Trying to understand HAL

Does HAL make his pitching decisions based on how your pitcher would be expected to do against the opposing hitters (i.e. rolls of the pitcher's card), or how the hitters would do against your pitcher (rolls of the hitters cards)? I ask because I had a situation last night where with the scored tied in the bottom of the seventh, HAL brought in Kenny Rogers (5L) to face a switch hitter (3R) and four righties (E, 4R, 2L and 3R) rather than Mike Garman (9R) or Ed Farmer (9R). And again in the next game, the exact same circumstances, tied in the bottom of the seventh, he brought in Lefferts (2L) instead of Garman (who had appeared 3 times in the previous 9 games for a total of 1.2 innings, so fatigue shouldn't have been an issue.) Jut trying to figure out how to handle my pitching staff.
Thanks in advance for your help.

Do you have roles for these pitchers set up, and any "avoid" boxes set on them individually?

I had Garman and Farmer as avoid lefties but didn't have Rogers as avoid righties, figuring I'd want him to stay in the game against a predominately left handed lineup that might have a couple of righties or switch hitters in it. I did not have Garman or Farmer as RH specialists because I've had the experience of HAL pulling a specialist after one or two batters even though the next batter still hit from the same side.

Trying to understand HAL? Don't! You can't.

sad to say bontomn is right, but one would hope that HAL can count card chances at least as well as I can, but he often seems to not do that.


to the original question, I would hope that HAL would take into account the pitchers card vs. the handedness of the hitter AND the hitters card against the handedness of the pitcher both at the same time deciding whether to go to the pen and who to call in.


like, if I had Sambito on the mound and Gates Brown came to the plate, I would sure hope that Sambito would not get pulled for Farmer.