thinking that he would keep me in most 1-run games. WRONG! Oh...he was an effective reliever all right...but HAL would routinely pull him for another slob who would proceed to blow it. Very frustrating......I feel that you are better off going with a closer by committee than trying to get HAL to use your guy when all your settings say he should.

For the third time, I have a team with Lefferts as closer and Tincup as setup. The first time, Lefferts was hardly used, and when he was he would get slapped around. Tincup was awesome, led the team in saves (though nowhere near league leaders) and pitched just over 100 innings. The second time, I altered the settings a little and Lefferts saved 20+ and the duo was seemingly unbeatable - lefferts had a sub-3 ERA and 60-70 IP while Tincup was over 100 IP again with a low 2 ERA. Now, the third time, Lefferts has 27 IP in 108 games, while Tincup has already amassed 89 IP. Lefferts has good numbers but has appeared in 30 games. Tincup's numbers are good again too... thankfully. So I just flip-flopped them. Tincup is now closer and Lefferts setup, we'll see how this goes....