Strat-O-Matic Baseball 365

Did anyone notice this at the top of the page?

Note: Starting with the 2019 season, we've made changes in an effort to moderately curtail the "Super-Reliever" phenomenon. You can read about them in detail here. These changes do not affect any other player sets at this time.

https://somonline.fandom.com/wiki/Bullpen_v3

Starting with the 2019 season Strat is trying to address super relievers and they have a few interesting ideas that I hadn't heard suggested. Such as only allowing pitchers to be assigned a maximum of TWO bullpen rolls. That in itself will pretty much kill super relievers. They also had some other changes they are implementing as well.

It sounds like if they migrate some of this stuff to ATG is will end Dale Murray's career ...

I'm in a league where M. Russo is only being used in relief. He will log over 300 innings and could win 30 games.

I recently finished a league where Babe Adams logged 437 innings as a reliever.

https://365.strat-o-matic.com/team/1529488

Nothing indicated that these new settings applied to ATG.

MARCPELLETIER wrote:Nothing indicated that these new settings applied to ATG.

That is correct. But ... I think it said something about not applying to any other games as of now.

Which implied to me this is a test to see if it fixes the issue? But I could be wrong just as easily.

"These changes do not affect any other player sets at this time."

That made me believe it will migrate to other player sets in the future.

I made the same inference.

SOM announced: "Starting with the 2019 season, we've made changes in an effort to moderately curtail the 'Super-Reliever' phenomenon. You can read about them in detail here. These changes do not affect any other player sets AT THIS TIME." (emphasis added)

MARCPELLETIER wrote:Nothing indicated that these new settings applied to ATG.

I read it exactly the same way as Rich and bcousy57, who both seem to think that the new relief pitcher rules will eventually be applied to the ATG game.

It appears from SOM's language that the handwriting is on the wall for the end of the super reliever era in the ATG8 game as we currently know it. It's obviously a question of when, not if.

Aside from when, the next question is whether the changes go far enough to end super reliever over usage. SOM said this:

"In our testing, we have found that these changes resulted in would-be 'Super-Relievers' pitching approximately 65-75% of the innings they would have previously pitched, which turns out to be still many more innings than a modern pitcher would pitch in real life, but is in line with our initial goals, which was to diminish the problem without making changes that would be too drastic."

So if some relief pitchers are pitching 400+ innings in relief, "65-75% of the innings they would have previously pitched" would be conservatively estimated to be 250-300 innings. It's a start, but such hardly resolves over usage issues. Regardless, it seems to "diminish the problem" by bringing relief pitcher usage closer to the 150 inning limit that I believe was intended when the cards were originally priced.

It is worth noting that the relief pitcher usage changes are being made to the game engine and not the cards, perhaps to avoid having to change card prices and/or change the endurance factor of various pitchers.

Hopefully any changes intended for the ATG8 game will be made before the start of Barnstormers 2020, as there are a number of managers who rely heavily on the super reliever strategy in Barnstormers who would probably prefer not to test the new rules in the tournament.

I have sent an email to SOM volunteering to form an ATG8 league to test the new relief pitcher rules. If SOM agrees to such, who wants in?

You put in two R1 relievers and mark avoid lefties avoid righties, leaves you with one reliever set to do not relieve before F0. WIll pitch 300 innings easily with no other settings especially if you have R5 starters. Other alternative is now the 4 stud philosophy becomes even more valuable, as directing the relievers will be more of a crapshoot if you use more than one.

gkhd11a wrote:You put in two R1 relievers and mark avoid lefties avoid righties, leaves you with one reliever set to do not relieve before F0. WIll pitch 300 innings easily with no other settings especially if you have R5 starters. Other alternative is now the 4 stud philosophy becomes even more valuable, as directing the relievers will be more of a crapshoot if you use more than one.

Wouldn't that 300 inning R1 pitcher would be entering every game at F0 based on that?