Archive of SportingNews.com's old SOM Baseball forum

I just drafted a $140m team in the Kingdome and I've got a starting pitching rotation that I've never had the privilege of having before.

Maddux
Walsh
Joss
JR Richard

My question is this: It's a DH league and I'm in a bomber park. The rest of the division is two Minute Maid parks and one Petco. My bullpen is Hoffman closing with Dibble and Willie Hernandez backing him up. I know that in a pitching park I could go with one of those three guys and I'd be golden, but since I'm in a (mostly) heavy hitting division, should I hold on to all three?

Your feedback is appreciated.

I like deep bullpens when in hitters parks. Too frequent pitchers get hit hard and fatigued even though all the bad rolls are coming off hitter cards and ballpark effects.

You have great starters. Set them on slow hook and let them do their thing. You are in a bomber park. Use the money to get some stud hitters, as they'll be needed in the Kingdome and Minute Maid. Although most starting pitchers get hit HARD in the $140 mil cap leagues, you can't do much better than what you have. Your bullpen guys will mostly be sitting around playing cards and checking out the chicks in the stands. You will be able to get by with a righty stud and a lefty stud (preferably with long endurance factors) and some situational guys.

Even with 3 aces and J.R. (fine and all, but not in the class of the first 3).
you still need run support and gloves. If you short your team on gloves
your aces will be less effective. If you short your team on hitters, having
the relievers will do you little good -- once behind you will seldom catch up.

Try to budget your relievers (probably just one of the three elite
ones will work out). You will still want to have a quantity of relievers,
a mid-range setup pitcher or two and some cheap mop-up pitchers are probably in order. Enough arms to keep your closer and set up available
for high leverage situations.

Bottom line: yeah, what BDWard said.

I'd set the first three guys to F7 or so. You're paying a lot for them. Squeeze every quality inning you can out of them. Then I'd have two lefty specialists, one righty specialist (<$1.5M each), a cheap mop-up guy (<$1M), and a solid R2 or R3 reliever ($3M-$5M) to close out tight games. The bullpen shouldn't cost more than $7M or $8M.

Wouldn't you want those SPs set REAL low, like an F2 or so? I believe the lower you set the F ratings, the longer they stay in. I usually go pretty cheap with my pens, and set my top SPs to F0-3, typically. I usually lead the league in Complete Games, or am near the top.

[quote:e5863f65e1="modmark47"]Wouldn't you want those SPs set REAL low, like an F2 or so? I believe the lower you set the F ratings, the longer they stay in. I usually go pretty cheap with my pens, and set my top SPs to F0-3, typically. I usually lead the league in Complete Games, or am near the top.[/quote:e5863f65e1]

Yeah, depending on how much you want to risk having a fatigued pitcher out there. Usually it doesn't long to drop from anything below F9. If you look at most box scores, the SP will cruise at F9 until he gets in trouble, drop to F8, then plummet down to F5 then F3 or F2 in the matter of just a few batters. If the game is still salvageable before the fatigued pitcher blows it, maybe you can get your stud reliever to hop in and actually "save" the game.

Relievers' cards are better than SP cards, comparatively, it's just that the relievers can't last as long as the starters. Therefore, it's a risk versus reward in terms of how much disparity you want between a fatigued ace and a fresh top-notch reliever.

Thanks for the feedback guys. I'm curious...I usually try to budget about 40% of my cap for pitching and that's right where I'm at right now. There's little room to upgrade my starters if I cut a reliever. The options of upgrading my bats are out there but limited after waivers. It can be done, though. Should I deviate from my usual 40/60 rule?

Since we've progressed with a few different opinions, here's a team link to give you a better picture of what I'm talking about.

http://fantasygames.sportingnews.com/stratomatic/team/team_other.html?user_id=332639

I'd downgrade a reliever (probably Dibble) to upgrade JR into something better.

With any excess money, probably upgrade Keller, since that's probably the easiest spot to apply some cash.