- Posts: 5730
- Joined: Sat Aug 25, 2012 12:12 am
Al Hogg wrote:Curt posted on the Leonard Nimoy League message board regarding innings limits for relievers. I thought we had finally buried this issue several years ago; I am hopeful we don't need to go through a prolonged discussion again.
I vote "no" on any limits.
As I've said repeatedly when we've discussed this in the past: A Strat-o-Matic team has far fewer pitchers than any major league squad. Thirty-one games into this season, for example, the Dodgers have already used 19 pitchers. Pitchers have to get a lot more innings than they get in real-life (this includes starters as well as relievers).
Also, the top relievers are not cheap. (When this issue first arose back in 2003 regarding Octavio Dotel, he was priced in the $3 million range, if I recall correctly.) To get your $5.29 million out of Dellin Betances, you really need to pitch him a lot of innings.
In addition, it's too hard to enforce. If someone goes away for vacation or just stops paying attention for a while and one of their pitchers goes over the limit, there's nothing that we can do. And for the best relievers, you really need to put on artificial restrictions to stop HAL from bringing him into the game.
This isn't real baseball. It's a computerized dice game. If you think you can get an advantage over other teams by having a reliever pitch a lot of innings, go for it. Let's all just stop stressing out about it.
I agree on all points.