How do you................

..........keep .50 relievers from coming into games and just sit on the bench collecting splinters?

Well, if he's a RP-only, HAL will find him sooner or later. I try to give those cheapies a very specialized role, so HAL is holding them out for that one opportunity that you HOPE never comes. Are you trying to run a 3-man pen, with the third one a .50? If you're not doing that, carry a .50 SP/RP or SP instead, and place him in the 5spot in the rotation.

Here's the team Andy:

Campell and Crawford are getting into so many games and just killing me!!!!


http://365.strat-o-matic.com/team/1420181

I believe its due to only having 3 RP's. I still have troubles getting SP/RP's into the game and have to think that HAL looks to pure RP's first.

In strategy set relief to conservative, and closer to regular--maybe try no closer role.

I would set the three 8 inning pitchers to F4, and probably Martinez too to keep them in the game as long as possible. Maybe all the way to F1 if you can get away with it.

Maybe set both Crawford and Campbell as mopup (the better one as 1st mopup), or set the starter/reliever that don't go as often as 1st mopup with your worst pitcher as 2nd mopup, and your best reliever as every thing else.

That is how I kept my cheap pen from pitching much here--had more than half of my games as complete games.

It was a mystery league though

http://365.strat-o-matic.com/team/1418129

We all run into that. Assign him Mop up role and avoid LHB or RHB will cut his use way down. When I have the money my preferred method is to spend about a million or less and find a a good 8L-9L-8R-9R RP and put them in a LH or RH batter specialist role. Avoid using before 7th inning etc. I use quick hook though I don't know it's necessary. They usually only face one or two batters and get out about 75% + of batters faced. Your mileage may vary of course. I've done the same with cheap SPs that lean extreme hard left or right with similar result. They aren't .50 but there are very cheap ones that do fine. I have found HAL will often use my good middleman first, bring in the specialist for a batter, and then transition to another appropriate reliever like setup man for example. Some here don't like to use specialists at all but it's worked for me 20-30 times in a row without a glitch. .