Welcome Back Mr. Super Reliever

[Jeepdriver]

I'm surprised I haven't heard anyone speak out on this yet, or maybe I missed it.

With the new "Pitcher Preferences" everyone seems to love, I just had a reliever ('08 of course) toss 250+ innings. I don't think that even in the S.R. years (sorry, many of you newbies won't know what I'm talking about) I ever had a RP throw 250+ innings. I was not one to take advantage of that when it was happening a few years ago.

Anywho, and I'm looking at other teams I have too, the stud RP is going to garner way more innings than pre Pitcher Preferences.

On a personal note my winning percentage took a nose dive when these preferences were implemented, but I'm not here to say that's the reason, although I'm not 100% sure it isn't.

Looking forward to hearing from my buddies and others alike as to what you think about this. Or, has it been a non-issue so far.

BTW, I'm not even saying I dislike this happening. I don't really see an unfair advantage out there, just more innings, a lot more from the stud relievers.

What say you all?

[AeroDave10]

I've seen a bigger change in ATG, where the top starters are much better than most relievers, and you can force them to stay in the game longer. Especially since the best are all S8* and S9*, setting them at F2, F5, or even F8 makes sure that they rack up the innings.

I think a similar effect will happen here in 200X, where they high quality relievers (Rivera, Soria, Kuo, Balfour, etc.) will be able to really pile on innings if the managers set the fatigue ratings appropriately.

[keyzick]

I typically put my bullpen on normal, don't touch my SP's, and maximize closer.

With the new "pitcher prefs", I've noticed my closer being used more closely to how I'd expect (ie, pretty much one inning saves for the most part).

As far as set-up men, if I go with 2 RP's (in addition to the closer) that are $2M+ (think righty and lefty), then I've been seeing them both logging upwards of 180 IP each. So yeah, I could definitely see the super reliever coming into play if I were to tweek my settings a little more. It kinda blows my mind to have 2 rp's with so many innings too, but I'm afraid of the "don't relieve before" settings backfiring on my starters, so I leave it untouched.

[Stoney18]

I think part of this is caused by better management of the hard right/hard left relievers. A big complaint was that they stayed in too long and face too many hitters on their bad side.

The new bp settings seem to work much better for these relievers but in turn pushes more innings to your middle/set up type relievers. Especially for teams that carry only 5 relievers.

[RICHARDMILTER]

I have noticed my set up super relievers (R2 C2) pitch a lot of innings, win a lot of games, but also blow a lot of saves.



I would suggest using 6 relievers to take full advantage of the new pitcher preferences. I like to spread my money around in the pen. Although I have seen Balfour and Kou dominate!

[schnoogens]

It was still possible to have a stud reliever before the new settings - Kuo threw 235.2 in my first 2008 season.

[the splinter]

i didn;t know it had ever gone away... I have been able to squeeze 200+ innings from R2's every year.

This year I have routinely had Balfour log 200+

[MARCPELLETIER]

Jeep, I think you forgot how bad super-reliever was in the past.

Dotel pitching 345 innings with era under 2.00 (I remember that one, as it was the straw that broke the camel's back...I should write the straw that forced TSN to do something)...Bullpen consisting in two relievers (and 7 SP/RP; I remembered that one, as I was the culprit behind this).

Nowadays, except for R3, if you have a reliever going 200+ IP chances are that he was tired for some of these innings...

But, yes, it is still too many.

[visick]

Ya know Luckyman...

That wasn't all that bad back then. After all, a slightly/moderately tired Dotel was better than most of the RP's.

:lol: :lol: :lol:
visick

[KEVINEHLE]

Currently, I have Kuo on a team who has thrown 269 innings, 3.12 ERA, 1.20 WHIP. He has a $5.24M Salary that pitches the amount of innings and has stats of a $10M starter.

As mentioned earlier, the new pitching features are messing things up. Halladay has 30 starts and is averaging a little over 8 innings per game. He has probably thrown about 26 to 28 complete games. Doesnt' sound very realistic to me for these days.

Kev