Mop-Up Role

[The Godfather]

What is the BEST way to set up a RP to play the mop-up role?? I'm talking about having a subpar guy in the bullpen who purely eats innings in hopeless games.

I have someone designated as the "Mop-Up" guy in the pitching settings, along with "avoid using before the 6th inning". So why is he being inserted into a tied extra innings game??? Of course, he gave up the game-winning grand slam.

I basically want him to enter later in the game when it's a blowout, but he seems to get in there during crucial times. It's not like the rest of my bullpen is overworked and unavailable!

[apolivka]

This is probably one of the toughest parts of bullpen management. I don't think I would select "don't use before the 6th", since blowouts often are 7-1 in the 3rd inning, for example. Make sure he has no other "roles".

In general, HAL wants all his players to like him, so no matter what you do, HAL will put him in other situations and try to even out the innings. He's kind of like a little league manager in that way. Because of this limitation, I generally don't want a super cheap mopup guy. I like to keep the bottom of my bullpen relatively even in price and make sure they all have some value on my team. Having a L/R specialist type guys sometimes helps down there, but the key I think is still having good park matches all the way to your worst reliever.

So, to (kind of) answer your question, I think the best bullpens are the ones with no clearly defined mopup only guy. (Especially in a no-DH league were your pen will get a lot of pitching changes pretty much no matter what.)

[The Godfather]

Yeah, I've never designated someone for that role before but it's about 100 games into the season and I had to drop my specialist because he just wasn't cutting it. The only RP left (in my price range) were mop-up types so I thought I would give it a shot to at least save the rest of my bullpen for non-blowouts.

Thanks for the insight!

[AeroDave10]

The other way to get around this is to try and assign your better relievers to as many of the other roles as possible, forcing them to come in whenever the game is close, hopefully leaving the "mop-up" guy just for the blowouts. For sure, I would de-select that pitcher's "don't use before 6th inning" and not have him nominated for any other roles.

[The Godfather]

Good point! I'll give that a shot.

[voovits]

One thing to remember about the mopup role however, and this is why I don't like using it.
The role is used for "blowouts", but it doesn't necessarily matter which team is getting blown out. I have seen a mopup guy enter the game with that players team leading, lets say, 6-1 in the 9th inning.
The last thing I want is to have that guy come in, give up a bunch of runs and risk losing the game.

That's why i try to avoid mopup pitchers if possible.

[The Godfather]

I noticed that already and it's only been a few games! This is probably the first AND last time I try this out.

(Famous last words)

[apolivka]

All good tips here. Too late once you are in the season, but for others if I was going to spend, say 13 million on a 5 man pen, here's how I might want to lay it out:

Type 1 bullpen with dominant closer to match with a good starting staff:

5 million r1c6
3.5 million r1
1.5 million r1c0 L spec.
1.5 million r1c0 R spec.
1.5 million r2


Type 2 bullpen with key innings eater to go with a less strong starting staff where you need someone good to cover innings 6-8 more so than the 9th:

5.5 million r2
2.75 million r1c3 righty closer
2.25 million r1c3 lefty closer
1.25 million r1
1.25 million r1

Basically with bullpen 2.0 you have a HUGE amount of influence on how the top 2 or 3 guys gets used in both those above scenarios. The bottom guys you have much less influence. But, as I said before, the key is matching your park and team with your bullpen more so than exactly matching the dollar amounts or ratios. In either of these scenarios, who is the mopup guy? Nobody!

[durantjerry]

I always use a mop up and I have never really noticed a problem with their use. Either my fifth starter or the worst reliever gets the role, preferrably an R2, but I use R1's. It can help you out in say Petco. I may use someone like Chris Perez at home in the bullpen rotation with Farnsworth as mop up. In as HR park, you can move Perez to avoid LH and put Farnsworth in the regular bull pen role. I have never had a big problem with their use when I just designate them as "mop up". I would never say "before any inninig", as they usually come in early. IMO, this setting basically makes it more likely they will appear late in games rather than earlier.The mop up can be an important spot, as I have had my mop up pitcher win 14 games and it sucks when they are 1-5 and you are two games out of the playoffs.