Does HAL understand the instruction, "Avoid LHB?"

I'm wondering if all the bullpen settings are illusionary -- they don't really matter. And they don't often work. So why not just get four decent relievers and some value starters, and quit worrying about match-ups?

Well if you play in a 140 million dollar league with 2 s6 starters 2s7 and have two specialists, a two inning reliever and Bruce Sutter and expect that to work perfectly for 450 innings of relief work then you are going to be disappointed that those 450 innings are not distributed into 162 units exactly as you designed --- 250 for Sutter 150 for Abernathy and 25 innings each for the specialists. But if Flint Michigan standards are met you get enough use of Sutter to allow the extra offense that is accumulated on the back of salary savings and quality early inning work of the s6 andS7 starters to allow the cheap bullpen to be good enough with the offense afforded them, you might be concerned when they come to your town and party on down with your pitching staff.

I personally have no clue about the bullpen in ATG-9. Truly none.

But I love the discussion. Some of the posts are just funny, and I need that! We all need that, I think.

But several of the posts are also very insightful--and probably express as good a grasp of this new elusive bullpen dynamic as I've seen. So thanks!

I am far from having figured out this new normal when it comes to bullpens, but here are my early thoughts:

In a NON DH league, you need 4 "decent" or better relievers. 2 million or higher, unless the league's ballpark makeup dictates you can get by with a guy like Ben Wade. I don't believe the Sambito's and Linzy's of the game can survive standing on their own. With the new rules it seems you burn through relievers much quicker meaning those guys end up facing a lot of guys you don't want them to.

As for the Avoid LHB or RHP ... I just dropped Linzy in a league because he had faced 20 lefties and ONLY ONE righty batter. Clearly HAL and I weren't seeing eye to eye on that one. I dropped him in favor of a lefty leaning righty reliever.

In a DH league you can get by with 2 "decent" relievers and 2 "lesser" relievers because they won't see nearly as many innings. If you have S8 and S9 starters, you can get 50% or better complete games unless the pitchers suck.

Guys designated for Setup , Middle Men & Mopup definitely see the most innings. So if you're trying to drive innings to certain guys, use them in those rolls. The problem is don't you want your best reliever acting as your closer?

Like I said, I don't have this figured out by any stretch of the imagination, these are simply my early observations and thoughts.

I used Linzy and Sambito a lot in ATG8 and had some success even at 140M.

Now with the new bullpen settings I'm afraid to try them in anything other than 80M. The new bullpen settings seem to be a puzzle to me, so I've tried to have an innings eater in relief just to pick up those extra middle innings. Guys like Regan and Radatz.