Changes in ATG9 ???

Are there more unwanted attempts at stealing bases than before? No insight, but it seems like that may be true.

I haven't seen this. I'm about a third of the way through a Ty Cobb season and he's only tried stealing third once with stealing set to conservative.

Is the feature that when only carrying two catchers and one is injured the other one in subsequent games cannot be injured still in place? That may be critical on whether I use the 600 AB Pudge or the other Pudge that looks slightly better hitter but has the 4 injury rating.

Yes, HAL won't injure your last C, but he will pinch hit or pinch run for him leaving a Fred McMullen type catching with no C rating.

"Somebody explain to me why you need more than 2 roles per reliever unless you're using a super reliever strategy."


Tied and late
Behind and late
Closer

All differentiated by as little as 1 run.

I agree.
The roles that have to be left unfilled leave HAL to his BP debauchery.
With a Pen of Arroyo, Quiz and Motte, with 2 specialists, there's still too much room for HAL initiatives, even leaving Middle and Setup open.

Tied and late
Behind and late
Closer

All differentiated by as little as 1 run.

I never use any of those roles so I guess we'll agree to disagree.

I will say there's a fine line between "this is the way I used to do it" and "bullpen logic is now broken". So please explain how dropping "behind/late" from that trio causes HAL's bullpen logic to go off the rails? You're already behind so by definition you can't say HAL lost you the game.

I agree.
The roles that have to be left unfilled leave HAL to his BP debauchery.
With a Pen of Arroyo, Quiz and Motte, with 2 specialists, there's still too much room for HAL initiatives, even leaving Middle and Setup open.

I don't understand. You've got your specialists defined plus 3 good relievers and you can't get HAL to use the 3 guys properly unless they can be assigned 3 roles each?

I guess we manage differently because Middle and Setup are the ones I always set. That usually gets you through the 8th inning (ahead or behind) and from there my attitude is once the 9th inning hits it's all hands on deck. Usually my setup guy is still going strong and can at least start the 9th, if not finish it. If there's a guy I don't want pitching in a close game that's what mopup is for.

I agree.
The roles that have to be left unfilled leave HAL to his BP debauchery.
With a Pen of Arroyo, Quiz and Motte, with 2 specialists, there's still too much room for HAL initiatives, even leaving Middle and Setup open.

I don't understand. You've got your specialists defined plus 3 good relievers and you can't get HAL to use the 3 guys properly unless they can be assigned 3 roles each?

I guess we manage differently because Middle and Setup are the ones I always set. That usually gets you through the 8th inning (ahead or behind) and from there my attitude is once the 9th inning hits it's all hands on deck. Usually my setup guy is still going strong and can at least start the 9th, if not finish it. If there's a guy I don't want pitching in a close game that's what mopup is for.

It's a "Behind/late" or "Tied/Late" and nothing is set there. HAL has options and picks a specialist that gets rocked when a rested Arroyo or Quiz would be better. I've had Dave Roberts pitch more than an inning and turn a tie game into a 5 run loss in 6 hitters. When an RP comes in and the role isn't specified in the play by play, that's HAL making a decision.
From my experience, Mopup is a role that does nothing to exclude that pitcher from entering game regardless of situation.

I have no problem with the changes in pricing you just adapt- I also have no problem with the top relievers being repriced and there usage limited somewhat- I do think the lack of bullpen control was a big misstep- no reason to tie our hands with bullpen management

I agree.
The roles that have to be left unfilled leave HAL to his BP debauchery.
With a Pen of Arroyo, Quiz and Motte, with 2 specialists, there's still too much room for HAL initiatives, even leaving Middle and Setup open.

I don't understand. You've got your specialists defined plus 3 good relievers and you can't get HAL to use the 3 guys properly unless they can be assigned 3 roles each?

I guess we manage differently because Middle and Setup are the ones I always set. That usually gets you through the 8th inning (ahead or behind) and from there my attitude is once the 9th inning hits it's all hands on deck. Usually my setup guy is still going strong and can at least start the 9th, if not finish it. If there's a guy I don't want pitching in a close game that's what mopup is for.

I don't want to be forced to have a bullpen consisting of three good relievers plus specialists. This is ATG, not the horrific game MLB became with 6 and 7 man bullpens and 3 and a half hour games. I'd like to have the option of using a bullpen with two good arms, a mediocre middle man and a mop up man. With the new settings, these four all pitch equally in any given situation.

Also, the new limitations coupled with HAL's black and white fatigue rules lead to a lot of situations where all pitchers are fatigued, so you have a $4-5M reliever coming in as F0 and giving up 10 earned runs. Again, I shouldn't be forced to have a six man bullpen to fix this - fine for the 2019 game, but not in ATG.

Hal has the logic of avoiding using your best pitchers except in high-leverage situations unless it has been told to do so. In a low-cap league you take your 3 reasonably good relief pitchers and cover middle, set-up and closer 2 deep (one other thing that is going on is your relievers are getting burned for multiple games when they pitch more than 2 innings sometimes). So youre probably reasonably covered. But even having 3 good relievers is a lot of money in a 80 milion league. And your low-dollar guys are going to come in low-leverage situations and are going to get lit up, turning close games you could win into routs.


If you have 4 aces you dont need relief and youre ok. Or maybe you go really cheap with your starters and stack your bullpen then youre probably ok, too. But what about all the teams in the middle who have decent starters but still need a significant numbers of relief innings?

I think the changes lead to more realistic reliever roles and having a deeper bullpen. The issue is where that drives the game into a limited number of strategies that work better in the game in 80 million cap leagues?
The top-heavy bullpens that used to work (just have a few guys cover everything) were not realistic nor or were really much of a strategy in the sense of being that creative or difficult to formulate. And it sounds like some managers are coming up with strategies that work. It would be interesting to see how they are dealing with those low-leverage situations wthout spending a lot of money on relief. Or maybe you just write that off?

I dont have a firm view one way or the other. I am waiting for more information. I do know that I dont know how to deal with Hal covering low-leverage situations poorly (and as Nevdully's indirectly showed down by one-run late isnt really low-leverage) without spending a lot of money on the bullpen and that only works if I am going cheap on starters. Is the game being driven towards extremes ( 4 studs vs 4 scrubs) or is there room in the middle?