Waiting on a starting pitcher

How many innings do you give before pulling the plug?

How many innings do you give before pulling the plug?

It depends. For my best pitcher(s), I set their Don't Rel. B4 setting to F8 so they don't get taken out until they start to tire (or get pinch hit for, which I can't control). I leave this setting blank for the vast majority of my pitchers.

For marginal starters (if any), I set them to 6 ip Max IP/start.

I normally leave my Relief usage set to Normal. However, I might adjust this if I have great starters (then set to Conservative).

This is by no means to "right" way to do it; it's just the way I do it. You need to find what works best for you. There are certainly some other settings you can adjust, but hopefully this gives you an idea where to start.

Coyote
Thank you this is very helpful, but I worded my question badly. What I meant to ask is how many innings do you wait before waiving a good starting pitcher who is underperforming.

I would seriously consider waiving a starting pitcher after four or five starts if deemed ineffective. That might be 20-30 innings of bad performance before I said enough is enough. Of course it's also important to consider if 1)he's faced unusually good hitting. If he's losing to teams on their way to 95-win seasons he might not be as bad as you think. 2)Have most of his starts come at home or on the road? 3)Is his hitter/pitcher roll balance out-of-whack? Perhaps, give him a longer leash if most of the rolls have been on hitter cards. 4) If he's giving up too many runs and losing too many games, but batting average allowed is well under .300 he might not be as bad as you think.

Coyote
Thank you this is very helpful, but I worded my question badly. What I meant to ask is how many innings do you wait before waiving a good starting pitcher who is underperforming.

paul8210's advice is excellent. However, there is one more thing I ask: What kind of cards does your pitcher have. Here are several situations, although one of my examples involves evaluating a reliever:

1. Does the pitcher have a bad card? My ace reliever Dick Hall was absolutely horrible for probably half a season. However, he does not have a bad card; his worst card is worth keeping, so I did.

2. Does a pitcher have some really bad years? If so, I tend to cut them sooner for fear he has one of those horrible cards.

3. The toughest calls are when a pitcher has a couple of years you don't want to keep, but they aren't terrible either. I hung on to Joe Horlen for 130 innings before letting him go. The first thing I'll do when the playoffs are over is see which card he had; I'm really curious. I think/feared he was on 1969, but he could have just been really unlucky.

I spend hours evaluating all my players' performances during the season, and the hardest thing is the question you ask. I've cut many pitchers I regretted when I saw which year they were on, and I've hung on to pitchers on bad years way too long. So, the TL;DR answer to your inquiry should be "who knows?!"

If Joe Horlen's whip is below 1.30 and his ERA is higher than 4.00, I'd say there's a definite chance it is a 1965 card, which is probably worth keeping.

I love to select pitchers who clearly have three good years and two bad years, such as Ron Taylor. I like having the confidence of knowing whether to keep or cut as early as possible. Gary Peters is another pitcher that kinda has three stellar years and two definitely not worth keeping. I wish Strat would add a standard deviation rating to each mystery card. A Danny Darwin would have the lowest standard deviation rating because all five years are pretty similar. I never have to agonize whether to cut or keep a Ron Taylor or a Danny Darwin! Anyone who cuts Danny Darwin makes me think, "Then, why did you acquire him in the first place?"

Not a starting pitcher, but I just set a personal record for quickly cutting a reliever, Johnny Klippstein. Here was his line:

IP........H.....ER....W....K...HR...ERA....WHIP
3 2/3...6......4......5....3....1....9.81....3.00

That was bad enough, but it can happen to any reliever in just a few innings. However, he had 17 out of 22 rolls come off of his card. Since he has two horrible seasons, it was easy to guess he probably had one of those. Too bad. He was tremendous for me last season.

PS. Joe Horlen did have his 1969 card, so I made the right decision for him (see my previous post). However, I made a couple of other decisions that weren't so astute.

How many innings do you give before pulling the plug?

It depends. For my best pitcher(s), I set their Don't Rel. B4 setting to F8 so they don't get taken out until they start to tire (

or get pinch hit for, which I can't control)

. I leave this setting blank for the vast majority of my pitchers.

For marginal starters (if any), I set them to 6 ip Max IP/start.

I normally leave my Relief usage set to Normal. However, I might adjust this if I have great starters (then set to Conservative).

This is by no means to "right" way to do it; it's just the way I do it. You need to find what works best for you. There are certainly some other settings you can adjust, but hopefully this gives you an idea where to start.

HAL just PH for Koufax in a 9th inning tie in GM 7 of a Championship Series!
Does anybody have suggestions on how to minimize pinch hitting for SP's? Would it help if I did not select pinch hitters, and/or set bullpen to Conservative?

I do not know what to do with HAL. I moved my IBB to very aggressive (Game 7 finals) just because Boog Powell was having a great season/playoffs and he was about it for my opponent. My team was up 1 with 2 out and a runner on third in the 9th. Does HAL IBB Boog as I wished? No he does not!. Boog drove in the run with a single and it went 14. At least I pulled it out but, HAL!?!

all great advice. One other item to keep in my mind is that the way Strat has allowed you to construct your teams, (in standard $80M leagues) you wind up with better hitters than in a real life baseball season.. i.e there are no/less easy outs in Strat. So your pitchers stats are generally higher than the season carded.

Which is a long way of saying the other metric I look at is to compare my pitcher stats to what the average ERA and WHIP is for your league.