The Super Reliever Fiasco

Gotta, just gotta get this off my chest. As much as I really enjoy this game, the comradery, etc. This really, really leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

In a current league, 100M where after 117 games, Dale Murray (super reliever) has now won 31 games. That's right 31. At that pace, he might surpass 40 WINS. Hell, even if he doesn't win another game the rest of the way, he still ends up with 31. RIDICULOUS.

I know many others, including Bernie, BDWard, have often harped on about the abuse of the super reliever, in the ATG game,, and how SOM continues to just plain ignore THE PROBLEM, and yes, IT IS DEFINITELY A PROBLEM. To the point, where some have, or are considering walking away from this game, if something is not done, and soon.

Again, as much as I do enjoy playing this game, Add me to that list.

COME ON SOM, get with it. This SUCKS.

Doug

I agree, Doug. 31 wins in 117 games destroys any notion that this game mirrors real MLB. I can't understand why Strat has allowed this egregious mistake to continue for so long. Murray's salary is $5.99 mil while Wilhelm's (R4) is $5.66 mil. I can understand using Babe Adams or Ferdie Schupp as super relievers because their salaries are close to, or over, $10 mil. But why use them when you can get Murray and Wilhelm for roughly half the cost, particularly in $100 mil leagues?

Strat should either double the salaries for Murray and Wilhelm or eliminate their present cards, replacing them with R2 ratings.

It's unfortunate that Mr. Richman, who created the most realistic baseball board game ever, allows this realism-destroyer mistake to continue.

Tom

Murray also leads the league in innings pitched with 268.2. Mark Fidrych is next at 247.1.

I agree, this is a first class fiasco.

Update on this garbage.

120 Games. Murray 32 wins-7 losses- 12 saves-6 blown saves = 57 times in 120 games Murray has been involved, one way or the other in decisions. Wins, losses, saves and blown saves. Toss in 276.1 Innings Pitched so far!

Getting close to saying adios SOM.

I looked at Dale Murray's stats from 1974. He pitched 69 innings in 32 relief appearances. That comes out to an average of 3 IP per game. If you look at his game log on baseball reference it seems clear an R3 would be a better choice than R4. Sure, he could go 4 innings at a time, but that only occurred 3 times during his season. Looking at his game log, that brutal stretch at the end of the season from Sep 22-24 is pretty impressive.

http://www.baseball-reference.com/playe ... &year=1974

In all fairness, he should be rated a R3 reliever. That would cut down on his super-reliever ability a bit, and a salary commensurate to a stud super reliever would help too. But if his salary is too high, the majority of guys wouldn't use him in a standard relief role anyway, he'd be too expensive to pitch a couple of innings per series. And the only ones that would use him would be the loopholers.

I think they should go a step further and swap the 1974 card for a more representative Murray season. He should not be better in ATG than Gossage, Sutter, Rivera, etc., etc. Gates Brown should meet the same fate.

Bill

From another thread:

..... I'm getting annoyed to see no improvement by the SOM management for the online game and the lack of customer services. I'm fed up to see the same loopholes continue year after year, some I was exploiting, most notably the fact that SOM does not implement the new rules they have created to restrict bullpen overusage.

Amen brother! I've been harping about "super reliever" abuses in the ATG game for years, but SOM continues to ignore the problem. No way should relief pitchers be routinely pitching 150+ innings a year, but it's not unusual to see Dale Murray and Bruce Sutter get 300+ innings.

Obviously those in the community know that I am an outspoken critic of the rules that permit such relief pitcher over usage. As we all enjoy playing this game, most managers, while acknowledging the problem, and as noted by Marc above, take an "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em" approach. Although super reliever abuse is not for me, I can't say that I really blame managers for engaging in such, as it is allowed by the rules.

The online SOM gaming community seems to be divided over whether a problem even exists. Many of the big spenders, some whom are no longer playing the game, have been vocal proponents of the super reliever, as they view it as an opportunity to continue to win credits. Their argument, in a nutshell, has been, that they spent their money on a team, this is fantasy baseball where reality doesn't matter, that there are no restrictions on hitter usage, that there is an imbalance in favor of hitting in the ATG game, and thus they should be free to use players any way they see fit, including relief pitchers. That argument is unpersuasive, as it ignores the reality that no relief pitcher EVER has been physically capable of pitching 250+ relief innings. However, money talks, and those big spenders have had the ear of SOM, while the rest of us have not.

SOM's response, or lack thereof, to the super reliever problem has been curious, to say the least. The hallmark of the game, highly touted in its advertising for 55 years or so, has been REALISM. That alleged realism has sold hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of card sets over the years and is what has us playing the online ATG game today, many of us 40+ years after that first roll of the dice. It almost goes without saying that the mere existence of the super reliever is extremely contrary to such realism. It makes me question whether SOM founder Hal Richman has any involvement in the online ATG game whatsoever.

It's not that SOM hasn't placed limits on pitchers in the past. Deadball pitchers routinely pitched 400+ innings, with some pitching 600+ innings. There are 15 400+ inning pitching cards in the ATG game, yet none of them has a chance to pitch 400 innings in an ATG league, as they are limited to starting once every 4 days. In 1972, Wilbur Wood, Mickey Lolich and Stan Bahnsen pitched most of the season on 2 days rest and SOM, in the 1972 card set, allowed them to pitch every 3rd day, but not so in the online '70s game or ATG game, where they are all every 4th game starters. Also, as a general rule (there are a few exceptions), SOM mostly limits starting pitchers with less than 200 IP to starting every 5th day. Given this history, it is especially perplexing that SOM has ignored the super reliever problem.

