besides the 3 or 4 starters, how many pitchers is good for your bullpen and how many innings should each pitcher throw in actual stats? I assume we can also count the 2 AAA players to help. Is there a Joss of relievers that shuts em down? 

depends on how many innings you expect to get from your starters. also depends on your style, some people like a couple dominant closers and a bunch of lousy Long B relievers, I prefer a larger number of good but not great RPs.

There are lots of them, but you don't want to pay too much for them. Eck or Joey Devine would probably be the best if money is no object. Niggeling, Northrop, Mike Adams, Neftali Feliz, maybe Gagne if you're feeling lucky. 

The key is to match their cost to their role. And the obvious answer to how many innings you need in your 'pen is the total # of innings you need minus the total # of innings you're getting from your starters.

I always try to get a closer in the 40-50 inning range. I only want them pitching in save situations and any more might be wasted. 

And I always try to get a Long A guy who can give me 2-3 innings in a game if my starter gets killed. Typically that will be someone in the 90-110 inning range with at least 3 IP/G.

Then I fill in the rest with a mix of setup A and setup B to get me to the innings total I need. I guess the split would be about 50-50 or 60-40 in favor of SetupA guys. Remember, you don't want a lights-out guy pitching when you're down 3. You could use that money somewhere else.

If it's a higher cap league or I need a bunch of innings then I'll add a Long B as well, who would be worse than the Long A guy.

I typically use ERC# as the key stat for my pitchers. So let's say that my starters 'average ERC# is around 2.50. Then my staff would look something like this:

Starters 2.50erc#
Long A would be around 3.00erc#
SetupA would be around 2.00erc#
SetupB would be around 2.50erc#
Closer would be around 1.75erc#
LongB (if needed) would be around 3.50-4.00erc#

Yes, I know that sometimes having your closer as your best RP when you have a 3-run lead in the bottom of the 9th isn't the best situation. But on average, a closer faces the highest leverage situations, so you just have to hope for the best. 

Also, remember that if you have AAA then you want to leave space for them on your 25-man roster. So if you have 6/2 AAA like in an OL then you are drafting 17 "real" players and 8 200k guys. So if you draft 8 hitters and 9 pitchers, you have to be sure you get your innings from just 9 pitchers.

If you're in an OL, you can count on your AAA guys for some long B work if you're lucky. I wouldn't count on more than that. They tend to be terrible. 

JFranco wins the 'Really-Freaking-Long-Post-of-the-Week' award.

To answer the how many relief pitchers you need, I'd say you need at least 4 relievers who can finish the game. Thats so you don't get eaten by appearance fatigue. Any players who can't pitch at least 3IP/G don't count toward that total. So, if you have three modern doods that pitch 1IP/G, you'll need four more doods. If your starters pitch a crap ton of innings, you might only need the four doods.  

thank you guys for being generous with your knowledge of the game. I cant wait to get my "doods!"

That's some excellent advice.

I'd be curious to see what the opinion is on some of those high-inning 70's-80's relievers who average 1-2 IPG and have 120-ish innings (Tekulve, Eichhorn, Quisenberry, etc.).  They have great normalized stats, but it looks hard as hell to be able to get your full innings out of them with fatigue issues preventing them from being used in some back-to-back games.

^ hard to get full value from them but you can come close. if they're underused (say, 10% less than their maximum potential) they can pitch back-to-back games without fatigue. or you can increase their pitch count by a small amount and their peformance decline isnt too big. not the most efficient choice for Open leagues, though they havae value in some theme leagues and progressives where your choices are more restricted.

what about a Earl Hamilton with 70 ip and an 8 ip/g? could he be used in a setup role?

Regarding Eichhorn et al. I should mention I never play open leagues, so this only pertains to theme leagues.

I find on the high powered 150ip guys can come in really handy if you're a little short on starting rotation IP (having only about 800 ip worth of SP talent). In that case, drafting an EIchhorn-type player can work quite well for filling the gap. You call him up for the occasional spot start and stick him in the bullpen the rest of time. He has enough IP that he's usually not fatigued after a single relief appearance, so he's almost always avaliable to spot start while nicely rounding out your pen.

Posted by chisox378 on 11/17/2010 11:10:00 PM (view original):
what about a Earl Hamilton with 70 ip and an 8 ip/g? could he be used in a setup role?

I don't see why not. I don't pay too much attention to IP/G when building my setup crew. But I do try to avoid having ALL 1ip/g guys or ALL 6ip/g guys. If you've got Hamilton mixed in with a bunch of 1ip guys then I might set his autorest higher and his PC higher. So he goes 25-30 pitches on the days when your short guys are tired.

Posted by dracul on 11/17/2010 2:50:00 PM (view original):
That's some excellent advice.

I'd be curious to see what the opinion is on some of those high-inning 70's-80's relievers who average 1-2 IPG and have 120-ish innings (Tekulve, Eichhorn, Quisenberry, etc.).  They have great normalized stats, but it looks hard as hell to be able to get your full innings out of them with fatigue issues preventing them from being used in some back-to-back games.

I try to avoid them if I can. If you're in a theme where you need them, they are fine. I am willing to set my RP's autorest to 80, so they can pitch back-to-back some days. In that case I'd probably have Quis throw 130 innings while working 90-95 games. If you have a bunch of AAA guys and you need to roll with 8 pitchers then there's obviously some value there. But I'd rather have 2 guys instead of 1, most of the time.

Cool, so I have

Starting Pitcher #1
Starting Pitcher #2
Starting Pitcher #3
Starting Pitcher #4

Long A
Setup A
Setup A
Setup B
Closer A

Long B - AAA
Long B - AAA

Thats 11 total pitchers. Is it safe to play the setup players if they are above 80% fatigue? the erc# is something I am going to have to look into. Appreciate the help.

I typically set my autorest to 80 for RP's and 95 for SPs. Other people might go 90 for RPs and 99 for SPs. It just depends on your comfort level.

One thing to remember is that it does depend on their IP total as well. If I have a guy who is a 30-IP reliever, instead of setting him to 5-10 pitches and 80%,I'll set him to 15 pitches and 99%. He won't pitch as often but he'll pitch more when he does.

Posted by boogerlips on 11/17/2010 2:51:00 AM (view original):
JFranco wins the 'Really-Freaking-Long-Post-of-the-Week' award.

jfranco can be countd on for two things. #1 being thorough, #2 being right.  If you can get through his post and THEN understand it you are guaranteed to be better.  I have ADD when it comes to posts so I normally get lost in section 2.