Archive of SportingNews.com's old SOM Baseball forum

Does HAL mis-manage this pen, or is it me?
The relievers ae set to avoid LHB or RHB & quick hook
All RHP (except guante) look good vs rh batters
the LHP look good against lh batters
but they face so many of the opposite ---only to get shelled.

Name IP BF H BB SO HR OAVG ERA WHIP Release:
Rogers, S. (R) vs. L 347 74 38 51 12 .213
S8* vs. R 345 106 24 67 14 .307
TOTAL 181.2 692 180 62 118 26 .260 4.21 1.33 $6.59M
Reuss, J. (L) vs. L 144 41 16 19 3 .285
S6*/R3 vs. R 432 105 30 58 14 .243
TOTAL 148.1 576 146 46 77 17 .253 4.07 1.29 $6.12M
Morris, J. (R) vs. L 279 57 41 44 8 .204
S7* vs. R 274 76 29 54 10 .277
TOTAL 145.0 553 133 70 98 18 .241 3.91 1.40 $5.52M
Krukow, M. (R) vs. L 62 14 9 7 2 .226
S6* vs. R 62 15 6 12 1 .242
TOTAL 34.0 124 29 15 19 3 .234 4.50 1.29 $2.74M

............................bf/h/bb/k/hr/avg
Cerutti, J. (L) vs. L 42 9 4 4 2 .214
S6/R3...........vs. R 70 24 8 6 1 .343
TOTAL 27.1 112 33 12 10 3 .295 3.62 1.65 $1.66M

Smith, L. (R) vs. L 78 29 11 18 5 .372
R2............... vs. R 90 15 11 31 4 .167
TOTAL 43.2 168 44 22 49 9 .262 5.56 1.51 $3.01M

Guante, C. (R) vs. L 19 4 1 3 1 .211
R2 ..................vs. R 34 12 2 12 3 .353
TOTAL 13.2 53 16 3 15 4 .302 5.93 1.39 $1.35M

Hume, T. (R) vs. L 42 17 4 8 1 .405
R2................vs. R 78 18 8 18 3 .231
TOTAL 31.1 120 35 12 26 4 .292 4.31 1.50 $.75M

Davis, R. (R) vs. L 71 18 13 19 3 .254
R2................vs. R 105 17 17 28 5 .162
TOTAL 47.2 176 35 30 47 8 .199 3.59 1.37 $.75M

Atherton, K. (R) vs. L 16 4 1 4 2 .250
R3.....................vs. R 22 5 2 6 0 .227
TOTAL 8.2 38 9 3 10 2 .237 3.12 1.39 $.75M

DiPino, F. (L) vs. L 14 2 0 4 0 .143
R2................vs. R 15 6 3 2 0 .400
TOTAL 7.0 29 8 3 6 0 .276 2.57 1.57 $.75M

Guetterman, L. (L) vs. L 46 11 3 8 1 .239
R2.......................vs. R 62 30 9 5 3 .484
TOTAL 24.0 108 41 12 13 4 .380 7.89 2.21 $.75M

Name IP BF H BB SO HR OAVG ERA WHIP
TOTALS vs. L 1289 324 157 202 43 .251
vs. R 1921 526 180 328 74 .274
OVERALL 824.2 3210 850 337 530 117 .265 4.48 1.44

First, reliever numbers can be terribly misrepresentative.
One bad outing can skew the numbers and make look worse than they are. You really need to look at how they have performed recently.
Second, because most managers use the best hitters and spend much of their time looking for the best hitters, all pitching numbers tend to be higher.
Your ballpark is another factor, especially if you have average to below average cards for your RPs.
I would suggest you set Atherton and Davis to face both LHB and RHB and set them for their maximum innings, instead of quick hook.
Set all your IPs to the maximum innings they can pitch.
And then hope.

when you set alot of players to quick hook, HAL has them pitch to one or two batters. Then, by the 7th inning he only has 2 pitchers left, one of whom pitched the last 2 games and he ends up pitching the last guy, who may be your worst pitcher for the rest of the game.

The only time I set quick hook if for my LHB or RHB specialist and I try not to have more than one of each in the pen.

This is a highly debated topic at times. My opinion is that it is HAL's doing not yours. You could have 12 pitchers on your staff and HAL will still make your specialists face their week side more often than you would like to have done.

SuperHAL Bullpen Controls fixes HAL's moron logic on the CD ROM if you program it right. TSN's version would be better if it had it in their game.

I have the more or less the same issues as you do using similar settings so you're not alone.

Given the limitations of the bullpen engine, I try to keep it really simple for HAL.

I tend to make my best reliever the setup man vs both LH and RH, set on slow hook.

My second best reliever is the closer vs both LH and RH (also slow hook.)

Any other good relievers are also slow hook, with no other settings.

Guys who are only effective from one side (I try to avoid these) are set on avoid the bad side, quick hook, and maybe a couple of other controls.

General controls are normal for closer use and usually regular for bullpen use (unless I've got a really good bullpen and bad starters, in which case bullpen use is aggressive.)

I find that with these settings, and by moderating my expectations a little, I have really very few complaints about how HAL manages my bullpen. Everyone says I'm nuts but it seems to work for me. :D :D