While the super reliever problem has been hotly and routinely debated in this forum over the years, with the topic arising about once a year and then simmering down, I can't recall SOM EVER directly commenting on the problem, and it is both arrogant and sad that SOM does not have a public forum page where it answers questions and engages in a discussion with the community on various gaming issues, including card usage. The closest SOM has ever come to acknowledging the problem is when it raised the prices on super relievers upon creation of ATG8, thinking that it would reduce the number of people using the super relievers, but that "solution" has been a miserable failure.

Since the community raises the super reliever problem from time to time and then moves on, all the while continuing to play the online game, SOM's focus (sometimes) has been on what it has concluded is the most important issue to the community, being new ATG cards, which seems to placate most of us. However, without action from SOM, the super reliever problem will not go away any time soon and is a threat to the integrity and viability of the ATG game.

Various solutions have been offered by the community over the years, the most popular of which seems to be to reduce the endurance rating of the super relievers. However, reducing the endurance rating is a band aid approach at best, as it would require repricing all of the super relievers (that won't happen any time soon) and ignores the fact that some relief pitchers can pitch longer than others.

When MLB had a problem 45 years ago resolving the DH issue, the owners comprised, and split the baby. When SOM had a problem with whether to include the extra player cards with skewed numbers in the seasonal online baseball game, it compromised, giving managers the choice of playing with the conventional card set without the skewed extra players or playing the "unleashed" card set with all of the extra players included.

In the quote that opened this post MARCPELLETIER stated he's "annoyed" and "fed up" that "....SOM does not implement the new rules they have created to restrict bullpen overusage." While I must confess that I haven't seen the rules, anything would be an improvement over the present system.

So I'm going to propose something that I've never seen proposed in the years that the super reliever debate has raged in the ATG game:

1. Publish the rules limiting relief pitcher usage for all to see.
2. As with the various choices for the player card set, DH, salary cap, waivers, drop penalty, live draft, etc., give league creators the option to use the relief pitcher limits rules.

With a choice as to which type of league to join, the managers who like using super relievers can all join the same league and fight over Murray, Sutter, Wilhelm and their corresponding sub $4 mil SPs, while the rest of us can enjoy a more realistic game. It would cost SOM virtually nothing to implement, would require no relief pitcher repricing, would require no major programming changes, as such rules are already in effect in the annual game, and would give managers a chance to dip a toe in the water to test the relief pitcher limits rules. Further, Murray, Wilhelm, Sutter, etc., would still be available for use, but would no longer be pitching 150+ innings.

The annual game already uses such rules. Most of the players in the ATG game were part of the backbone of SOM's success starting many years ago and we are not second class citizens. We deserve the chance to use the same rules used to improve the annual game.

I hope you are listening SOM. MARCPELLETIER, DOHowser1, bontomn, Casey89, supertyphoon, BC15NY and I are just the tip of the iceberg among those dissatisfied with the lack of relief pitcher usage limits.

Amen Bernie. I think the only way we will ever see SOM take this obvious problem seriously is for them to be convincingly persuaded that this is costing them a large amount of potential income. Intuitively I believe that managers who successfully employ the super reliever gimmick drive away new customers who sample the ATG game and leave immediately afterwards in frustration due to a lack of realism in the game results, which is - as you said - their main selling point. But proving that there is a cause and effect relationship between super relievers and return business would be a nearly impossible task. Consequently, nothing happens.

I don't think the super reliever issue is a fiasco, nor do I necessarily agree that dichotomizing leagues by anti-super reliever rules will work. It is hard enough to fill leagues now without adding extra preconditions, so that might be a tough sell with SOM; not that they pay attention to what the community wants in any event.

I have no problem with Bruce Sutter pitching 200 innings. Anything more than that tends to negatively impact his performance, he will come into games so frequently and early, that he will start out tired too often for my taste. Mike Marshall pitched 208 innings the same decade when Sutter routinely pitched in the low 100's so there is some realism with a reliever hurling 200 innings. ATG encompasses the entirely of MLB baseball history. The game has evolved from relievers being afterthoughts to the highly specialized roles they enjoy today. So I think that there is room for multiple styles of reliever usage.

Wilhelm and Sutter are legitimate super relievers, Murray is an aberration inflicted on the community by a well intended Bernie Hou who saw Murray as a special gift to the game. No way he should be any where near the most expensive pure reliever in ATG, he had a journeyman career with an early fluke season. It might be simpler to just eliminate his card. Wilhelm is self limited as a super reliever given his ballpark hr's vs righties. The influence of super relievers in general is a function of salary cap. They can easily unbalance a league with a 80M cap, they really aren't nearly as dominant at the higher caps.

One way to address the super reliever issue is not to impose an absolute limit to innings pitched per season, but to have any relief pitcher who exceeds, say 200 innings in a season becomes a R1 for any appearances beyond 200 innings (or whatever the community deems an appropriate limit) including the playoffs. That should solve the issue.

Just an aside, any pretense to realism on the part of SOM vis a vis ATG went out the window with the overblown ballpark homerun effects. I see that as a much bigger issue than "super relievers."