My preparation for the playoffs

Pay no attention to those silly settings, Pacoboy. Just set closer to maximize and forget this whole thread.

I’m so confused now

This is probably the single most function I play with because I never get it right.

When is AGGRESSIVE optimal
When is NORMAL optimal
When is CONSERVATIVE optimal

Let's say you have a very strong starting rotation and that you want Hal to be more conservative.

If you are not assigning any reliever in the bullpen roles, and perhaps more importantly if you don't use the settings on individual pitchers on the pref pitchers page, then using the "Conservative" mode on the Team strategy page can make sense.

So, to answer your question, using "conservative" in the Team strategy page is optimal if you are lazy and don't want to use the bullpen roles and the individual settings to communicate your intention to be conservative.

But if you use a deep set of bullpen roles and use at length of the individual pitchers' settings, then the better way to communicate how to be "conservative" is to use these. If you assign all your starting pitchers on "slow hook" and fix the F-rating at F3, then believe me, Hal will be extremely conservative even if you set your Team strategy on "aggressive" (actually, these instructions are even too conservative if you want my opinion, because of the penalties attached to throwing in a fatigued mode. I would not advise using these unless all your relievers are worth less than a nickel).

Actually, think of it this way: if you give Hal very detailed instructions (you use most if not all bullpen roles, and every pitcher has its own individual settings), then what you REALLY want from HAL is that it follows closely your instructions, and the way to communicate this intention is to use the "Aggressive mode" on the Team Strategy. It might sound counter-intuitive, but the "Aggressive mode" on the Strategy page really means that Hal will be aggressive at following your instructions. If your instructions are set in a way to be conservative, then the "aggressive" mode on the team Strategy page will put Hal in a mindset to be very keen at following your conservative way of managing the bullpen.

This is why I suggest, if you are using a long set of bullpen roles and of individual pitching settings, that you always use the "aggressive" mode on the Strategy team page. Using the "conservative" mode will have the consequence that Hal will sometimes sit on his hands in situations where you gave him a clear instruction to act. Imagine Billy Beane calling the bench, but the manager answers let's wait and see!!

But I must repeat the warning: you must use a long set of roles and clear instructions to most/all pitchers so that Hal doesn't start to act out of whack under the "aggressive" mode. If your instructions are not thorough enough, then Hal's aggressive mode may lead him to act on impulses, without making any sense.

BTW, we won the 5th game of the Finals, again in a very tightly matched game, this time 4-3. Brown went through 7.2 innings in a full non-fatigued mode. He faced 2 hitters on a F8 mode, in logic with what I had set (I set his F-ratings at F7). He allowed on a walk against the second hitter. Down at F6, Hal removed him quickly for Murray.

With retrospect, with Murray being completely rested, I played a bit with fire, I should have set Brown at F8 quick hook rather than F7 quick hook. There was no need to wait for Murray any longer. But anyway, no harm was done.

So now we have Millwood coming in for his first start of the whole playoffs, with Burke and Murray both available. I will set Burke at the first position for every bullpen role, even mop-up. And I will set Murray at the second role at every role, EXCEPT "mop-up" AND "behind and late", and I will instruct Hal to avoid using Murray in a blown out. So if Millwood gets hit early and gets an early exit,I will have Burke coming in to give my team some extra time to get back in the game. But if, even then, the game gets out of hand or even if we stick behind in the scores, Murray will sit and be ready for game 7. To do so, however, I must make sure that Heredia and Shaw are set so that they are not removed until their arms get dead---I have to avoid the scenario that Shaw and Heredia throw only one inning or two and Hal is forced to call in Murray to finish a useless game.

But still, I am not playing too cautiously. I'm setting Millwood for a quick hook, without setting any F rating, so Millwood could be out as early as the 4th inning. If this occurs, then Murray will certainly come in unless the game is a blown out. If this situation occurs, we will adjust tomorrow by making sure our starting pitcher gives us 6-7 innings.

I didn't discuss on how I prepare myself to determine my lineup.

Of course, during the course of a season, I set a lineup I feel comfortable with, and mostly just wait and see once a while if everything is ok. But in the playoffs, I'll get a deeper analysis in the stats provided by SOM.

First, I always pay attention to intentional walks. I'll go check:
[*]Manager Profiles - Regular Season, to see if my opponent is agressive with intentional walks
[*]League Leaders - Regular Season, I look at individual leaders for intentional walks, both my team and my opponent's team.

