Strategy Preferences ignored???

I'm sure I'm not the only guy here who's buys a cheap reliever for under a million to be a simple specialist.

I have Luis Avilan, marked as a Lefty Specialist, with a Quick hook, avoid righties, and no more than 1-2 innings.
Ideally, he'd come in versus a lefty or lefties and then get pulled, but he's pitched a whole inning in 80% of his games, including 7 games of two or more innings (thus the 11.24 era and 2.31 whip)

If you look at this 6 to ten run innings, you can clearly see him (1) be the first out of the bullpen, meaning theirs plenty of arms available, (2) face multiple righties, some time 5 or 6, meaning that the Pitcher pref to avoid righties is ignored several times an inning, (3) turn a close game into a blowout only because the strategy part is ignored.

How does the sim come up with the occasional decision to completely ignore instructions to force a loss on you?

I'm sure I'm not the only guy here who's buys a cheap reliever for under a million to be a simple specialist.

I have Luis Avilan, marked as a Lefty Specialist, with a Quick hook, avoid righties, and no more than 1-2 innings.
Ideally, he'd come in versus a lefty or lefties and then get pulled, but he's pitched a whole inning in 80% of his games, including 7 games of two or more innings (thus the 11.24 era and 2.31 whip)

If you look at this 6 to ten run innings, you can clearly see him (1) be the first out of the bullpen, meaning theirs plenty of arms available, (2) face multiple righties, some time 5 or 6, meaning that the Pitcher pref to avoid righties is ignored several times an inning, (3) turn a close game into a blowout only because the strategy part is ignored.

How does the sim come up with the occasional decision to completely ignore instructions to force a loss on you?

Wikipedia sez:

"Avoid left-handed batters / Avoid right-handed batters
When this setting is active for a relief pitcher, he will avoid entering or staying in a game to face the corresponding type of batter. A switch-hitter is (intuitively) considered to be a lefty if the pitcher is a righty, and vice versa. This avoidance is rather strict as long as 1) there are other fresh, available options in the bullpen that are not otherwise restricted from being used in the given situation, 2) the game is relatively close, and 3) the game is in the later innings. This setting is ignored in otherwise lower-leverage situations.

Note: This setting is ignored completely for a pitcher if he is the starting pitcher for a game.

This setting was greatly improved for SOM Online's Bullpen v2 enhancement, as compared with the original CD-ROM game implementation, resulting in fewer instances of pitchers facing their Avoid side, among other things."

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Perhaps, what Hal considers "low leverage" situations may not be very "low leverage" to the rest of us.
Perhaps, your other pitchers have been assigned roles that discourage HAL from using them in your particular situation.

As certain Loogies would never ever be allowed to face 6 consecutive Righthander batters that he gave up either a walk or a hit toward, this is saying the baseball simulator, in this situation, is specifically designed to be as far from the actual game of baseball as is possible.

What other parts are built as to not resemble baseball in any way, shape or form?

As certain Loogies would never ever be allowed to face 6 consecutive Righthander batters that he gave up either a walk or a hit toward, this is saying the baseball simulator, in this situation, is specifically designed to be as far from the actual game of baseball as is possible.

What other parts are built as to not resemble baseball in any way, shape or form?

Well...let's see.....there's that time an intentional walk was issued to the relief pitcher, Marcelino Lopez, in the bottom of the 14th with two outs to load the bases in a game that decided a pennant race. The next batter, Felix Millan, was leading the league in batting against left-handed pitching and promptly singled to win the game. Boy, we all got a laugh out of that one!

Generally speaking, the effects of unrealistic aspects of the game, such as roster size limits, crazy pitching matchups, baserunning travesties, and inane substitutions, can be mitigated through the adept use of settings and thoughtful roster construction so that you only get a HALcream pie in the face a few times a year.

This used to be a serious problem, but they really did improve it a couple of years ago. I recently had a lefty specialist pitch 6.2 innings the whole season, so I know he got used the right way. (Or not enough!)
Having said that, they just made some new rule changes regarding reliever usage and fatigue, and now it's nearly impossible to tell which relievers are available for a given game. So I'm thinking it's possible that Avilan was the most rested guy for some of those games. And yeah, the computer manager still does weird stuff sometimes... But not often enough to bother me (and he's coaching my opponents as well, so it all evens out anyway.)