Player Profile: Emmanuel Vizquel vs
Player Profile: Trent Denorfia , imo appearances are considerably more important than raw volume of innings. You might want to play around with the player settings to optimize your guy's usage, with 70/50 you have to resist the temptation to get your guy in too early, to set your guy's pitch count too high, and with his talent you have to resist the urge to set his call bullpen to 1. Simmy sometimes leaves guys in too long when you're winning by too many, and also leaves guys in too long in the rare instance when they are getting pounded.
During last season with that SF team, I went into Denorfia's game log to try and figure out San Antonio's player settings... We each had our players in the SuA role- For me, I had Vizquel on inning available 7, target pitches 0, max pitches 25, call bullpen 2. For SA, he had Denorfia on inning available any (or possibly inning available 4, it was hard to tell. But definitely early), max pitches 45, call bullpen 1. Because Denorfia was available early, his W-L was 15-6 and he only had 3 saves (I assume all 3 innings). The extra wins are simply from coming in during the 5th and getting credit for the W in games he was already winning or games in which they came from behind, whichever.
For my guy, setting his available to 7 means that if my starters were set to around 100 pitches, that they could go 6.1 (overlapping PCs), and if they got into trouble, Vizquel would bail them out with a DP and then finish the 8th and 9th. Even with 25 max PC, there were multiple times where he got 3.0 IP on 23 pitches or fewer. (Also note that with 25 max PC, if he finishes a batter on 24, simmy will let him throw to the next guy and he can pitch until the next out even if it gets to 28-30 or more). Note that Vizquel went 18/22 on saves, but only a few were 1.0 IP or less, virtually every single one was 2.0-2.2 innings, a handful were a full 3 innings. In 104 appearances he only lost 3 games and blew 4 leads, that's an amazing number especially considering our team led the league in one-run win %, extra inning wins, and extra inning win %
Upon review of advanced stats, Vizquel led the league in something like 10 different base categories including ERA, WHIP, OBP, etc, but also led the league in both volume of inherited runners and inherited runner %. (Denorfia was nowhere near the top in IR volume and was something like 5th best in %). Vizquel's IR% was 19.1%, upon research and review- team ranges are normally between 22-34% across both ML sample sizes and HBD single-season sample sizes. Such a high IR% makes all the starters' ERAs much better as well. His WAR impact with these player settings was devastating
By conserving Vizquel's PC per each individual appearance (25 instead of 30 or 45), we made him available for the maximum # of games which made him more valuable. By having his pull setting at 2 instead of 1, we got him out of there in there rare instances he was ineffective and had him ready for the next game. Denorfia threw a similar portion of innings but had a lot of 3-IP middle inning appearances in 6-0 wins, had a few games where he gave up 6 runs in 1.2 innings and simmy never took him out, etc. He had 15 wins but wins in a vacuum are a hollow stat. Vizquel had a quantifiably higher WAR and the difference in usage between those two similar players was arguably the sole reason why I went 108-54, won the bye and went to the finals (lost in game 7), while the other owner went 98-64 with a more talented lineup, did not get the bye, and lost in the first round. Be careful trying to amass innings for the sake of innings and think about how you want your guy to have the maximum overall impact