Posted by timf on 1/23/2011 10:01:00 PM (view original):
This is actually a good point. Alot of guys on here want the SIM to mimic MLB as best as possible, otherwise it wouldn't really be a simulation would it? How many big league managers (guys who know what they are doing) would pull their SP with a no-hitter or perfect game in the 9th inning? Hell, even in the 7th or 8th inning a manager will leave his guy in there until he gives up a hit, just so he can say he gave his guy a shot to do something that history suggests is very rare. You can argue the other side all you want, but I don't know if there is one instance in the history of baseball where a manager pulled his SP in the 9th with a perfect game going, just because the pitcher has hit his 'target pitch count'. Would I be ****** off if my guy got hurt because he was left in after he reached his max pitch count? Probably. But not if he was throwing a perfect game or no-hitter because I understand that if I was managing I would leave him in there to finish his business.
The real-life manager would leave his pitcher in there mainly to give him the chance for an accomplishment that he can tell his grandchildren about...and also because pulling him may create some locker room dischord.
But locker room unrest and player nostalgia are not applicable to the HBD world, obviously. I understand the desire to make the game as close to lifelike as possible, but baseball is a game that incorporates such human emotion, it will never be 100% lifelike, for reasons such as this.
I'm never going to sit my grandkids down to tell them about the time the computer-generated Slash McCray took a no-hitter into the 9th in Frank Torre World, only to have the computer-generated Hulk O'Rourke dash his dreams with a statistically unlikely walk-off dinger. And if I did, they'd put me in a home, where I would belong.