For example, for these playoffs, I learnt that Alfonzo, who is probably my 7th or 8th best hitter in my lineup, is one of the league leaders in intentional walks!! In fact, the player targeted here is Jimmy Rollins. For most of the year, Rollins was hitting behind Alfonzo, I sometimes had Rollins batting after Bagwell, and in effect both are among the leaders in IBB. Jimmy Rollins has a very bad clutch, and not much power. My understanding of Hal's logic with intentional base on balls is that power and clutch are somehow mixed before Hal decides to issue a walk or not, but I feel sometimes that clutch is the bigger factor for Hal. In fact, Hal will very rarely issued walks with less than two outs.

So learning that Hal is very tempted to issue intentional walks to face Rollins leads me to have two reactions: embrace it, or avoid it. I can see occasions where I would prefer to have Rollins in a potential 3-run homerun instead of having Alfonzo hitting wth first base open. It could be, against more extreme right-handed pitchers that allow more on-base vs left-handed hitters. Or I can try to avoid it. That would be by setting Rollins 8th and Alfonzo 9th, and have someone with a very bad clutch in front of Rollins.

This said, my opponent was not extremely aggressive on issuing intentional walks during the season. He was roughly in the league average, even a bit below. So while I was not utterly concerned with the intentional walks issue, I nevertheless decided to try to avoid the situations for the most part of the seires. So I decided to move down Alou in front of Rollins for most of the games, and have Alfonzo hit behind Rollins at the 9th spot. Alou has a -11 clutch, so I thought this might be sufficient to lure Hal to face Alou instead of Rollins.

Tonight, however, it's different. We are facing Mike Scott who allows 16 more chances of on-base vs left-handed hitters. Given the poor clutch by Rollins, Alfonzo still has a bit more of on-base in clutch situations, but I prefer to have the extra runner on and take a chance for a 2-run triple or double. Furthermore, I prefer the strategy of playing the big inning, with my #3 facing my opponent's ace. So we'll have Rollins back behind Alfonzo down in the lineup.

Another thing I look is how aggressive my opponent is with his bullpen, and how does he manage his relief specialists. If my opponent uses a lot of, say, right-handed specialists, I will try to avoid lining-up 4-5 consecutive right-handed hitters. But this is not the case. My opponent does have one specialist, a lefty, but looking at the Sim L/R splits on my opponent's page, his specialist has faced only 36% of right-handed hitters---this suggests that his specialist does not occupy a lefty specialist bullpen role. Bottom line, I don't need to be concerned about avoiding two lefty hitters in a row. This information will also impact in this game, because I will not hesitate to have at the top of my lineup two lefty bats: Dykstra and Harper.

Another thing I look at every day is the pitcher/catcher combination. My opponent has Pudge, with his monster -5 arm. So in most games, my opponent had a combination of -7 when holding one of my runner at first. Under these circumstances, I set my stealing strategy to very conservative. But again, tonight is different, because Mike Scott has a hold of +7, for a overall combination of +2. So if Dykstra has his lead, he has a 90% chance to steal second. So I will set the stealing strategy back to "aggressive". I am also putting back the "steal more" option that I had removed on Ron Leflore, my most dangerous pinch runner.

Another huge thing I consider when organizing my lineup on a daily basis as allowed by the playoffs schedule is whether my lead-off hitter can "attract" a hold--whether he will be held if he reaches first base. You need to know that there are some rather important benefits in having your runner held at first base, well any base actually. Double plays possibilities are diminished, batting average increases. So with Pudge in the lineup, I eliminated the option of having someone like Sheffield hitting lead-off. Sheffield has a "star", which normally triggers a hold at first. But his first steal number is 15, so without holding, with Pudge behind the plate and any pitcher not-named Scott on the mound, Sheffield steal number would have not been high enough in order to automatically attract a hold. Bottom-line here is that, I would very rarely lead off a lineup with a runner who, after the hold combination from the pitcher and the catcher, would not have a lead steal number of 12 or above. So this explains why Dykstra led off the whole series.Tonight, facing Scott, I could have Sheffield or Harper leading off since both would be held when reaching first base. But since Scott gives up so much on-base vs lh, I will lead-off with Dykstra, as mentioned above.

