Strat-O-Matic Baseball 365

My $100 mil DH ATG 7 team is going to drive me out of this hobby. I decided to spend most of my salary cap on hitting, to load up on cheap starting pitching and to overuse Hoyt in relief. So far the hitting is performing as expected, the starting pitching is inconsistent, as is to be expected, and Wilhelm is blowing up on me in spectacular fashion. He is 2-8-10-6 with a 5.92 era after 60 games. Hell, Al Schacht is 4-2 with 2 saves and 1 blown in as many innings pitched, which brings me to another question, why is Hal sending Schacht out there so much? Here is a typical inning pitched by Wilhelm:

BOTTOM OF INNING 8
SUBSTITUTION at P: Hoyt Wilhelm (role: Tied & Late)
0 K.Johnson 4-10 Fly Out (RF) b-0 F9
1 T.Steinbach 3-10 Single (LF) b-1 F9
SUBSTITUTION at PR: Sandy Alomar
1 1 F.Frisch h&r Single (CF) 1-3 b-1 F9
Stolen Base 1-2 F9
1 23 L.Appling sqz Sac Bunt (P) 3-H 2-3 b-0 F9
2 3 E.Averill 1-7 Walk b-1 F9
2 1 3 J.Fournier 1-9 Walk 1-2 b-1 F9
2 123 M.Ott 2-8 Walk 3-H 2-3 1-2 b-1 F9
2 123 N.Lajoie 1-7 Double & Error - CF 3-H 2-H 1-H b-H F9
2 R.Jackson 6-9 Ground Out (SS) b-0 gb(SS)x F9

3 hits, 3 walks,1 error, 6 runs, another lead blown and another game lost.

Here is my team:

Pitchers T P $M
Pfiester, J. (1907) L P 6.95M
Barker, L. (1977) R P 4.99M
Higbe, K. (1946) R P 3.34M
Moret, R. (1977) L P 2.48M
Hendrix, C. (1916) R P 2.42M
Faber, R. (1919) R P 1.74M
Wilhelm, H. (1965) R P 5.36M
Rogers, K. (1989) L P 1.38M
Clear, M. (1979) R P .92M
Schacht, A. (1920) R P .51M

Hitters B P $M
Boone, B. (1977) R C 2.88M
Nicosia, S. (1979) R C 1.24M
Greenberg, H. (1940) R 1B 7.92M
Gilliam, J. (1953) S 2B 4.77M
Smith, R. (1917) R 3B 3.42M
Cronin, J. (1938) R SS 6.89M
Santana, R. (1986) R SS .50M
Goslin, G. (1924) L LF 5.63M
Bonnell, B. (1984) R LF 1.06M
Musial, S. (1948) L CF 10.86M
Brown, W. (NeL) R CF 8.44M
Crutchfield, J. (NeL) L CF 1.30M
Rojas, C. (1964) R CF 1.29M
Ruth, B. (1927) L RF 13.07M

Here is a link to the league: http://onlinegames.strat-o-matic.com/league/349153

Here is how I've set the relief usage:

Your Current Bullpen Roles

Closer------ Wilhelm, Hoyt (R, 1R)

RH Specialist------ Clear, Mark (R, 7R)

Closer vs. L------ Rogers, Kenny (L, 5L)

LH Specialist------ Rogers, Kenny (L, 5L)

Setup------ Wilhelm, Hoyt (R, 1R)

Setup------ Rogers, Kenny (L, 5L)

Tied & Late------ Wilhelm, Hoyt (R, 1R)

Behind & Late------ Rogers, Kenny (L, 5L)

Middle Man------ Rogers, Kenny (L, 5L)

Middle Man------ Moret, Roger (L, 3L)

Mopup------ Schacht, Al (R, E)

I'm pretty sure I don't know how to manage the bullpen, so any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Sociophil

If I analyzed correctly, your team has significantly more errors than every other team. That's not helping Wilhelm. He might be giving up a lot of earned runs due to hits, but, the errors could be prolonging the innings he pitches in.

I can do you one better with Wilhelm:

http://onlinegames.strat-o-matic.com/team/1127487

Paul, The errors are killing me. I lead the league with 63 which is 10 more than the next worst team. My catcher platoon, with an e1 and e4 respectively, already have 5 errors. My pitchers account for 8 of the 63, and my outfield (e7, e9, and e14) have 18 errors. I'm hoping that this is just bad luck and that when the luck turns I can run off a long winning streak, but if I am doing something wrong with my pitching settings I'd like to know.

Stratfan, I'm using the more expensive Wilhelm card, so there is really no excuse for his lack of performance.

It's actually an atypical outing. If you removed that one and Game 47 from his record (4 IP, 15 ER total) -- appearances where your opponent ran the table on dice rolls -- he'd have a very reasonable ERA of 3.59.

You should delete Schat from the mop up role if you do not want him to pitch too much, especially with an offensive team. And Clear should only be a RH specialist and Rogers a LH specialist. All the other roles are confusing HAL. Let Hoyt be middle, closer, late inning tied, setup and make sure he is set to slow hook do not relieve before F8 and have your bullpen set to bullpen usage aggressive. this will get Wilhem in and he'll pitch a ton of innings. If he gets bombed you can't help that, just get him out there.

gkhd11a wrote:You should delete Schat from the mop up role if you do not want him to pitch too much, especially with an offensive team. And Clear should only be a RH specialist and Rogers a LH specialist. All the other roles are confusing HAL. Let Hoyt be middle, closer, late inning tied, setup and make sure he is set to slow hook do not relieve before F8 and have your bullpen set to bullpen usage aggressive. this will get Wilhem in and he'll pitch a ton of innings. If he gets bombed you can't help that, just get him out there.

I second that advice -

While we chide HAL's bullpen logic, we can compound HAL's diabolical decisions when when we restrict his craziness.

Wilhelm should pitch as many innings as possible.

I agree with the above guys.

You are spending a lot of $ on Hoyt. Let him earn it. He needs to get a lot more innings

Thanks guys, I've adjusted based on your advice. Now I have 100 more games to see how this plays out.

For one thing, there are 5 primarily LH teams in your league - it would have been better to use Murray, Sutter, or Radatz as your super reliever (or even Miljus or Schiraldi).