How Do You Evaluate Reliever Performance?

My apologies if this is a very novice question but as I mentioned before, I only play Strat and don't know much about real baseball. I have tried to research this topic but didn't find much. I've noticed that relievers in Strat often have worse ERAs than I would expect. This can be blamed on HAL to an extent but since HAL affects everyone, bad WHIP and ERA often are accompanied by great win/loss records. With that said, I don't quite understand the relationship between these stats. In a sense, the record is what matters most but it is built, along with your offense, from WHIP and ERA. If anyone could enlighten me on this that would be great.

There are two major factors in pitcher performance in ATG being worse than in real baseball. The first is that even at lower salary levels like 80M or 100M, teams are stocked with much more dangerous hitters than in real baseball. So pitcher ERA's are going to be higher. Also, most managers tend to use power parks and parks well adapted to the hitters in their lineups. So it's not usual to see a Barry Bonds type hit 100 home runs. DiMaggio will play in parks favoring RH power, not in Yankee Stadium, which favored LHB. This affects both SPs and RPs.
The top RP aces have ERA's at or below 2.00 in actual baseball. That level of performance just isn't sustainable in ATG. A pitcher with a 2.00 ERA in actual baseball would likely be doing very well to have an ERA below 4.00 in ATG, especially at higher caps. The key is simply to adjust your expectations of pitcher performance to fit the ATG environment.

excellent call on the SOM effects

to add to the question about record (I'm assuming W-L), that of course depends almost as much on run support as it does pitcher's performance

2 examples come to mind, though both are just a drop in the bucket of a ton of others like them

Jack Billingham of the 70's Big Red Machine used to consistently win 15-20 games each season with fairly bad ERA and WHIP (for that era), for example high 3 or into 4 era (in an era where 2's and low-mid 3's were more prevalent) and a WHIP of 1.30 or worse....there were a few good hurlers on those squads, Gullett, et al, and they all benefited from huge run support as do any SPs playing for good offense teams

on the other hand, guys like Robin Roberts comes to mind...he was before my time, but I knew he played mostly on league (2nd division team in a one division league lol) doormat or also ran 40's and 50's Phillies teams....except for the Whiz Kids in '50, Roberts had many season where he finished with a record like 17-17, even though he had good peripherals....he did win 20+ a few times or more, but he could have had even more had he played with good offenses

there is a partial correlation IMHO with ERA and WHIP and a pitcher's W-L record, but it's at most half of the equation arguably

Besides the facing better lineups and your home ballpark league construction in general matters too. So a league where more money is spent on pitching and there’s in general more pitching parks expected era would be lower than if a league is more hitter friendly. Generally speaking mid 3’s to mid 4’s depending on the environment I would consider good but it’s all a guess without knowing more about the league.

In strat, it is difficult to evaluate a particular relievers performance in a vacuum. I tend to think in terms of "how did my bullpen do" thinking of the bullpen as a unit. If my bullpen has a winning record and the ERA is about the same as my starters, I consider that a net win because my bullpen didn't hurt me and in fact if the game got to my bullpen, I most likely won the game. In strat, I generally ignore saves as unimportant (I rarely designate a closer for example). Of course, some relievers may take a beating over the course of the season and and others perform way over their heads --but a lot of that is because HAL put them in those situations (good or bad). As I have mentioned before, I spend a little more than most on the bullpen based on the theory that if HAL has better choices, he makes better choices (sometimes I am right and sometimes HAL proves me wrong).

There are significant aspects of the online version of strat which simply are not realistic and don't easily correspond to "actual baseball"--remember online strat is an attempt to simulate the card and dice game, not too simulate "Real baseball". How pitching is managed is certainly "unrealistic." As noted above, the game seems to favor hittig in the sense that it is more common to see hitters out hit by significant margins realistic or predictable numbers -100 homers for example- than to see pitchers have sub 2 ERAs or even outperform their cards in ERA or WHIP. That's a function of pricing and the roster rules (if pitchers were significantly cheaper it would be more cost efficient to carry heavier staffs that could be tailored to particular opponents, get favorable matchups, etc).

Thanks, guys. That helps! Lots of valid points and I feel I understand better now. I was frustrated at times because my relievers would get nuked regularly even if I felt I had selected them well or had highly desirable players. Perhaps my expectations were too high.

Even really good SPs and RPs can get torched if the rolls go against them. Here's a recent game in a 175M league that my team lost 41-10. https://365.strat-o-matic.com/game/469123/653
All of my pitchers in this game were top notch, and in this game all but one of them got hammered. Sweeney lasted .2 innings and gave up 11 runs. Then Neidenfuer gave up 9 in 1 IP. Putz lasted 3 innings but gave up 11 runs. Then House got hammered. Only Papelbon, who finished the game, avoided giving up runs.
This level of pummeling may be unusual, but the roof can fall on any pitcher from time to time in the ATG environment. Still, my team has a winning record and, after 120 games, the bullpen is 11-11, which is OK and is 30-10 in saves, which is really good in ATG. And, overall, the team's ERA is 3rd in the league. It would be 2nd w/o that fiasco. But it only cost me one win.
ERA can be especially deceptive with an ATG reliever, since they don't pitch a large # of innings. An RP can pitch well most of the time and then get hammered in a couple of games and that can drive the ERA up very high. But how are they doing over the whole season? That's the more important question.
Neidenfeuer gave up 9 runs in 1 inning in that infamous game, but his w/l is 7-2 with and saves are 7-3. His ERA is 5.23, but if you take out that one game, it's more like a 4.5 ERA, compared to a league average of 6.02 ERA.
So, I agree with goffchile's suggestion that there are likely to be ERA spikes during a season when assessing an RPs performance, so put those in the context of overall performance. I also agree that assessing the bullpen as whole is appropriate, since only that way to you get a big enough sample of innings.

Thanks for the explanation. I was aware that small sample size was a huge factor but I hadn't considered the effects of blowouts. Evaluating by the average makes great sense. What really got me thinking about this is that I watch a ton of my replays and my relievers very regularly enter the game (each one of them) and give up runs. It got pretty frustrating once I noticed it was happening very frequently. I know confirmation bias exists but it really was happening a crazy amount.

Tekulve would come in against righties and just get hammered. Sambito too. Elite general relievers, it just didn't matter. So that's when I began to wonder if I was doing something wrong and started spending more time learning the nuances of relievers. In many cases they appear better than they actually are as their role is quite volatile and prone to anomalies and short term luck. Establishing a good balance between starters and relievers is a very tricky aspect of the game. There are certain simplifications can that are viable (4 aces slow hooked to the max) but I feel this is likely not the most optimal solution possible despite it working brilliantly for many managers.

A good measure is to look at the relievers last 10-20 games. Don't look at the average stats. Look at each game, and you'll usually see that a reliever was lights out in 8 out of 10 games but was lit up in 2 out of those 10 games. That skews the stats, but you'd gladly have a reliever be effective 80% of the time.

Also, for specialists, look at the vs. Lefty/righty and home/visitor stats. They are likely doing their job, but HAL is screwing things up by being badly programmed.

When you see this, feel free to let SOM know.

the next time u sit down with HAL

ask him why my RP specialists, listed to avoid their weak side (ideally only face the hitters they are designed for), have sometimes an almost 50%/50% split of RHB and LHB batters faced ;- ((((

oh, and why in the heck does he INSIST on always putting Earl Williams at 3B def replacement when he's a 5 rating e37, and always replacing a better defender who HAD NOT been pinch hit for, and HAD NOT gotten injured

just pure idiocy the late inning musical chairs