I think I may be asking a rhetorical question, but curious how others play it. 

Player A: IMO, My "Best" reliever (with 30 Sta/77 Dur) has 80+ splits, control, P1 & P2, Groundball (a high first rounder in a bad draft year)
Player B: 17 Sta/83 Dur, 57/66 splits, 80 control, 63 Groundball, P1 & P2 87+ (a moderate/inexpensive int'l)

(no velocity difference)

How many use player A as Setup A (to maximize innings) and player b as closer?  Anyone have a dissenting opinion?  "A" will be a 21 d call-up here very shortly and B is a vet who has a track record getting hitters out at the ML level.  Thx in advance.

Closers typically get way underutilized by the engine, so a number of owners have moved away from the closer role completely.

I would go with player A as a Setup A, and player B as a Setup B.

Agree with tec.  I'm surprised player B has much success.   I'd expect his results to be very inconsistent.

I always use my best reliever as SuA to maximize their innings, unless I've got a great reliever whose DUR/STA are each below about 40. Then I'll use him at closer.

I'd likely have them both as Setup A.

Some may disagree with me, esp Mike and tec, but-

I think WIS appears to be programmed to design certain dur+stam combinations into certain roles. Dur fits to how often you can pitch and Stam fits to the optimal max pitch count. The combination of these numbers normally add up to around 100 whether it's for a SP or for an RP.  Whenver it adds up to more than 100, that means the pitcher can either throw more often or is capable of throwing more pitchers-per-outing than you would expect

I tend to notice that the engine "intends" for certain combos to be setups and certain combos to be closers. Player A looks like he's engineered to be a setup because his combo adds to 107. With his stamina of 30 you can stretch his pitch count to 20-25 which is approx 2 innings per game, and his extra boost of durability means you can pitch him maybe 2/3 or 3/4 days which is very nice. 8 innings per 5 games adds up to the same innings pitched total as a dominant starter. (Setups are wayyy overpowered on WIS imo)

For Player B, his stam is lower than 20 which means you should only be setting his pitch count to 10-15 which can ALWAYS only be 1 inning. So since he has a pitch count limitation that limits him to 1 inning at a time you might as well assign that inning as the 9th inning. However, on the positive side, his high durability suggests that he could pitch his 1 inning on maybe 4 consecutive days if necessary. Theoretically, from a pure baseball perspective this is a desirable quality in a closer. His splits aren't great or anything, but vsR is always more important than vsL (maybe even to the point where we can discount vsL entirely?), and splits only reflect opposition BABIP aka "luck" so his luck is average, but as long as his P1 and P2 aka his "out pitches" are high, then that is what is intended to be a good fit for the closer role. High Vel aka high K/rate also correlates to closers.

Additionally, the final piece of the WIS closer profile, which you did not mention, appears to be Makeup. From my observations, it appears that the Makeup attribute actually functions as a primary attribute for this player role, more important than even Control or splits.  From the players I've studied, any Makeup rating over 90 seems like it may counteract any type of deficiency in Control or R/L

Thoughts?

If you posted some examples to prove your theory, it would be helpful.  

I agree that A would be Setup A.  B's role depends on others in my bullpen, but I never use closer.

"Additionally, the final piece of the WIS closer profile, which you did not mention, appears to be Makeup. From my observations, it appears that the Makeup attribute actually functions as a primary attribute for this player role, more important than even Control or splits.  From the players I've studied, any Makeup rating over 90 seems like it may counteract any type of deficiency in Control or R/L"

Disagree completely.

The combination of durability and stamina does indeed define the "best" role for a pitcher, i.e. starter versus reliever, but certainly not specific roles within those designations, such as setup reliever versus closer.  Those specifics are purely left up to the manager to decide how to deploy each pitcher into those roles, based on the primary pitcher ratings such as control, splits, pitches, etc.

As I pointed out earlier, and many others agree, by designating a pitcher as a closer, you are often artifically limiting the number of innings he will throw in a given season.  Your best reliever might only pitch 40 games/50 innings as a closer, but if designated as a setup A, he might get 70 games/90 innings.  Over the course of a season, that's nearly 5 full games of work from arguably your best pitcher.  Why would you want to leave that on the table?  That's why, for the most part, the role of closer in HBD is often a disservice to your team.