Dykstra
Harper
Alou
Sheffield
Schmidt
Bagwell
Tamargo
Alfonzo
Rollins


Harper is a natural #2 tonight, with Scott giving so much more on-base vs lh. My opponent has no right-handed specialist, so I can follow Dykstra and Harper by a loaded serving of right-handed hitters. Sheffield being my best hitter among them, I will reserve him the 4th slot. My 2 best hitters are then Schmidt and Bagwell, so in theory they should be occupying the 3rd and 5th slots, but there is several arguments that pulls me in choosing Alou to hit 3rd. First Alou has a very bad -11 clutch, and hitters in the 3rd slot have the least chance, in percentages, to hit in a clutch situation (hitting #3 avoids you any cluch situation during the first inning). Second he has a rather low gbA chance. Third, my opponent go-to reliever is Wagner, a lefty, so I am tempted to use Bagwell a bit lower in the lineup and increase the probabilities that he faces Wagner twice. The idea of having Bagwell hitting 7th, in front of Tamargo even crossed my mind, Tamargo on-base vs Scott is almost as good as Bagwell, but Bagwell still has the far edge in power, and I don't want him to hit too far behind Sheffield.

"Aggressive mode" on the Strategy page really means that Hal will be aggressive to follow your instructions.

NOW I GET IT ! Thank you.

Great reading Marc! One question, it has always been my belief that HAL will hold all asterisk base stealers no matter what. In fact, in my first season here I had Y Molina and wrote to support after a hit was allowed due to holding on a runner that I wouldn't have bothered holding with Molina. I believe they said they were "looking into it", but for now astererisk base stealers are always held. I cut Molina for a better hitting catcher (why pay for an arm you're not deriving full advantage from?) and ended up winning my fist division title.

Another thing I look at every day is the pitcher/catcher combination. My opponent has Pudge, with his monster -5 arm. So in most games, my opponent had a combination of -7 when holding one of my runner at first. Under these circumstances, I set my stealing strategy to very conservative. But again, tonight is different, because Mike Scott has a hold of +7, for a overall combination of +2. So if Dykstra has his lead, he has a 90% chance to steal second. So I will set the stealing strategy back to "aggressive". I am also putting back the "steal more" option that I had removed on Ron Leflore, my most dangerous pinch runner.

Aggressive stealing and steal more will not increase your stealing of 2nd base much but it will increase the attempts on third base and home plate and the number of outs at second. From my studying of this issue aggressive means HAL will go as long is there is a better than 55% chance of being successful. From a run optimization aspect anything less than 70% is costing you runs over the long term. There are only 3 settings for stealing I utilize, Very Conservative, Conservative and normal.

Here are two teams that both had stealing teams in a league, the first one I think had stealing set to normal and resulted in 68% success and contributed to the poor record, was an interesting team in that was 51-30 at home the exact same as my team but a total disaster on the road. My team was set to very conservative all year and ended with 84% success and second in the league in steals anyway. What you would want is for Dykstra to steal if he has the lead, conservative steal will do that more often than not and he will go, what he will not go is go the second time without a check no matter what, which will happen with aggressive, along with stealing third and home more often.
http://365.strat-o-matic.com/team/1437283
http://365.strat-o-matic.com/team/1437289

The raiders with their success ratio had 50 more outs than me on the base paths. In general on my teams I aim for a 75-80 percent success rate. The catcher's and pitcher's ability are automatically accounted for in using conservative, it is the success rate that changes.

Hey Steve, you mean that the SOM management told you that runners with a star are always held? Because I could think of another reason why a hit would occur, like the infield playing in. My data here come from the CD-ROM: Runners were not held if their rating was under 12.

Thanks gkhd11, I will think about it and will come back to you

Hey Steve, you mean that the SOM management told you that runners with a star are always held? Because I could think of another reason why a hit would occur, like the infield playing in. My data here come from the CD-ROM: Runners were not held if their rating was under 12.

Thanks gkhd11, I will think about it and will come back to you

That was about 6 years ago, but I'm almost certain their response was all asterisk stealers are always held. I even responded with "well I got Molina so I wouldn't have to hold everyone on". That was when they responded that "that was interesting" and they would ""look into it"

My last post: we won the Finals with a 3-1 win in game 6. Millwood carried a no-hitter through the 6 inning, and he was hooked at the very first single he gave. That's how aggressive Hal goes when you select quick hook not limited any F-rating. Having Millwood at home saved from one homerun, but we would probably have won in any stadium.

I changed my stealing mode on Team Strategy Page on Normal instead of aggressive. I think gkhd11 got it right when he said that would have risky with guys trying to steal 3rd