What are the 2 or 3 key ratings you look at when evaluating a closer? thanks in advance...

Control, VsR and 1st pitch. Technically a closer should be aces in all of these plus P2 and VsL.

That being said, I'll value control in an 8th and 9th inning guy a lot more then a starter. 1 walk can cost you the ball game that late.

I prefer my closers to have really strong P1 and P2. I find pitches to be more valuable than splits in shorter, less frequent appearances. I also think velocity and g/f need to be pretty good too, more so than with other members of the pen. You don't want your closer giving up bombs, and you also want them to either strike someone out or induce double plays with guys on base.

How about some is the other "makeup" ratings - or patience, etc.

Makeup and patience do not affect in-game performance.

Posted by itsnjmike on 3/7/2017 9:52:00 AM (view original):
How about some is the other "makeup" ratings - or patience, etc.

I like my closet to be proven. So they should already be maxed out in their categories and never be demoted. Patience and makeup effect those two things and thus have zero bearing on my closer.

Many of us don't use closers because you leave too many innings in the pen. In all likelihood, he's your best pitcher, not including DUR/STM, and "closers" only pitch the 9th with leads.

Personally, I set my best RP at 8th inning availability as a SuA with no closer. If my best pitcher can throw 89 innings, I don't want 47 with 42 saves. I want 89 high leverage innings.

How do people find experiences with 2-pitch vs 3-pitch relievers? I find my two-pitch guys struggle more than they should, even with good ratings across the board.

Posted by MikeT23 on 3/7/2017 10:25:00 AM (view original):
Many of us don't use closers because you leave too many innings in the pen. In all likelihood, he's your best pitcher, not including DUR/STM, and "closers" only pitch the 9th with leads.

Personally, I set my best RP at 8th inning availability as a SuA with no closer. If my best pitcher can throw 89 innings, I don't want 47 with 42 saves. I want 89 high leverage innings.

Mike makes a great point. If he's your best reliever, you don't want to leave any innings off the table.

If your closer candidate has a high enough stamina to throw two innings per appearance, make sure he's eligible to come in for the 8th inning. You want to maximize his IP at high leverage time.

If he can't throw two innings, then make him SUA to come in anytime from the 7th inning on. The only exception to that would be if his durability is low also, such that he truly is only a 50 IP pitcher. Then you can make him your 9th inning closer.

Posted by tecwrg on 3/7/2017 11:16:00 AM (view original):

Posted by MikeT23 on 3/7/2017 10:25:00 AM (view original):
Many of us don't use closers because you leave too many innings in the pen. In all likelihood, he's your best pitcher, not including DUR/STM, and "closers" only pitch the 9th with leads.

Personally, I set my best RP at 8th inning availability as a SuA with no closer. If my best pitcher can throw 89 innings, I don't want 47 with 42 saves. I want 89 high leverage innings.

Mike makes a great point. If he's your best reliever, you don't want to leave any innings off the table.

If your closer candidate has a high enough stamina to throw two innings per appearance, make sure he's eligible to come in for the 8th inning. You want to maximize his IP at high leverage time.

If he can't throw two innings, then make him SUA to come in anytime from the 7th inning on. The only exception to that would be if his durability is low also, such that he truly is only a 50 IP pitcher. Then you can make him your 9th inning closer.

You can usually find a good pitcher with low a durability-stamina combo for a reasonable price to be your closer. You do want your best relievers pitching set up if they are capable of throwing more innings, however. I used to go without a closer, but there were too many instances where my set up guys could not get through the end of game, only to have a well protected lead get blown in the 9th by a set up b or long a guy. I want control over who is going to get those last outs on a consistent basis.

Posted by itsnjmike on 3/3/2017 7:16:00 PM (view original):
What are the 2 or 3 key ratings you look at when evaluating a closer? thanks in advance...

In theory, a closer will have very low OAV, very low walk rate, very low slugging % against, and very high K-rate so that baserunners cannot advance on flyouts (sac flies) and groundouts (infield RBI), and high groundball rate to get out of trouble with double-plays. Closers often begin the inning so it's uncommon for them to inherit runners but it's valuable to get themselves out of any trouble that they pitch themselves into because the game is always close when they're pitching.

Player Profile: Louie Kondou is an incredible talent, his S36 is a stat line you're not going to see too often.

I am not a big fan of Closer role on here in general because simmy tends to under-utilize. You want to leverage your best guys as much as possible in the most important moments, so that could mean more IP, that could mean more appearances, or it could mean both.. but ClA is simply not best for that.

I like to use closer whenever a pitcher's Dur + Stam is specifically optimized to pitch exactly 1.0 IP 2 out of 3 days or 3 out of 4 days. The way that dur and stam interact, pitchers have optimal pitch counts that influence today's effectiveness and tomorrow's availability %. In general, the average pitchers-per-inning result is 17-18, and elite guys are 14-15. Because you can only set pitch counts in increments of 5, I set Kondou to min none and max 15. Many times the final at bat begins at 13-14 and overlaps to 17-18 so he's still able to get all 3 outs. Anything past 18 and his effectiveness drops, so it's tempting to set him to 20 but if it overlaps to 22-23 he's pitching on fumes and he's likely to be less effective.

With guys like Player Profile: Mike Prinz , or Player Profile: Richard Tatum , they have way more Dur and Stam than Kondou so I tend to use them in a 7th or 8th inning role, combined with a top LHP also in SuA such as Player Profile: Pedro Fernandez. If it's the 8th and there's a pitching change, simmy logic is smart enough to play upcoming L/R matchups and it does put in the correct pitcher Prinz vs Fernandez. These types of pitchers excel in the max pitch count range of 20 or 25, 3 out of 4 days or even 4 out of 5 days. Prinz has 95 appearances in 5 consecutive seasons and counting, 100+ in 3 straight, 30/36 saves as a guy who enters the game in the 8th inning almost every single appearance. Those top SuA guys are de-facto closers but they are longer and more flexible/interchangeable from a L/R perspective, so it would hurt my overall W-L to set them to ClA and have them get saves for the sake of saves in the 9th inning only. From a pure talent perspective Kondou is way better, but Prinz and Tatum are each arguably more valuable from an overall WAR perspective because of leveraging their Dur+Stam and because they do lack some of the features of a true closer (specifically K-rate and gb/fb)