I am realizing I don't actually know the answer to this question. I know that Sparky chooses your lowest OAV pitcher when picking from a bunch of pitchers with the same role.

Joe Blow .200 oav
Joe Suck .210 oav
Joe Vacuum .220 oav

Joe Blow will always be picked first. But let's say Joe Suck is a lefty and there is a lefty hitter due up. Does Sparky give more consideration to Joe Suck? I guess I always thought he did but now I'm not so sure.

Good question, and I don't know the answer. Somewhere in the Knowledge Base there is an article that implies - or maybe even directly states - that it does matter, but (a) I don't know if that is accurate (b) I don't know exactly how it is incorporated. How much OAV would Sparky sacrifice to get the platoon advantage? 5 points? 10?

There's probably a way to test this...or maybe admin would answer a ticket on that question?

OK, I put in a ticket. We'll see what they say.

I'd be very interested in the definitive answer to this question. I know you can get around the OAV default to a large extent by fine tuning

Oops, by fine tuning innings available. I assume Sparky uses all of the setup A pitchers before any pitcher labeled setup B. I hope so.

Posted by gbakker on 3/8/2016 4:26:00 PM (view original):
Oops, by fine tuning innings available. I assume Sparky uses all of the setup A pitchers before any pitcher labeled setup B. I hope so.

I don't think that's true. In some situations (losing, maybe?) the SUB will come in first.

From the KB (emphasis mine):

The A/B designation is an additional control for setting pitcher usage. An A designation will almost always be used before a B designation of the same role, e.g. if you have one pitcher set to Setup A and another set to Setup B, the Setup A would receive priority in a setup situation.

Thank you!

The only way to get Sparky to reliably use Pitchers to gain a platoon advantage is to set all your relievers as right or left specialists. If you always want a platoon advantage, you will also need low pitch count and high pull settings.

Zubinsum, that would be pretty clever or crazy or brilliant, not sure which. Has anyone ever tried anything this radical?

I used a left/right specialists for a whole season in a 1931 progressive league and sparky never used either pitcher.

Contrarian23's pinned thread on bullpen usage:

https://www.whatifsports.com/forums/Posts.aspx?TopicID=452075

Posted by italyprof on 3/9/2016 5:39:00 PM (view original):
Zubinsum, that would be pretty clever or crazy or brilliant, not sure which. Has anyone ever tried anything this radical?

It doesn't work very well. The basic problem is that Sparky seems to prioritize the role over the pitch count - that is, unless your opponent has 4+ guys in a row that bat the same way, your relievers tend to get pulled pretty fast, even if you do set their pitch counts to something higher (for example, 15-20, which would be fairly typical for a Setup guy). Consequently, Sparky will tend to burn through your bullpen every game. I experimented with it one time with a deep bullpen team in the middle of the season. IIRC, I had 9 bullpen arms and 6+ of them were used in 5 of the 7 games I left the bullpen set up that way. So even with something close to the largest reasonable bullpen size, appearance fatigue was going to become a real problem in a hurry if I'd stuck with that configuration. I suppose it could work if your rotation was something like the near-700 inning Lady Baldwin + Silver King and you could reliably depend on 7+ innings from your starters nearly every game you could use 5 or 6 guys set to the specialist roles and maybe have some success with it. But given any sort of normal rotation, where 5-6 inning starts are going to happen, you'll be in trouble. You can do starters + long relievers + specialists, but that doesn't work out great in the late innings. At least, I'm not happy with how pitchers are selected.

Posted by dahsdebater on 3/9/2016 9:18:00 PM (view original):

Posted by italyprof on 3/9/2016 5:39:00 PM (view original):
Zubinsum, that would be pretty clever or crazy or brilliant, not sure which. Has anyone ever tried anything this radical?

It doesn't work very well. The basic problem is that Sparky seems to prioritize the role over the pitch count - that is, unless your opponent has 4+ guys in a row that bat the same way, your relievers tend to get pulled pretty fast, even if you do set their pitch counts to something higher (for example, 15-20, which would be fairly typical for a Setup guy). Consequently, Sparky will tend to burn through your bullpen every game. I experimented with it one time with a deep bullpen team in the middle of the season. IIRC, I had 9 bullpen arms and 6+ of them were used in 5 of the 7 games I left the bullpen set up that way. So even with something close to the largest reasonable bullpen size, appearance fatigue was going to become a real problem in a hurry if I'd stuck with that configuration. I suppose it could work if your rotation was something like the near-700 inning Lady Baldwin + Silver King and you could reliably depend on 7+ innings from your starters nearly every game you could use 5 or 6 guys set to the specialist roles and maybe have some success with it. But given any sort of normal rotation, where 5-6 inning starts are going to happen, you'll be in trouble. You can do starters + long relievers + specialists, but that doesn't work out great in the late innings. At least, I'm not happy with how pitchers are selected.

it didn't work well for me either, but I do know someone that was able to get it to work. The keys are:
1) sparky prioritized set-ups and long men before specialists, so for any given inning where you want a specialist to be used, you can't assign other relievers..
2) pitch counts need to be pretty low to force reliever changes.
3) pull needs to be very high so that if a runner reaches base, sparky pulls the pitcher and plays the platoon match-up.

of course with most top owners choosing all or near all Switch Hitting players for their lineups this novel idea becomes somewhat moot as a way to gain the +5% R on R or L on L advantage.

You're actually talking about the opposite problem from what I had zub - I couldn't get Sparky to NOT pull my relievers.