The one exception to this would be the example that travis pointed out in his post.  If you have a lights-out reliever with a low DUR/STA combo such that he's not going to get significantly more innings as a SuA as opposed to as a closer, then it probably makes sense to utilize him in the closer role.  Those types of pitchers are few and far between, however.  They are the exception rather than the rule.

Finally, I disagree about the comment about makeup.  My experience and strong belief is that the makeup rating factors into development/decline only, and does not play a role in in-game performance.  You may think that you're seeing a correlation between makeup and performance, but my guess is that it's coincidence only at best, and that you're reading something into your analysis that isn't really there because you want it to be there, at worst.

I'll do it for you:

Your Set-up type:
Hardball Dynasty – Fantasy Baseball Sim Games - Player Profile: George Ford  62 make-up
Your closer type:
Hardball Dynasty – Fantasy Baseball Sim Games - Player Profile: Earl Willis  99 make-up

Using my formula, they're pretty much the same guy with the exception of the DUR/STM.    The good news, they're used as SuA(for multiple seasons), they're on the same team, they're both LH and they're producing similar results(with the exception of IP).

Even better Hardball Dynasty – Fantasy Baseball Sim Games - Player Profile: Luis Ortega was picked up late in FA to add some balance to my bullpen.   His LR ratings(27 DUR/43 STM) and low make-up(57) has produced 12/12 saves in the SuA role for the same team and very similar WHIP/ERA to Ford/Willis.

Players that are "meant" to be setups-
whatifsports.com/HBD/Pages/Popups/PlayerProfile.aspx
whatifsports.com/HBD/Pages/Popups/PlayerProfile.aspx
whatifsports.com/HBD/Pages/Popups/PlayerProfile.aspx Used as a closer- 2 pitches only, high P1 and P2 suggests closer, stam of 30 suggests setup, Makeup only 64 may cause higher-than-expected blown save %
Players that are "meant" to be closers-
whatifsports.com/HBD/Pages/Popups/PlayerProfile.aspx limited ML career sample size, MiL career statistics suggest mis-use. P1 and P2 decent but not great, 66 vsR decent but not great, control 82 decent but not great, 99 makeup eliminates blow-ups? Park effect assumed to come into play, but has given up 0 HR and blown 0 saves.
whatifsports.com/HBD/Pages/Popups/PlayerProfile.aspx career blown save % higher than you would expect for his ability. 84 dur/15 stam can only pitch 1 inning, excellent command, excellent P1, slight P2 deficiency, excellent vsR, Makeup "only" 76, Vel "only" 42 which is sub-optimal K-rate
Players that are NOT "meant" to be closers but are effective anyways-
whatifsports.com/HBD/Pages/Popups/PlayerProfile.aspx strange combo of 35 dur and 35 stam, but 90 control and 90 splits, 5 pitches not intended to be a reliever, great pitch 1 and 2, Makeup of 99 = 3 blown saves in 2 years.
whatifsports.com/HBD/Pages/Popups/PlayerProfile.aspx similarly strange combo of dur and stam, nice K-rate, 99 makeup, career save % 87 which is maybe 5 points lower than you would want. Poor performance could possibly be attributed to fatigue when being called upon in back-to-back cycles?

Ignore minor league stats in a vacuum.

Lee actually does a little better than I thought he would, considering his low splits.

Gonzales - it's nice, but very limited sample size. Doesn't prove anything, really.

Espinosa is pretty much in line where I thought he'd be.

Tanner and Roth are beasts. But you can tell without looking at makeup.  To make your "makeup" point you need to show examples of similar players where the only obvious difference is makeup.  And even so, with someone like Tanner, the sample size is too small.

Thank you for your examples Mike, if it was me I would definitely use Ford as the 2-inning setup and Willis as the 1-inning closer because of the stam-durability combos and the Makeup is a bonus. 

Tec I disagree that Makeup is not used for in-game performance, but we have no way of proving each other wrong unless we had a developer confirm or deny it.  But intuitively, you would think that the devs would write mental focus into the game as an attribute of day-to-day variance.  There is a consensus amongst real-life baseball analysts that a pitcher must have that intangible "It" quality to be a successful closer, so I operate under the assumption that of the hoarde of ratings that this game creates, One of them contributes to in-game It