Your 2008 80M dream team

[J-Pav]

[b:e9d0c17eb0]Marcus[/b:e9d0c17eb0]:

Thx for the re-set. Don't know if you noticed a lot of the seasons do not add up to 162...but it's not too surprising we just have a reshuffled bell curve among the very good teams submitted.

My question is this:

I have often used Aq. Lopez as my innings eater. When I don't have him, I often do not designate a mop up guy. Do you think using Feldman in the sims, as the low $ innings eater, enhances your bullpen enough to give you those extra 2-3 wins?

Your use of the bullpen in this way appears to be the one thing which separates your lineup from the others. I would be curious to see if my changing A. Sanchez to Parrish (or Gallagher or even Feldman) would impact the won/loss column by diverting unnecessary innings from Wagner/Johnson. Also, how would changing Feldman to Sanchez change [i:e9d0c17eb0]your[/i:e9d0c17eb0] bottom line?

I have been finding that the addition of Parrish to my four * SP teams appears to be an improvement, although I have not played enough new teams to say w/ any statistical significance.

Thx again -

[b:e9d0c17eb0]J[/b:e9d0c17eb0]

P.S. I have been fooling around w/ C. Jimenez as a higher $ version of Feldman (when I don't have four * SPs). He seems to be getting me an extra serving of bullpen wins by stopping the bleeding and letting me hang around long enough to come from behind. Don't know if it's worth the $ yet...

[MARCPELLETIER]

[quote:cfbe617190]Thx for the re-set. Don't know if you noticed a lot of the seasons do not add up to 162[/quote:cfbe617190]

No, I knew my post wouldn't be clear.

So there is three columns in my last post.

First column is: average record over 21 seasons (after changes were done).

Second column is: best season ever among those 21 seasons.

Third column is: the 95% confidence rate for the number of wins per season. Therefore, to take Luckyman's team as an example, 87-92 means that there is a 95% probability that the real value of this team is somewhere between 87 wins and 92 wins.

[MARCPELLETIER]

J-Pav,

To answer your question:

[quote:38f98c6742]Do you think using Feldman in the sims, as the low $ innings eater, enhances your bullpen enough to give you those extra 2-3 wins[/quote:38f98c6742]

Definitively no. Due to technical failures, I only have individual performances from 9 of the 21 sims. Anyway, on average, Feldman pitched roughly 3 innings per season. His innings are so low because I restricted Feldman to be a starting pitcher, so he would come in only in extreme emergency.

Here is the breakdown usage for my team, averaged over 9 seasons:

Halladay 301 innings, era=3.81, whip=1.29, hr/9=0.85, 20-14
Santana 275 innings, era=4.23, whip=1.41, hr/9=1.04, 20-12
Hamels 259 innings, era=4.22, whip=1.33, hr/9=1.13, 17-13
Mahomes 217 innings, era=4.56, whip=1.46, hr/9=1.05, 14-12
Rivera 144 innings, era=2.22, whip 0.89, hr/9=0.61, 10-6
Robertson 125 innings, era=4.80, whip=1.67, hr/9= 0.99, 6-5
Rodney 64 innings, era=5.91, whip=1.81, hr/9=1.00, 3-4
Frasor 43 innings, era=4.91, whip=1.69, 2-1, hr/9=0.75
Romero 25 innings, era=5.56, whip=1.75, hr/9=0.83, 1-1
Feldman 3 innings, era=6.05, whip=2.26, hr/9=1.56, 0-1

Because of the quality of the starters, and given the stadium (PNC, a low-hr stadium), I thought that Robertson and Rodney could take the load of the useless innings without hurting the team. This said, if I run another set of sims, I might as well try your suggestion and have Feldman as my mop up.

[J-Pav]

Thx for the clarification on column three -

Regarding the S5/R3 fifth pitcher, I was surprised to find out about the very low innings. I was wondering if your simulation disc was liking this more than the online game, so I was curious if there was a slight edge here that you were exploiting. The few teams where I am doing this, guys like Gallagher are not getting decisions unless the game is going into long extra innings. They seem to be perfect innings eaters, gobbling up innings where the fate of the game has already been decided (both for and against).

