if you have 3 guys who are all about as good, is there a benefit to naming one of them the "closer" and the others "setup" or just make them all setup and let the engine choose?

I know one has to make sure the innings in which they can come in make sense, 

there are advantages to NOT having a Closer.

I used to play a ton, but have been off for like 3 years - working back now in my 2nd league - how does it help to not have a closer - is it just the SIM picking the best matchup or something more subtle?

The advantage of having a closer is that you can choose which of your pitchers will close a game and likely face on average the highest leverage situations. The disadvantage is that your closer won't be available in high leverage situations that are not save or closer situations.

I hardly ever use them because Sparky will often bring in a Setup B guy instead of your closer if your Setup A guys are used/unavailable. If you use a designated closer, no matter how you set your guys up, you will have situations where you'll read a boxscore and think, "Damnit Sparky, what was that??"

In the code, closers (and mop-up men) have very specific situations where they are eligible, and leaving the 'use closer in save situations only' box unchecked does not always result in the guy coming in when you want him to, even when you think all settings will make him come in (eg, having inning available set to 7 or 8). Furthermore, the exact situations a closer will come in are never concretely stated, so I feel it's best to put similar guys as Setup A.

Posted by zubinsum on 12/18/2011 8:04:00 PM (view original):
The advantage of having a closer is that you can choose which of your pitchers will close a game and likely face on average the highest leverage situations. The disadvantage is that your closer won't be available in high leverage situations that are not save or closer situations.

This is usually my approach. The closer should still face the highest leverage (on average) so it's worth putting a guy there. But if you don't have a guy who fits, then I wouldn't try to cram them into the role. If you have 3 75ip guys then maybe you don't need to bother. If you have 2 80ip guys and a 50ip guy then that's a good way to maximize the utility of your 50ip guy.

The game seems designed to use a closer in a manner parallel to real life baseball. So my theory is if I want to win the game, when designating the "Role" fill the spot with an appropriate pitcher.

However, in open leagues it seems like Billy Beane's observation in Moneyball applies -- there are a lot of not-too-expensive guys who can fill that role (several popular cookies come to mind) and sometimes you're lucky enough to get a AAA pitcher who will serve nicely.

If you are asking wherher you should draft  a high $/IP stud to be the closer, no, that isn't necessary. If you are asking whether it is to your advantage in managing your pitching staff to have someone designated as the closer for each game, yes it is. Most of us draft 4-6 relievers who we are comfortable setting in any role in the bullpen, and fatigue issues usually dictate who is assigned to what role on a game by game basis.

Probably the league you are in has something to do with it.  As stated, in an open league perhaps letting sparky pick the best setup guy for the situation is the way to go. However, if you're in a $160 mil cap league perhaps you can afford a closer...or two.  I typically do not use the closer but have been thinking about experimenting with one in theme leagues.  But just as sparky has options to pick the best pitcher if you label all your pitchers setup A, then perhaps you need to have more than one closer for sparky to choose from as well. Has anyone experimented with setting 2 or more relievers as closers?  I would think this would be possible only in higher cap leagues.

Going with similar arguments on various forum threads, and having a bias against using closers myself, I shifted most of my teams having the whole bullpen on either setup A or setup B (it seems, correct me if I am wrong here, that unless the setup A pitchers are worn out, setup Bs usually come in only when your team is losing). 

But I found that in a lot of these teams, even when I had high IP pitchers (Steele, Nehf, Toney, Ramsey, Potter, Berry, Beene - often at least two of these) that the entire staff went into blue with some in red in no time at all. When I moved say, Nehf or Steele to Long A and Bailey or Gossage or Rivera or Eckersley to closer they were back to 100% pretty quickly. This happened on three or four teams. I am aware that there are a lot of variables at work here that I haven't had the time to analyze: frequency of high score or extra-inning games, pitch count of my starters, 3 or 4 man rotations etc. but my impression at least is that this phenomenon spread through my squads like wildfire and was spent when I moved everyone back to defined roles despite my bias against doing so. 

Since the assumption is that the setup man will pitch in around 70 game, closers in around 50 (if I remember correctly) and long relievers somewhere in between, I wonder if the explanation (again, if this was not coincidence) is that the SIM thinks that each of these setup men will pitch 70 games, 2 or more innings when in fact if you have 6 of them none will have to work that hard, but that overall staff situation is not taken into account when evaluating likely individual overuse? 

Is this a problem others trying this strategy have encountered as well? Is there a study of it? 

Your first 10-15 games or so of any season, it is very easy for you stamina stats to get out of whack.  Especially if you have a few high scoring games or extra innings one's......I once opened a season with two 17 inn games in one league, and it felt like it took forever to get everyone back in line.  The sim looks at how much they pitched so far, and figures out their pace.  So, a  couple of rapid fire appearances can wear out your staff early on.

Posted by seels on 12/21/2011 9:35:00 PM (view original):

I dunno the 50 IP closer to me is one of the best deals in the sim.  35-40 saves for $2M or even less.