Why?????

I want someone to tell me why HAL is making these stupid moves with my pitching, on all my teams, I have Rodney set at F1 and slo hook--no inning limitations--Wright (which should not have been in the game anyway, is set at F7 (fast hook though) and taken out when at F9--then all my worst relievers go in---Rodney should have never came out---I am going to abandon the online game if I can't stop this---I see way to many blow-ups in late innings because of idiotic moves by HAL.
DO I have to set everyone to F0 to keep them in a game?????


http://onlinegames.strat-o-matic.com/ga ... 346344/736

Sorry I meant Marshall instead of Wright

I don't get it either. I see no reason why Rodney would be removed. I'm having the same problem on my two most recent teams, including PC2013 team, and up until now I've been pretty happy with how Hal has handled my pen. but on both these teams I cant seem to get Paplebon and Johnson (respectively) into the game enough. On one of these teams I just watched Joe Kelly blow a 14 inning game while Johnson and Lecure sat in the bullpen playing tiddly winks

I see all these strategy posts where people say they get 150 inning out of there two best relievers, I lost about 6 games last night by giving up 6,7,8 run leads in the 8th, 9th, & 10th, because my best setup man or closer gets pulled even when I have very low f settings---and all these vets tell me I'm overspending on a closer--that's true enough--I always like a Kimbrel/Rodney type, but they don't get the innings even set to F0--if I set a pitcher to F0 he should stay in till he loses or gets hurt---I saw one post with one last thing to try--use 1 super reliever for every bullpen roll--do not set any other pitcher to a bullpen roll or HAL will take him out--set him to F0--not very baseball like--I pay close attention to games I lose especially---I see two-three innings of F0 pitchers staying in a game against me and I can't score off them--I set my closer reliever to FO and they get pulled or bombed(though this one is F1) I seem to get bombed no matter who is in the game--

I'll give you all a quick piece of advice that goes a long way into setting up the bullpen properly.

STOP USING THE "Fx" SETTINGS

Seriously, bullpen isn't that hard. It will never be perfect, even with seven 5+ mil RP's. It can be damn close as long as you have enough and set it up properly.

I absolutely agree with the above post. The F(X) settings are almost always a bad idea. Once a pitcher starts getting tired, he REALLY sucks, pretty much no matter how good he is. I'm not sure exactly how the mechanisms work inside the game (and nobody at SOM is really telling us), but once they get tired, the hitters pretty dramatically roll mostly off their own cards. If they do roll on the pitcher's card, it always seems to be a walk/hit or an X roll. It's not as simple as the card/dice rules are written where being tired only adds about 12 single** chances to your pitcher's card.

HAL does a better job (IMO)if you keep things pretty simple. Using a "super reliever" only works with a very few number of guys. Usually a balanced approach with 2 pretty good arms, and some fill-ins is the way to go. Build your team around an expectation that HAL will use your crappy relievers more than you want. Balance things out so that hurts you less...

Miller, send me your pitching settings and I'll take a look at it

I'm copying Geoff's post from a different thread here, it breaks it down nicely

I'm not sure if this will be the issue or not, but what **order** are you listing the relief roles in? The order does matter.

The order that I list them in is usually like this:

Closer #1
Closer #2
Setup #1
Setup #2
Tied & 9th #1
Tied & 9th #2
Tied & Late#1
Tied & Late#2
Behind and late #1
Behind and late #2
Middle man #1
Middle man #2
Mopup #1
Mopup #2

I am not a big fan of lefty and righty specialists, although I do use them. The place in the bullpen order that I put them will depend on whether I think they are good for a particular series, or not. If I don't like them for a series, I'll list them below mopup. If I like them, I will place them higher up in the order. If I really really like the specialist, I'll list them right at the top of the bullpen roles.

If I like my setup pitcher better than my closer, I'll list the setup roles above the closers. If I really like the closer, I may choose to list him as setup#1 as well as closer #1.

My understanding is that HAL will choose the pitchers in the order that you list them in, starting with the first listed role that is applicable for the game situation.

If you are finding that HAL is using specialists more than what you intend, place the specialist roles lower down in the order, or even at the bottom. In my experience, that's a great way to limit their innings, and that has worked very consistently for me. Here is an example of a team where I used the low order placement to minimize the innings for the specialists:

http://onlinegames.strat-o-matic.com/team/378694

This was in one of mbrake's virtual reality leagues. The team is obviously a Phillies team.

On this team, Herndon was listed at the bottom as a RH specialist, and Purcey was listed as a LH specialist, in the next to bottom role. Between the 2 of them, they had less than 8 innings pitched for the entire year. Stutes and Blanton were the mopup pitcher roles. Madson and Bastardo had the main roles, with Stutes also filling in as middle man and maybe some tied and late, tied and 9th etc. It helped a lot that Stutes could eat innings. But listing the specialists at the bottom of the bullpen order should help to reduce their innings, if that's what you want!



PS here is the last bullpen listing that I had for this team:

Closer Madson
Closer Bastardo
Setup Madson
Setup Bastardo
Tied & 9th+ Madson
Tied & 9th+ Stutes
Tied & Late Madson
Tied & Late Stutes
Behind & Late Stutes
Behind & Late Bastardo
Middle Man Stutes
Middle Man Bastardo
Mopup Stutes
Mopup Kendrick
RH Specialist Herndon
LH Specialist Purcey
LH Specialist Blanton

I think what I was doing is that if the opponent faced hitters that were L Balanced (prefered lefty pitchers) then this is the bullpen roles that I would use. If I was facing an opponent that prefered righty pitchers, then I would switch Madson and Bastardo in their respective roles, compared to the above.

I had all of my pitchers set to slow hook, except for the specialists. This strategy happened to work for this pitching staff, because of the great top 3 starters, 2 good relievers, and a guy (stutes) who wasn't too bad and who could really log innings.

Here's my new strategy for my new team
Your Current Bullpen Roles

Closer Johnson (F8)
Setup Johnson
Setup LeCure
Tied & Late Johnson
Tied & Late LeCure
Tied & 9th+ Johnson
Tied & 9th+ Lecure
Behind & Late Lecure
Behind & Late Watson
Middle Man Lecure
Middle Man Watson
LH Specialist Miller
RH Specialist Tolleson
Mopup Kelly

It looks to me like he was pinch hit for in the bottom of the ninth. Absolutely correct move.