Dale Murray vs. Mitch Williams

Murray is the closer and Williams is Mopup, but for some reason HAL in his infinite wisdom leaves Murray in to receive this drubbing, check out the 9th inning!

http://onlinegames.strat-o-matic.com/game/playbyplay/266993/896

Oh and by the way, Murray's setup is: no"Don't relieve b4" checked, and qk/slo hook left blank as well.

I'm with HAL on this one. You pay Murray a lot, you have him marked for "late and behind", you certainly were behind, and no way Mitch Williams was going to get the win on this one.

Once he got in there, Murray the super reliever just needed to earn his pay and finish the game.

Can't believe it took that long to come off an F9. 5 runs in one inning should do it.

Modifying my original answer. Originally did not think bringing Williams in was warranted because my concept of mopup is starter gets chased early this is the guy who takes on for team and eats innings.

Murray set for late and behind HAL is just following your instructions.

Having said that and noting that HAL brought in Worrell for the other team in the 9th with reason being role of mopup do not consider it as unreasonable to expect HAL to have applied the mopup rule and brought in Williams. So instinct was to say your expectations were wrong but on second thought I see your point.

But whether we agree or not is irrelevant. Important thing is what HAL thinks and how to get HAL to cooperate with us.
To that end I suggest removing Murray from behind and late role. I think this may be a case of trying to configure Murray for super reliever role and getting it.

I tend to be philosophical against super reliever but recognize it as potentially effective and thus do it to some extent on my own teams. But shy away from blaming HAL when the implementation of the super reliever yields wierdness from HAL. Kind of lean toward a live by sword die by sword.

I think that the issue I have with HAL is that once I was losing by 7, it's time to bring in the Mopup guy. But, on the other hand you are correct, Murray was set for "Behind and Late", it was the 9th inning and he was brought in an inning earlier. He is certainly a better option to stop the bleeding than Williams. Not really trying to get super reliever stats out of him, I am using Junior Thompson as setup and he also has 100+ innings thus far, just sort of disappointed that Murray and not Williams got shelled. In all fairness though, HAL probably did make the correct move.

I think you have a point that once behind by so much a comeback was unlikely mopup should have been called in.
Could it be the mopup had pitched in a recent game and thus was considered tired?
If not then just have to assume HAL does not care how far behind and is going to use Murray in this slot. Plus I suspect once Murray was in he was not going to be pulled until he got tired.

You know we probably need to have more discussions along these lines. I am not saying we should gripe about HAL more.
But discussions about how HAL thinks and how we can tweak things given how they do work (not how we think they should).
After all what does and doesn't work really is what is important, right?

So if you can check the previous couple games to see how many inning Williams had pitched it could be helpful in determining whether HAL considers late and behind by 10+ no different than late and 1 behind.

Once we know that we can all adjust our own teams accordingly. And though probably an exercise in futility make a post in the wish list asking for addition of a close and late role. Just checked and did not see one but I could swear there was such a thing.

on your list of roles, is mopup above behind and late? (i.e. higher on the list)? I believe it goes thru the roles in order, you so you would want it higher on the list (drag and drop)

Great point geekor on the order. Look forward to seeing the answer.

XLNT point! I always list mopup as the bottom choice, figuring in a game so slanted to offense a team could always come back and my mopup guy is usually not a guy who can hold a team down. Maybe on a small ball team where there is gonna be less offense mopup should be higher in priority. And as far as Williams usage, he pitched in only one of the two previous games. Generally speaking my preferred pecking order for the pen goes like this (most of the time)

Closer
(or closer L, closer R)
Tied and 9+
Tied and Late
Tied and Behind
L Specialist
R Specialist
Setup 1
(setup 2)
Middle 1
Middle 2
Mopup

Of course this is general and is not how I would operate in all cases, it depends on how deep the Pen is and whether or not I am overusing a Super Reliever, a philosophy I don't care for and rarely use.