My closer, 1984, Willie Hernandez, keeps getting rocked every time he takes the mound.  He enters the game 100% and is on a pace to finish with fewer innings than he actually pitched that year. I have him set to go 20 pitches.  His ERA is 5.52 and he has more blown saves than saves.  The last four times out he has given up 2, 3, 0 2, and 5 runs!  The real Willie Hernandez had a fantastic year and won the Cy Young award.  But the SIM version is a nightmare.   I'm afraid to put him back out there, but without his innings, my bullpen is toast.  Is this just a coincidence, or is there something going on that I can fix?  Is there something wrong with the sim, or my settings?   Without an effective closer, this team is going nowhere.

What cap are you playing at? It matters because the lineups Hernadez faced in real life probably come in at an average of $30 million is WIS money. Even at an $80 million cap, he's going to be facing much better hitters, and the higher the cap, the better the hitter.

That said, contrarian is correct in the fact that the only stats that matter are OAV#, BB/9#, K/9#, HR/9# and a few others. These are the stats that matter when selecting any pitcher. They will be used in the WIS formula for ABS against the hitters, AVG#, OBP#, SLG#, and the various hitting #s (HR/100AB# etc.).

Real life saves play no part in determining a closer on this site, just as real life wins play no part in the success of starting pitchers. That said, with your sample size of the past 4 games, it's really too small of stretch of games to tell how he's going to perform.

If you are looking to use his innings, set him as Setup A available in the 7th or later and go with no closer. In close games, he'll act as a closer if you have no one setup in the closer role.

It's a $110M cap, so much better offenses than OLs.  In 39 games so far, he's allowed 0 or 1 run in 30 of them.  Of the 35 runs he's given up, 14 have come while pitching under 90%, and 9 of those at 75% or less.  He's pitched 2/3 of his IP at home in Weeghman, which is a hitters park.  He's got a nice 3.12 ERA on the road, and 7.07 ERA at home.

Yes, he's had two bad blow-ups recently when entering the game at 100% (5 ER and 6 ER) but those will happen occasionally.  In the 6 ER game he threw 35 pitches so he probably gave up some of those runs while pitching through in-game fatigue. 

Keep him under 30 pitches and close to 100% and he should be just fine over a longer timeframe.  But at $110M those offenses will still get to him sometimes, and it only takes a few bad games to make a reliever's stats look bad.