innings pitched by relief pitchers

I see many teams using their relief pitchers in a way just to win and take to realness of the game and the fun of competing away when their pitchers pitch over 300 innings have 20 wins and 25 saves and lead the league in innings pitched....is there a way of blocking relief pitchers every 3rd or 4th game or after pitching 4 or more innings and keep them from pitching. when I see abuse of these pitchers I just lose some of the interest in playing...hope I'm not just the only one feeling this way .....greg

Other than Strat making a modification to prevent such blatant overuse...

You can play mostly in non-dh leagues, where it is much tougher to get 300 innings from Dale Murray or look for or start leagues where pure relievers are capped at 3 million...

Also, when compared to the way baseball used to be played, the numbers aren't as bad as they look when compared to today's MLB, where teams use about 6 pitchers per game...3 inning saves used to be common.

Not sure you will convince the DH league Dale Murray crowd to change their ways...my biggest problem with Murray is he is not one of the all-time great relievers, but he is a HOF pitcher in Strat...

Bill

The only trigger in place that I know of is HAL seems to not let RP's pitch in more than 3 consecutive games. I agree that the overuse of super relievers is a bit 'unreal' but I'm guilty of it as well at times. The concept of some form of governor would be interesting but I imagine somewhat complex to implement.

I see many teams using their relief pitchers in a way just to win .....greg

Yep, that's the goal.

But seriously, I do agree about Murray. He wasn't anywhere near that good. I don't really have a problem with Sutter or Fingers or Eckersley etc racking up a ton of innings.

I see many teams using their relief pitchers in a way just to win and take to realness of the game and the fun of competing away when their pitchers pitch over 300 innings have 20 wins and 25 saves and lead the league in innings pitched....is there a way of blocking relief pitchers every 3rd or 4th game or after pitching 4 or more innings and keep them from pitching. when I see abuse of these pitchers I just lose some of the interest in playing...hope I'm not just the only one feeling this way .....greg

if the team is winning these RP will log in more innings

It is precisely because dollar for dollar relief pitchers will have a better ERA than a starter will, as the assumption is starters pitch more innings and therefore cost more. By effectively figuring out a way to get a reliever to pitch in excess of 250 innings you are optimizing the dollars of your pitching staff. Dale Murray because he is one of the most expensive is therefore one of the best for this strategy, and you get an 11 million dollar value for 6 million dollars, so in an 80 million dollar league this is effectively a 5 million dollar edge. Same would be true for Sutter or Eckersley if you could get the innings out of them.

Now Al McBean can be used in the same way, although you are getting a 6.5 million dollar starting pitcher value for 1.39 million dollars and will give up more runs and harder to get innings over 250 as Al may get run out of a game before Murray would so total innings are harder to build up, but the same principle applies.

The higher the salary cap you play the less advantageous this style is by unlimited cap everyone is pitching a top pitcher all the time so Murray becomes just another pitcher and McBean becomes worthless. So the solution would be to play at higher caps only if that strategy really is annoying as the advantage fades in those caps. I would offer a solution to strat that no reliever be rated as higher than R2 in order to eliminate this particular strategy, at least for relief only pitchers over 3 million to avoid this problem and only let pitchers that can also start be rated higher than R2.

To answer Greg,

You can start a league and require a gentleman rule that no reliever go beyond, say, 150 innings...when you create a league, there is an available section where you can write down these kind of specifics

I don't view Strat as baseball, but as part math puzzle, part exercise in study and concentration.

And therefore I don't see any problem with a manager that, say, has four 10 million dollar 9* starters, two 0.5m starters, and three or four 0.5m relievers. Or a team that uses 5 or more platoons. Or that uses nine lefty hitters in Dunn. Or that use 9 small ball hitters in a small ball park. Or use Murray/Miljus/Wilhelm/Adams for 400 innings. There are lots of ways to try to seize an advantage over your league-mates. None of these team designs are "realistic," but they sure can help the manager in his/her attempt to field a competitive team.

That's regarding overall team design. With specific players, we all try to find the niche to a player that we deem optimal. Billy Hamilton 9m makes often makes sense to bat leadoff. Wallace 2.95 makes to bat lower in the order (except, perhaps, against lefties in very low caps). Brown 5.07 makes sense to use only against righties, to the maximum extent you can manipulate that. Your worst * starter makes sense to place as your #4 starter especially in the playoffs. The optimal use of Murray is not hard to figure out either. The card is begging to be used as much as possible without getting him fatigued.

Switching gears, I recognize that there are multiple views/desires for what Strat is/could be, what Strat represents, or what we want Strat to be. So I agree with the great suggestions put forward earlier in this thread on rules to facilitate limits on relief use: No DH leagues, in-house rules that limit relief use, higher caps.

I would add a few more: if you are concerned about use of Murray that you don't like, draft him in the first round, and then use him in a pure way, maybe 50 games / 50 innings. You'd get the use a great reliever, and you'd avoid another manager using him for 300+ innings.

Other ideas:
1) make starters cheaper (overall)
2) make duration in relievers much more expensive .

To me, #2 has always struck me as an avenue I would (try to) push Strat toward if I was concerned about relief innings of high-end high-duration relief pitchers.

This is exactly the reason I avoid DH leagues. One man bullpen. But even with that, I had Dibble throw 175 IP as a setup man in one league. Way back in the day in the computer game, you could set a minimum number of ABs and IPs for each team at draft time, then you could limit overuse. But I think you'd have a lot of managers throw fit I'd you took their super reliever crutches away.

I like to use Murray, Wilhelm, Miljus, Moore, Wolfgang, Adams, etc, as my #1 reliever, and to get 400+ innings out of them. But, I'd be perfectly happy to play in a league where there were specified relief limits. New rules, and more rules, leads to creativity and (more) fun!

We all look to maximize some advantage to get an edge. We try to understand what the rules are, and to work within them to optimize our chosen strategy/ies. For example, if you have a lead-off guy who gets injured infrequently, are you going to rest him occasionally during the year? No, you won't. Nor would I. Noone would!! If you can get 162 games and 700 plate appearances out of him, you'll do it. I wouldn't call it a crutch.

If you have a S9* starter who costs 10m, are you going to use him for 30 starts? I don't think so. You are going to use him for 41 starts and get 350 innings or so out of him, 370 if you can. Some managers do this pretty regularly. I wouldn't call it a crutch.

None of these scenarios are realistic. Which is fine, if you accept that Strat is not baseball.

I'm going to create a DH league where no relief only pitchers with a duration of R4 or R5 can be drafted or kept on your roster. Should be fun!