Bullpen Usage; Aggressive/Normal/Conservative Which one????

[ANDYCOCHRANE]

When setting up a pitching strategy how is best to set bullpen usage? I uaully have it on normal but what are the merits of Aggressive or Conservative as alternate settings?

[MICHAELSCIANATICO]

For me, my settings depend on whom is in my bullpen staff, the field
I am playing, the starters I have going for the series.
If I have excellent starters in a pitchers park, I put the relievers at
conservative, regardless of how good the bullpen is.
Typically, I want my starters to go as long as they can then give it up to the bullpen.
If I have a cheap starting rotation but a great bullpen, I would set the relief to aggressive.
Not that I have great success.

[goredsox33]

it depends on who your starters are and who you have in the pen....

myslef i like to get 4 SP* guys....with atleast 1, maybe 2 aces.... then 2 low to med salary SP* .....and a solid set up man and top rate closer......

ii set all my starters to slow hook..... and bullpen to conservative....

not saying my way is the right way ... just my opinion

[durantjerry]

I find that even on "normal" starters often get pulled earlier than you want, so I would stay away from aggressive. I use conservative when I have a weak bullpen

[ANDYCOCHRANE]

My pen is not too bad. Francisco, Cruz and Rivera on one team: Moreno, Cruz and Kolb on second. Starters are Clemens, Garcia, Davis and Weaver on Ist team and Zambrano, Oswalt, Davis and Drese on the other. Slow hook on Clemens, Garcia, Zambrano and Oswalt.

I would imagine I could use Conservative or Normal with these two pitching staffs, depending on the park etc.?

[worrierking]

I rarely use anything but "normal" and closer "regular" rather than maximize.

I think having closer set to maximize is one of the great value consuming settings out there. Your closer, who likely has the best card on your staff, sits around waiting for you to have a lead late in the game. He doesn't get enough innings to be efficient at his cost. Set at regular, he gets much more usage in games that are not "closer" opportunities. Typically it's easy to have a secondary guy around like Shields or Adams who can scoop up the occasional stray save needed by using your closer in more than just save situations.

[CHARLESBELL]

The setting that mostly ties your closer to "closer only" situations is naming him as the closer under Manager Strategy. HAL will attempt to "save" your closer for closer only situations. I generally do not name my closer unless that is really all I want him to do. An example would be a cheap closer on a hitters team - I want to take full advantage of his C rating, but otherwise don't want him in the game. Otherwise I'll use indivdual settings to make sure he doesn't come it before the 8th, for example (ie, he's available for closing situations but can be used in non-closing late game situations too).

I will set closer to maximize if I would rather have my closer in the game than any other pitcher in closing situations. Setting closer to aggressive means that HAL will go to your closer (or a closer rated pitcher if you don't have one set) more often when the current pitcher is still doing fine. If you have RJ pitching a 1-0 shutout, do you want your closer to take the 9th inning? If yes, set closer to aggressive.

Setting the bullpen to aggressive does not necessarily mean that your starter will be yanked sooner. There are conditions HAL checks to determine if he should check on bringing in a relief pitcher. If those conditions aren't met then the bullpen setting doesn't matter. But once those conditions are met HAL will go to the pen quicker if the setting is aggressive. That holds for any pitcher, by the way. If bullpen is set to aggressive, and Lidge is in in relief, he is also subject to the aggressive setting and could also be pulled quicker. I would set the bullpen to aggressive if I had a strong pen (where it was ok to spread out the innings among your relievers), or one with several left/right matchups where you might not want your relief pitchers to stay in the game too long and prefer HAL swapping pitchers around to get matchups. I'd set it to normal with a pen that has a costly innings eater RP and a strong closer with the rest of the pen supporting those two (you want to keep your big 2 RPs in the game).

And as always, these are tendancies, not absolutes. None this happens every time, it only tends to happen this way (it's a probability thing).

[1crazycanuk]

So with Gordon as set up man and Rivera as closer I would be better off setting my relief pitching to "Normal" then eh? I also have Cotts, Atchison and Graves as RP.

[ANDYCOCHRANE]

IMO, I would say so yes. That way Gordon would get used enough. If it was set to aggressive he may just be one of many used. If set to conservative he probably wouldn't be used enough.

[1crazycanuk]

Ok thanks. 8)