Do you set a relief pitcher to the role of Closer?

If so, why? If not, are you finding anything unique?

I set my 1990 Dennis Eckersley to Setup A several days ago for the backstretch of a close division race. I currently have no 'Closer'. I presume it to mean it's 'best man available' when closing games.

It occurred to me that my ongoing gripe with MLB/how it's managed, is that the closer is pigeonholed into a 9th inning role, and that the best relief pitcher on your roster needs to be used in close games as the meat of the order presents from the 7th inning on, or in tie games in extra innings on the road. So yeah, I put my money where my mouth is.

So far, results inconclusive as I made the switch after the AS Break.

You care. No really, you do.

Yes, I do. There's no way to set up your pitchers to come in according to the leverage of the situation.

Therefore, I assume the closer will on average get the highest leverage situations, even if he does get some 1-inning saves with a 3-run lead.

Also, I like that you can usually count on a closer only pitching in save opportunities to work 45-60 innings, and you can draft exactly the # of innings you want to use.

Yeah, the problem is that Sparky will basically bring in the best pitcher appropriate to the situation. So putting everybody at Setup A doesn't bring your best arm in when you need him most. It brings him in at the earliest inning he's allowed to enter with a score that would call for a Setup A. So instead of pitching with a 1-3 run lead in the 9th, he may come in with a 4-run lead or a 1-2 run deficit in the 6th. In general Setup A are used in lower leverage situations in this game than closers. It's worth it to make your closer a little bit better than your setup guys.

This is less true in LIVE leagues where you can manage many of your own games and use everybody whenever you feel is best.

Sparky decides between pitchers of the same role based on OAV. Lowest OAV comes in first, even if he's not the "best" pitcher by other standards. Without a designated closer, I'd assume Setup A would be at the top of the hierarchy to enter the game in a save situation. So the pitcher who will enter the game is the Setup A with the lowest OAV, assuming he's not below auto-rest levels on fatigue and his inning available is < or = to the inning at the time.

For example:

Setup A - '90 Dennis Eckersley - .160 OAV, 0.61 WHIP, Inning Available = 7, 100% fatigue (so auto-rest is not a factor)
Setup A - '11 Aroldis Chapman - .147 OAV, 1.30 WHIP, Inning Available = 8, 100% fatigue

7th inning or earlier: Eckersley comes into the game first since Chapman is not available until the 8th
8th inning or later: Chapman enters before Eckersley every time both are available since his OAV is lower

As you can see, it's not necessarily "best man available". It's lowest OAV.

That's a very valuable piece of info that I didn't know before, Skunk. Thanks!

^ Ditto