- Posts: 2251
- Joined: Sat Aug 25, 2012 3:53 am
I have had this issue for some time--I use defensive subbing on a lot of teams and what I have noticed is that HAL just is not very good at making decisions if some of the players are already in the game due to injury or pinch hitting, etc. I can think of multiple times where I have had guys like Duke Snider end up catching or other guys playing out of position to honor a def sub or pinch hit request. Hal will seemingly randomly switch guys from inning to inning from RF to LF and then back again for no apparent reason. Often times there is a much more rational option on the table (typically leave the defense alone) which Hal passes on for the odd substitution.
The ONLY explanation I can think of is that there is some variation structured into the algorithm to generate some level of "discretion" (really randomness) to HALs decisions which makes him think such decisions make sense.