This is my favorite progressive league team - I took it over in 1964 and it is now 1967. It is finally showing signs of life and I have recently made a couple of trades to shore up the starting pitching which already had Jim Kaat, Denny Lemaster and Tommy John. I was able to add Jim McGlothlin and Mel Queen. 

 I have a bullpen that is passable, not bad but not great: a couple of long releivers in Bob Shaw and Frank Bertaina, a good closer in John Wyatt, three setup men in Hank Aguirre (not too bad) , Bob Hendley, and Fred Lasher. It will get me through the season and has been surprisingly effective but is not made up of world beaters. 

So here is my question: do I move Tommy John to the bullpen, to have a first rate setup A that can pitch very frequently, backing up what are now four good starters?

The four I would have include one with good IP (Kaat at 264), but the others hover around 200 IP - so if I move John to the bullpen, I need to set their pitch counts to around 5-6 IP (say 85-90 pitches) when they are the best pitchers on the staff with the partial exception of closer Wyatt. Of course I could then count on John to come in as setup. Or do I stick with a five man rotation, which puts little stress on the starters, and count on the okay if not great bullpen as currently constituted ? 

Here are the RL numbers of the starting rotation as currently configured (five starters):

Pitcher	Role	%	G	W-L	SV	IP/162	ERA	OAV	WHIP	K/9	BB/9	$
Jim Kaat '67 (L)		100	42	16-13	0	264.0	3.04	.260	1.18	7.22	1.44	6.12M
Denny Lemaster '67 (L)		90 (96)	31	9-9	0	216.0	3.34	.229	1.19	6.20	3.01	5.08M
Jim McGlothlin '67 (R)		79 (94)	32	12-8	0	199.0	2.96	.226	1.11	6.26	2.56	5.18M
Mel Queen '67 (R)	Starter #4	100	31	14-8	0	196.0	2.76	.215	1.06	7.10	2.40	5.71M
Tommy John '67 (L)		94 (100)	31	10-13	0	179.0	2.47	.219	1.07	5.56	2.38	4.89M

You want to get the most IP out of your best pitchers. Having just one as a Setup A might not do that. I'd actually be tempted to put Kaat, Lemaster, and McGlothlin in a 3-man rotation and both Queen and John as Setup A, with the ability to come in as early as the 5th and high pitch counts. You'll get 5+ IP/game out of Kaat and 4 out of the others and your big setup A crew will come in for the second half of the game when it's at all close but will stay out when it's a blow-out either way. Lots of chances for PHs then too if this isn't a DH league. Just my 2 cents!

I would leave the 5 man rotation and click the use starters in relief button.

Any RP you have that is better than your starters set to setup A available 8th inning.

Any RP you have worse than your starters put at mopup.

The "bad" RP will then only appear if it is before the 8th inning AND your starters are not rested. 

Thanks both of you crazyamos and TJ. Have to think about it. I could experiment with each approach as it is early enough in the season and while I hope to compete this season, it would be a long shot (team should improve over the next couple of seasons, but is just reaching decent competitiveness), so with expectations not that high a little risk taking is not out of the question. 

get the maximum innings from your best pitchers and have some of your best at Setup/Closer. doesn't matter how you accomplish those goals, move pitchers around as much as you want. When choose pitchers roles I never think that I'm stuck with those roles all season.

Another good point, thanks rbow923.