The Big Picture: The Pitching Issue with ATG9

I filled out that poll. I said then what I'll say now. If you want to limit the abuse of Dale Murray, make his salary $10. Then if someone wants to get 300 innings out of him, go for it. I don't see how the super reliever is any different than having 4 starters pitch to F0 with little or no bullpen.

Does anyone else get the uneasy feeling that when everyone runs to one side of the boat, maybe there’s some opportunity on the other side?

So let’s discuss a counterpoint.

My personal feelings include the desire for a simple explanation as to how the black box pitching rules work. But my motivation is completely selfish. Once I know what the exact rules are, I will launch a boatload of teams to find out just how I will exploit the weaknesses. HAL, who is all knowing, Peace Be Upon Him, cares nothing about my feelings, and He apparently will not make my goal of finding his self-destruct button an easy task.

What I’m hearing quite a few managers say, to me, sounds like “return the game to the way it was easier for me to win.” My hand is up too! I’m a comfort zone person as much as the next guy. I never clamored on about super relievers or changing the pitching rules.

Having said that, I want to try and reframe the argument from “Take away my uncertainty” to “How do we figure this out?” I mean, in my opinion, the joy of finding things out has to be one of the larger reasons I’ve been playing this game for 20+ years.

So, (believe me, strongly against my better judgment), let me throw out a team that HAL will most certainly lead down the path of greatest difficulty, having posted it mid-season.

https://365.strat-o-matic.com/team/1678710

This isn’t a Hey Mom, look at me! thing. It’s just one attempt to crack the new code, violating many sacred held beliefs about what you can and can’t do with a pitching staff along the way (the forum boards inspire me like that). I’m pretty sure it won’t end up this way, so I’ll mention it here at Game 51: Team first place, +46 run diff, third in pitching, fourth in offense.

For counter-counter pointers, naysayers and Karens, I will announce loudly:

I AM NOT SAYING I HAVE FOUND THE WAY.

But I hope we can agree, it kinda sorta is A way.

With so many great managers making so many great teams, shouldn’t we at least try to figure this out a little more before throwing up the white flag? I have at least a half dozen more ideas I want to pursue. This is such a great opportunity, I find it hard to imagine that so few out there can’t be convinced to be of a similar mind.

And I now look forward to days ahead when we’ll all complain about cheap starters and “totally unrealistic” R1 relievers!

(Okay, probably not, but I hope I made a small point at least! )

All good J-Pav...maybe a league link instead, for context? Hard for me to understand how the approach fits unless I can see the league.

Your counterpoint is a great one. I certainly don't want the next great over-reaction to occur that is even worse. That's why just repricing--regularly--could be a great way to smooth out the ripples no matter what the game engine is doing. This game is all about value, unlike the C&D play, so pricing is central.

I don't think the angle is to make it easier to win--surely for every winner there is a loser, so that is zero sum. Heck ATG9 has been very good to me, better than any other set--partly because pitching is a lot easier to manage now. There are other ways to manage pitching, yes, but the lowest risk approach with the least amount of negative variation is max salary to stud starters til their arms fall off, with relievers that are appropriate for the cap, which depends on personal taste. It is simply the most economical way to achieve results. And for my part--giving HAL a lot of latitude and options works well--not tying his hands too much.

It really is just that there is no reason to force unpredictable decisions into the pitching algorithm such that it makes most of the pitchers unusable at most caps. Note that the changes also changed the interface--limiting settings, which is part of this.

There are a number of black box-isms and max rules that are of unknown impact--but that is another story.

League link:

https://365.strat-o-matic.com/league/459696

Just lost two of three, so a little better than the sweep I was anticipating.

Tempting HAL is not smart!

I know, right?! Anyways…

The line of thinking was:

HAL can’t screw up a relief situation if he has no bad options to turn to. So I tried to build off just that one simple idea.

This was an anti-experiment which I started after watching a “Give HAL lots of $2 RP options” work pretty well, but I wanted to try and find another way of my own.

