HAL The Pitching Coach

relative noob: have seen a few mentions on here of letting HAL determine all bullpen roles and usage - has anyone had good results with that? (I have not)

I know of a guy who doesn't touch any of his settings and does great. As for me, I've had really great success with assigning a lefty and righty specialist.

Hard to quantify, all very anecdotal, but it depends on what type of pitching staff you have. If you're using the four aces and very cheap relievers, seems logical to quick hook relievers based on their strengths/weaknesses. If you have a cheaper starting rotation, makes sense to have a better bullpen with settings that are logical. I'd hate to leave everything up to Hal, i think micromanaging the team is in our DNA as owners, right?

Haha--I can't argue with Hack's insight into our proclivities.

Yeah I am one of those who prefers a hands off approach. Mostly to cure heartburn. There was some discussion on this a while ago after the latest bullpen v3 algo was implemented.
The discussion was about degrees of freedom for AI decision space versus a human desperately trying to prevent HAL from doing stupid AI tricks.
But in the end it is all about preventing HAL from the stupidity so as Hack said--look at context.

I had done a small non-scientific sample of initially a dozen+ teams with mostly hands off approach. I found I was less likely to get annoyed daily, so that was my data-driven decision point.

So, I don't specify any roles with a couple exceptions depending on context.
Generally I will use Mopup and I will set avoids and quick hook vs slow hook (which is proxy for "L-R specialists"). Sometimes I will use "not before" type settings for relievers and do not relieve before for starters. But back to Hack--it depends on the team and the cap.

If you look at the PbP results, you can see whose bullpens are set how, and if they are getting good results, it is easy to try and then adapt.

I have found that NOT assigning roles works best for me. Just give HAL some viable options and often times he will actually do the right thing.

But, as always ... Strong starting pitching is the best cure for Relief woes.

That being said, I literally NEVER spend more than 10 M on my bullpen, ever. In DH leagues, I often will have one decent $2 mill reliever and 2 for each side slanted relievers. The vast majority of the time, HAL will use the "decent" reliever for most situations. In non-DH leagues, I always have two decent $2 mill relievers.