It also seems to me you could greatly improve your bullpen by simply adding Corcoran, Grabow or Grilli.

My [url=http://fantasygames.sportingnews.com/stratomatic/team/team_other.html?user_id=198661]AT&T Team[/url] used Corcoran the way you used Hoffman in your Strategy section (post about bullpen mgt) and it seemed to make the low dollar specialists more effective as well as Balfour. (Won the ring here, too - finally :wink:) I'm surprised your bullpen was surrendering such high ERAs and WHIPs. But then again, a lot of "innings eating" could be hidden here if they are not surrendering blown saves and losses...but still wondering why you weren't following the advice in your own strategy thread (unless you [i:0b1e7f8a41]were[/i:0b1e7f8a41] following the advice, just utilizing lower dollar RPs maybe?)

[MARCPELLETIER]

[quote:dafe422171]Thx for the clarification on column three - [/quote:dafe422171]

My pleasure.


[quote:dafe422171]Regarding the S5/R3 fifth pitcher, I was surprised to find out about the very low innings.[/quote:dafe422171]

The sims work a bit differently than TSN (or at least I couldn't find the same settings). When you assign a pitcher to be a starting pitcher, you have the option to let pitch in rarely as needed, on occasions, or never. It looks to me that, in TSN, by default, the option is "as needed". For the Luckyman's team, I set the option to "never".

Now, is this a better strategy than having your SP/RP do the mop-up role? Well, I think it depends of your pitching set-up. In Luckyman's team, I thought that I would very rarely need a mop-up pitcher, due to the quality of my starting pitching. So I thought that Rodney and Robertson could handle the mop-up job without hurting the team.

What I do believe is that the 2nd or 3rd inning is too early to have your worst pitcher coming in, no matter what is the score. So I could easily assign Feldman to a mop-up role, but I would make sure that he comes in only after the 6th or 7th inning.

I might as well say this here: Another difference btw TSN and Sims is the resting rules between starts. In TSN, as you know, the delay is fixed to 3 days of rest, no matter what. In the sims, it depends on the number of innings. Usually, it will be 3 days of rest. But if your SP gets hooked in the first inning, he might be fresh for an earlier start. On the other hand, if your SP goes the distance beyond 9 innings (10 or 11 innings), then he will need 4 days of rest.

In the case of Luckyman's team, the rule didn't change much the use of Halladay, because the few times he was hooked early was balanced by the few times he went beyond the distance. On average he had 42 starts (instead of the TSN's 41 starts). But there are a few other teams that have their #1 starter have 43-44 starts on average.

[MARCPELLETIER]

[quote:864c057a5a]...but still wondering why you weren't following the advice in your own strategy thread (unless you were following the advice, just utilizing lower dollar RPs maybe?)[/quote:864c057a5a]

For the newcomers, I'll summarize the advice I gave in the Strategy section a few months ago.

A few months ago, I was using this TSN team, which finished with 98 wins

http://fantasygames.sportingnews.com/stratomatic/team/team_other.html?user_id=212143

When the season started, I had only ONE big reliever, Nathan; I did not have Hoffman, and I was noticing I was losing a big share of tight games, so much that I had fallen early 3 games below my expected record. I argued that adding a reliable closer such as Hoffman would stop that trend and help my team perform like the expected record, and the sims I did seem to show evidence of this (it should be noted that my TSN team nevertheless finish 5 games under its expected record).

I still believe in this argument, but you have to understand the context. This team was a Fenway team, so with a lot of singles allowed, thus a greater expected whip (despite the fact that I specifically selected low whip starters), and thus a greater risk for my SPs for an early 3-hits/walks leave from my starter. Besides, this team had two SP(5), and three SP(6), and no SP(7). Finally, overall, the pitching sqaud can qualified as good, but not exceptional.

In THIS context, having ONE big closer/set-up becomes problematic, because chances are that HE will come in early in the 6th/7th inning in a great share of games, leaving nobody-but-cheapies to close the deal. In THIS context, adding a second closer becomes an obvious way to help your team.

