I haven't played this game in a while, but usually a common noob mistake is: strength of schedule/quality of opposition. "Why did I lose 7 straight games after winning 11 out of 13?". Because opposition/park/mismatch and random (bad)luck/scheduling. If you face 3 good owners/mismatch in a row, you might lose 8 or 9 games pretty quickly (and vice-versa).

Seriously, it should just be pinned. Great stuff!

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Here's a question from a "back in the saddle" guy who used to play WIS back before the Red Sox finally won the WS in '04...

Say I want to use Stan Musial at 1b from a particular year where his primary position was OF, but his secondary is 1b. Does WIS weigh this into consideration, or can I just take his secondary defensive grades at face value?

As long as he's rated at the position, he will field according to that rating.  So you can take the secondary position grades at face value.

Also, why won't WIS let me setup a pair of pitchers as 4a and 4b? It won't let me bump them up to 3a and 3b and place my 3rd starter as the 4th, either.

I think I can answer my own question. I think they don't allow you to "rotate" 4th starters because it'd typically mean you're going to use (within the context of a 4 man rotation) a couple of guys who are approx 130 or so innings each. Those guys, by and large will be representative of long relievers/spot starters throughout the eras. So, their # of IP/G will be out of whack for what you want out of his role in the starting rotation spot "duo". I also think the reason they let you do it with the 3rd slot is because the chances are better you will use a couple of 180-200 IP guys to juggle that spot, within the context of a 3 man rotation. 180 IP guys typically have 25 starts, so combining the duo equals 50, which is more in line with a 3 man rotation.

Posted by ojo on 4/22/2015 6:42:00 PM (view original):
I think I can answer my own question. I think they don't allow you to "rotate" 4th starters because it'd typically mean you're going to use (within the context of a 4 man rotation) a couple of guys who are approx 130 or so innings each. Those guys, by and large will be representative of long relievers/spot starters throughout the eras. So, their # of IP/G will be out of whack for what you want out of his role in the starting rotation spot "duo". I also think the reason they let you do it with the 3rd slot is because the chances are better you will use a couple of 180-200 IP guys to juggle that spot, within the context of a 3 man rotation. 180 IP guys typically have 25 starts, so combining the duo equals 50, which is more in line with a 3 man rotation.

This has nothing to do with it.

The game doesn't have the programming capacity to record 8 games worth of SPs. Starter 4A/4B requires 8 games of SPs to be stored.

As to why you can't put a regular starter after a A/B, that one is still a mystery to me.

The SIM does not stop you from making poor decisions with your pitching staff.

You're saying that since the game allows for 1a/1b, 2a/2b, 3a/3b options, it therefore requires itself to store all six of them? To me, the SPs are just variables that have the potential to affect gameplay, and you as the owner can only change the 2nd upcoming game's SP, not ever the next.

What would be the need to store all 8?

uncleal,

If I read your post correctly you are implying that a rotation of Starter 1, Starter 2A, Starter 2B, Starter 3 is an inherently poor decision.  Help a newbie out.  Why?

From a newbie point of view, the system won't let you do it. You need to have your pair of 'rotating' starters be at the very end of your rotation. I have no idea why that is, to be honest.

To address your question otherwise as to it being a poor one? It's not a poor decision if you set it up as SP1, SP2, SP3A/SP3B, so long as you're paying attention to a pitcher's IP/G as well as his IP in general.

Posted by slotterhodge on 4/23/2015 12:03:00 PM (view original):
uncleal,

If I read your post correctly you are implying that a rotation of Starter 1, Starter 2A, Starter 2B, Starter 3 is an inherently poor decision.  Help a newbie out.  Why?

That's not what I said at all. I'm not even sure how that could be read that way. In fact, I wish this was possible to do.

All I'm saying is that if you can't do something in the SIM, there's a programming reason behind it (or to prevent an abusive strategy). There are no limitations in the SIM designed to prevent poor management. So "this is a bad idea" is not why something can't be done in the sim.

Posted by ojo on 4/23/2015 8:48:00 AM (view original):
You're saying that since the game allows for 1a/1b, 2a/2b, 3a/3b options, it therefore requires itself to store all six of them? To me, the SPs are just variables that have the potential to affect gameplay, and you as the owner can only change the 2nd upcoming game's SP, not ever the next.

What would be the need to store all 8?

No, I'm saying the game can only store 6 SPs of data. Not that it has to. When you use 3A/3B, the game data treats the rotation as a 6-man rotation, with the 1 and 2 starters repeated twice.

6 man rotation has: 1 2 3 4 5 6
3A/3B rotation has: 1 2 3A 1 2 3B
2/3/A/B has: 1 2A 3A 1 2B 3B
A potential 4A/4B roto would go: 1 2 3 4A 1 2... can't store any more, 4B gets lost.

While I would like to think that this would be an easy fix, the game programmers disagree.

I understand the ramification of what happens to the 4B pitcher here, but I'm at a complete loss as to understand why. SPs should be nothing more than a string of variables. Why would the game run into memory or capacity issues because of a couple bits of data? The only games run are run within the current SP. Once they go to the next game, the buffer clears, right?

Have you talked with the game's programmers about this? 

Posted by ojo on 4/24/2015 6:53:00 PM (view original):
I understand the ramification of what happens to the 4B pitcher here, but I'm at a complete loss as to understand why. SPs should be nothing more than a string of variables. Why would the game run into memory or capacity issues because of a couple bits of data? The only games run are run within the current SP. Once they go to the next game, the buffer clears, right?

Have you talked with the game's programmers about this? 

I don't have the reference offhand, and it was not to me personally, but this has been explicitly stated by the programmers, I believe from a dev discussion a long time ago.

In fact, I remember that Tandems were introduced specifically to allow 4 A/B options where none existed before. So the devs apparently thought it easier to code an entirely new mechanic (Tandem starters) than introduce split starters 4A/4B. (Split starter is an older mechanic than tandem starter is.)

I don't believe the details of the code have been discussed as to why it happens, no. It's ASP though, so it's crappy code anyway.