thanks for the tips ranger!

Thats a good idea I have been using a closer the last couple seasons and seem to me that they never pitch many innings and other guys always end up with more saves then  I would care for anyway. 11 picthers sounds right but is there a reason to have one set as mopup? other then in the minors I have yet to have a mopup guy.  I ask because couple of you said mopup a few others said 5sp,2la 4su. I am leaning more along that setup.

Interesting discussion.  Here is what I do though I may be looking at pitching RP more.

I usually go with more pitchers 13, sometimes 12 or 14.  
I always give a RP a day off if they go more than 1 inning or 2 days in a row.
On my bench I have a C and a utility player that subs in at  SS, CF, 2B, 3B.  plus a 3B/RF AAAA type

I will be trying less P and use RP more often on 1 of my teams.

Posted by b_rad052 on 1/2/2013 2:01:00 AM (view original):
Thats a good idea I have been using a closer the last couple seasons and seem to me that they never pitch many innings and other guys always end up with more saves then  I would care for anyway. 11 picthers sounds right but is there a reason to have one set as mopup? other then in the minors I have yet to have a mopup guy.  I ask because couple of you said mopup a few others said 5sp,2la 4su. I am leaning more along that setup.

I never use a mop up at the ML level. If the guy isn't good enough to trust as a setup B, then I don't use him.

Mopup guys eat innings in blowout games.  No need to burn a good arm in blowouts, save the good arms for the next day's game.

FWIW, my mopup guys are typically good enough to use as a LR, but are usually the weakest of all the SP/LR types on my staff and are inexpensive.  I'll burn them in the mopup role.

I guess this makes sense. In my experience the worst relievers are used in blowouts already. It is of course possible that my worst pitcher was used recently, so reserving a scrub for useless innings might every now and then save a better pitcher from being used in blowouts, but I would rather roll with 10 pitchers and use the scrub's spot for my bench.

I like to aim for an 11-man staff if I can reliably use a 4-man rotation.  A 4-man rotation is my primary goal, and I usually have 1 LR that can spot start and a Mopup for the blowout games.  I'll then have 3 SUAs that can pitch the majority of innings and 2 SUBs, one of which is often a LH Specialist (and will only pitch ~30 innings/season, but they are often very good innings).  If I go with a 12-man staff there's usually a 50'ish STAM guy with lower durability that I use as a SUA. 

Posted by rangerup on 12/27/2012 10:59:00 AM (view original):
Being no pucker factor in HBD, closers are pretty much a waste of time.  Even with a lights out low stamina/durability guy, I usually look to trade them if I can, as other owners will put more value in a "closer" than I will so I can get a better return for my team. 

Closers are stupid in a sim game because of situations like this: Hardball Dynasty – Fantasy Baseball Sim Games - Player Profile: Luis Pena

This guy is a career closer in one of my worlds, and he has an outstanding amount of saves.  Big deal, he should have been a career SuA, giving 150 innings a year, instead of the lights out 40 he has been giving.  His owner has been sucking up the additional 100 innings with a lesser arm, and it is costing him games.

I kind of disagree with this. Now, keep in mind, I have 4 teams and none of them have a designated closer, but given the aforementioned low stamina/durability guys I would use them in a closer role. Mainly because in that last inning of a close game, you know the other team is going to give you everything they have to win. Pinch runners, Pinch hitters, etc., so when possible, it seems to make sense to have a really high quality pitcher available for those situations to be able to give you a chance to get strikeouts and double plays. In those cases those guys are not capable of too much more than 30-50 innings anyway, so its not like there is a great opportunity cost.

How do you set pinch hit/run settings to a certain inning? My teams commonly pinch hit/run late in games, especially the 9th.

I was thinking about player rest.  Pinch hit/run is only a scale from never to very frequent.