In Luckyman's team, context is different. Here is a TSN team that is a carbon-copy (at least when it comes to pitching) to the Luckyman's team, one that won 100 games (different from the simmed team: this TSN team had Nolasco instead of Santana, and played in Petco instead of PNC):

http://fantasygames.sportingnews.com/stratomatic/team/team_other.html?user_id=227372

In this team, my SP squad is superior to the Fenway's squad. Overall, they pitched 80 more innings, and that number would have been greater if it wasn't of my specification to limit Maholm to 7 innings.

Soria pitched 89 games, of which 66 games were finished by him, leaving out 23 games that Soria could not finish. I don't have Nathan's number, unfortunately, but I would think this number is at least twice as big.

Note that both Soria and Nathan pitched 150 innings, which is pretty much the upper limit of R1/C6 set at set-up/closer. But those 150 innings are not exactly the same. Presumably, up to 80 of those 150 innings came earlier in games that involved Nathan, 80 innings being the number left out by the Fenway SP squad. Part of those 80 innings, no doubt, are game-deciding innings, so there a need for fulfilling these innings by a good reliever. Conversely, only 23 games were not finished by Soria, so the need for having another closer is not as acute in the Petco/PNC team than it is for the Fenway team.

I should still note this: the 100-win team was still quite lucky. It played 4 games above its expected record, and no doubt part of this comes from an outstanding (as in OUT-standing) performance of my sub-1M pitchers. Feldman went 4-0, basically grabbing those 4 wins in overtime. Overall, the cheapies went 11-5, saving 18 games out of 23 opportunities. In another not-so-lucky season, my cheapies might have ended up with a 7-9 record, with perhaps up to 10 blown saves. Still, at 96-66, I would still be around, and not under, the expected record. This underlines again the lack of need to add a second strong closer to the mix.

In the sims, the Luckyman team, on average, outplayed its expected record by 1 win. I used Rodney as a potential closer (in the case Rivera couldn't finish the job). And I used Robertson as the other go-to-guy, as I thought that his card was a perfect match to PNC's settings.

[MARCPELLETIER]

Here is the breakdown of the Secret team, once it was upgraded with Chipper, Roberts, and Mussina ( a 3-win improvement, which I thought was telling)

Lowe, 15-14, 246 IP, era=4.55, whip=1.46, hr/9=0.93
Saunders, 18-13, 246 IP, era=4.02, whip=1.38, hr/9=0.91
Mussina, 17-12, 231 IP, era=4.45, whip=1.43, hr/9=0.97
Perez= 10-14, 182 IP, era=5.33, whip=1.67, hr/9=1.12
Sanchez 0-1, 3 IP, era=8.22, whip=1.63, hr/9=0
Johnson 11-7, 177 IP, era=3.43, whip=1.39, hr/9=0.71
Wagner 2-4, 45 sv, 74 IP, era=3.00, whip=1.16,hr/9=0.74
Brown 6-6 101 IP, era=4.64, whip=1.67, hr/9=0.93
Pinto 4-3, 122 IP, era=4.01, whip=1.51, hr/9=1.09
Weathers 3-2, 79 IP, era=4.46, whip=1.57, hr/9=0.76

BTW, my bad, but after checking the settings with your post, I realize that Lowe, Saunders, and Dempster/Mussina were not set at slow hook, which explains the high number of innings pitched by your relief.

Relief usage was set at TSN's normal.

Lowe's performance looked quite disappointing, but there was a huge bias in this simulation: there was a ratio of 66/33 rh/lh vs rhp. For lhp, the ratio was roughly inverted, 33/66.

[MARCPELLETIER]

I'll probably run another 20 season simulation, but I'll make some changes so that the overall ratio vs rhp is closer to 55/44 and 27/73 vs lhp. So, to all participants, please feel free to suggest changes

(but please, let these changes be only tweaks...)

[J-Pav]

[b:9b2476b126]Marcus[/b:9b2476b126]:

Thx for the great posts!

:D

[packleader]

Lucky: Thanks for all your hard work and information. I find it very interesting. :D