I am thinking about trying baseball sim after a long hiatus from even trying to figure out the sim from the trials.

I have a rotation question for the vets for my next attempted team.

I know this rotation is by far and away one that is probably used a ton or is not knew to anyone but I figured using it will help me understand how to set rotations better.

I am going with a 3 headed pitching staff.

The pitchers are

1886 Bob Caruthers
1917 Babe Ruth
1903 Cy Young

That takes up about 9/10ths of my pitching budget. of about 48-52M for an 80M league.

My question is...is it best to run these guys as 3 starters or do I tandem a pair or set 1 of the 3 as long relief every day?

Also if you go with monster innings pitched guys what do you do for the bullpen? just a few specialists and then a 2M closer or do I even need to worry about those since these pitchers will eat innings?

Thanks for the advice in advance, if someone would prefer to sitemail me that is great too because I finally have some free time and the baseball engine intrigues me a lot.

You only need about 1200 innings for a neutral park in an open league. So, not only have to spent your entire budget on 3 pitchers, but you've met your inning requirement as well. I wouldn't recommend doing that. There are a few different ways pitchers fatigue, one of them being appearance fatigue. You'll have bigtime problems with that. The first time you go into extra innings, someone is going to have to make an extra appearance, whether it be a bullpen guy or one of your other starters. As soon as that happens, you'll have a hard time recovering.

The ratio of innings in your starting rotation vs bullpen doesn't matter, but you'll need at least 4 guys in the bullpen, regardless of IPs, to keep up with the appearance fatigue. So in your case, even if you found four guys with 25IP each, you'll be buying too many innings. I'd cut one of those starters and go from there.

in that case, you are saying to go for two pitchers in the 10M-16M range and then spend roughly 20M on bull pen?

That's one way to do it...I think his main point is that you need more than 5-6 pitchers total. Appearance fatigue makes that few pitchers very difficult to manage, even if the IP adds up. There are a lot of good ways to manage a pitching staff.

Quote: Originally Posted By mattedesa on 5/19/2010That's one way to do it...I think his main point is that you need more than 5-6 pitchers total. Appearance fatigue makes that few pitchers very difficult to manage, even if the IP adds up. There are a lot of good ways to manage a pitching staff

What he said.

You can get away with 6 pitchers....I recently ran a league like that and had a very effective pitching staff.

In fact, I bet you could have a very good pitching staff with 3 guys if they all pitched complete games 75% of the time.

I don't see how you could get by, without at least 7 pitchers. I always have 10, but that's just the way I manage. Not saying it wouldn't work, but I couldn't make it work.

I was in the league TJ mentioned above and have been messing around with CGs and the 900 IP/162 John Clarkson a bit lately and have been getting by with what is effectively 3 pitchers. It's doable, but it's a pain. If you want something easily manageable I'd recommend at least 6 pitchers.

Player SN T G GS CG SHO W L SV SVO IP H R ER HR BB SO OAV OBP SLG WHIP ERA
Maddux, Greg 1998 R 52 33 17 5 24 8 4 5 304.7 202 56 48 9 54 202 .184 .224 .238 .84 1.42
Brown, Kevin 1996 R 50 32 18 5 18 14 1 1 288.3 225 75 67 7 47 148 .211 .254 .282 .94 2.09
Pena, Alejandro 1984 R 42 28 4 1 11 14 3 3 236.0 236 94 80 6 64 139 .260 .312 .331 1.27 3.05
Ferrell, Wes 1937 R 51 22 11 2 15 13 5 6 218.7 219 106 89 11 112 101 .260 .348 .354 1.51 3.66
Chandler, Spud 1938 R 45 23 8 0 9 13 3 6 214.0 208 86 73 6 58 70 .255 .305 .353 1.24 3.07
Tobin, Jim 1945 R 38 24 9 2 9 14 2 4 213.0 227 104 89 12 79 50 .273 .336 .371 1.44 3.76
TEAM TOTALS -- -- 278 162 67 15 86 76 18 25 1,474.7 1317 521 446 51 414 710 .237 .292 .316 1.17 2.72

I almost always have problems with managing my pitching, to the point that I don't even try to manage it any more. I simply draft starters I hope I can rely on to give me 6 good innings consistently, with all my relievers on "set up A." I am more successful doing that, than anything else I have tried. In boogerlips 100m league, I went with a 2 man rotation, and set their PC at 70/70, with several of the 85-100 inning very effective starters all at setupA. I figured that if I need a spot start here and there, I'll have it. So far, the team is 8-2, and I have had no fatigue issues. But, i would add that when you commit so much of your pay roll to those 2 starters, you have to pick the right ones, and the right ball park, because if they fizzle, it will be a long season.

Here is some advice. Caruthers and Ruth are overpriced. BUt if you are gonna use 'em bat them 1st.