I think R1 relievers are underpriced if you can coax 162 innings out of them. Each of my pitchers was purposefully designed to pitch an equal amount of innings (one inning per game [on average], both SP and RP), with Sutton as an add-on to face the RHB teams and take some load (but not necessarily equal weight) off the other starters.

(As an unrelated aside, I think the ability to have six S1/R1 pitchers throw one inning each and every game would be hugely AWESOME.)

Anyway, I started to get the uneasy feeling that behind the scenes, Strat was quietly dismantling the four studs set to F0 strategy and I wanted to start trying out some new approaches.

I know, right?! Anyways…

The line of thinking was:

HAL can’t screw up a relief situation if he has no bad options to turn to. So I tried to build off just that one simple idea.

I have tried this approach a couple of times and it failed miserably for me. Then again, I used R3 & R4 guys so they wouldn't get gassed as quickly, but nevertheless, it went over like a cement cloud.

J-Pav--I agree on giving HAL options and have posited here that less is more when it comes to specification under the current algorithm.

I think many strategies should be open for us. This particular strategy of relying on the bullpen, at least under the current v3, can run into some difficulties for me, but that may be because of how I put the team together, which is kind of your point. Relievers are not available every day, and will unpredictably be unavailable, regardless of their cost, if they throw more pitches than HAL estimated for their fatigued limit, regardless of their endurance rating. This can create a cycle of constant fatigue. It also can put the team in a position of catch-up early in the game, which can also affect how HAL manages overall.

In your league, I would say that it is largely a deadball-ish league, so I view it through the lens of potentially a special case which may not get stressed to its limit.
I also note that there are many players that I was surprised to see on those pitcher park rosters in a league of many pitcher parks. So it will be interesting to see how they roll out. For instance, I would never think of using Garvey, Baines, Sosa, ARod, et al on a deadball or nearly deadball team in a league of predominantly pitching stadiums--especially at 80M.

For a pitcher park, that's a big investment in low OB%, wasted #s, non-productive outs, etc in order to gain a little natural power. But I may certainly have a blind spot here, so will watch those approaches to see if there is something novel in it that is not immediately obvious.

Here’s the basic problem, I think, with Strat365 vs real baseball.

A real team uses, what, 25+ pitchers over the course of a season? In Strat you can get away with nine. It is unrealistic for Strat to implement 25 man pitcher rosters, so what should they do? Simplistically, each pitcher in Strat really represents say, three real life pitchers. So each pitcher should have something approaching the usage/fatigue level of at least two and maybe three “real” pitchers. But when Strat managers view the stats, they say Look! This is totally unrealistic!! But actually, it isn’t. If you simply attached three names to one identical card, the numbers would look pleasing to the eye in the stats, but the results would be exactly the same as with the guy whose one “name” represents that card.

So in a way, I’m completely in agreement that Strat should stop trying to manipulate the pitcher rules in order to create “realism” to the managers eye, simply let the pricing correct any unsatisfactory inbalances, and just accept the fact that the numbers in no way, shape, or form will ever appear “realistic”.

The point of my earlier post is that, since we have to play with these “new rules” now, we should do everything possible to see how we can make them work before throwing up our hands. For me currently, the search for new approaches is outweighing the frustrations of my old comfort zone. I’d hate to think that maybe Strat was actually moving in the right direction, but I was just too set in my old ways to see it.

A real team uses, what, 25+ pitchers over the course of a season? In Strat you can get away with nine. It is unrealistic for Strat to implement 25 man pitcher rosters, so what should they do? Simplistically, each pitcher in Strat really represents say, three real life pitchers. So each pitcher should have something approaching the usage/fatigue level of at least two and maybe three “real” pitchers. But when Strat managers view the stats, they say Look! This is totally unrealistic!! But actually, it isn’t. If you simply attached three names to one identical card, the numbers would look pleasing to the eye in the stats, but the results would be exactly the same as with the guy whose one “name” represents that card.

So in a way, I’m completely in agreement that Strat should stop trying to manipulate the pitcher rules in order to create “realism” to the managers eye, simply let the pricing correct any unsatisfactory inbalances, and just accept the fact that the numbers in no way, shape, or form will ever appear “realistic”.

Absolutely, I couldn't agree more!