- Posts: 4253
- Joined: Tue Mar 19, 2013 2:08 pm
Well, the 4 ACEs-no bullpen has clearly been successful. It consists typically of spending 40M+ on 4 aces, and 44-45M overall on pitching, leaving thus roughly 55M to spend on offense.
I'm wondering if another option wouldn't be to get 4 x 8M *SP(7). Some S7 are definitively cheaper than *SP(9) for the same quality. So I think there is an opening for a succesful strategy of getting 4 high-quality 8M *SP(7) and a one very good reliever. In my experience, I would say that a *SP(7) can complete a third of their games without being fatigued, so one very good reliever should be sufficient to deal with high-leverage situations. This option would probably cost around 40M (4 x 8M on SP + 7-8M on bullpen).
Teams using the super-reliever strategy in the 100M format usually spend more on their starting pitchers than in 80M environment. I still think (never tried it) that if you can get your hands on the 4 super-bargains SP, namely Pineiro, Duren, Henry and Klippstein, you can be very successful with a super-reliever like Sutter or Burke, even in a 100M settings. I don't know if I would go with another cheap 2.5M-3M starter (to complete the rotation) and a second super-reliever or if I would go with a *SP(9) and settle with only one super-reliever. In any case, both options are over 8M--closer to 10M in the case of a dominant *SP(9). So 8M-10M + 15M on the 4 super-bargains + 6M on a super-reliever+ 2-3M to fulfill the bullpen, this makes a sum between 32M and 34M. So I would suggest that 32M is the bare minimum you should spend on pitching in a 100M environment.
The logic with the second option is that teams with excellent offenses rarely play 3 consecutive games that are decided by relievers. So if you have one *SP who tosses a complete game on most occasions, you probably only need one super-reliever, with probably a second option in the 2M-3M zone, probably a R2, to close the games that the super-reliever or the dominant starter can't finish.