Not that I play as much as many around here but anyone have sustained success with a five man rotation? Obviously 3 man rotations seem to be the norm.

I just coaxed 91 wins and a WC appearance out of a 5 man but thudded out in the first round 3-1.

Any type of rotation, from 2 man to tandems to 6 man, can work. 5 man rotations tend to work well at lower caps where there are a lot of good values in the 170-225 IP range.

Personally, I usually prefer a 1-2a-3a-1-2b-3b format or even in most cases where I have a lot of options in that range, though.

Not the most successful owner here, but I believe that you want to play your best players as much as possible. So unless you have a bunch of sub-200 IP pitchers like Matt Harvey, Jose Fernandez, etc. a 5-man rotation is most likely a waste of innings.

But 3-inning rotations work because they’re usually deadballers.

I like them in lower caps, but you have to expect that most of the time one of them will be in the bullpen. At least that's how it always seems to go for me.

I wouldn't try to draft a team this way since I would rather only use 3 or 4 slots on the rotation and put the extra arm in the bullpen with less moving guys around all the time. But playing in a historical replay league (you get the actual team, warts and all, with no help) has given me opportunity to learn how to work with different combinations.

Right now I have the 1990 Pirates, who had only 1 pitcher with more than 150 innings. Only 4 had over 95 in fact. So I've already used 8 different starters and essentially have 1 guy (Drabek) who always takes his turn, followed by 3 or 4 guys who are the best rested and sometimes rotating them in and out of the minors. Would I choose this setup if I wasn't forced into it? No ... but it teaches you a thing or two about managing a staff on a daily basis when you have to.

Any rotation can work, if you set pitch counts correctly, draft enough innings, draft enough innings for your bullpen, and adequately manage your staff.

Some require more attention than others.

Look for bargains ($/IP), and don't be afraid to think outside the box.

I've used everything from the old "Superman" strat to 2-, 3-, 4-, 5-, 6-, 7- and 11-man rotations (you could look at the first and last as being no rotation at all). The bigger your rotation, the more micromanaging your bullpen requires, since there will be fewer relievers and even if they have high IP for the 'pen you'll often be without one or two.

That 11-man team required shuffling after every single game. Of course some of us (Hi) love micromanaging. redcped's experience with the 1990 Pirates is an extreme example of this which sounds like fun to me.

you should love the post-juice years then

What I like as a fan is something like Bob Gibson in ‘68. But yeah, as a finicky nerd gamer, I’m more like, why do we need a 40-pitch minimum for SP’s? That just prevents me from micromanaging yet further. I want “openers” G*d damn it (and yes I know that’s not a new thing).

you love what i hate

the micromanaging, the shuttling up and down between AAA and the bigs

my favorite thing is to draft a ballclub and make NO CHANGES all season long

rarely happens of course

I have a 4 tandem rotation going in an OL. Not much juggling, but a 5 man bullpen is dicey. Next time I might go with a SP and 3 tandems, just to give myself an extra arm in the pen...so far it has worked with shuttling a few guys back and forth from AAA...or next time I draft more relief innings.

They are currently 38-22 playing in Busch I, and are second to sford's Petco team in ERA.

Posted by bagchucker on 2/20/2019 4:01:00 PM (view original):
you love what i hate

the micromanaging, the shuttling up and down between AAA and the bigs

my favorite thing is to draft a ballclub and make NO CHANGES all season long

rarely happens of course

Yeah. When I used to run 15-20+ teams at a time I did try to figure out how to use advanced settings to minimize game-to-game tinkering. But I never really got it down so I spent waaaaaay too much time managing. Keeping it to 3-4 teams at once makes it marginally more sane.

Basically, if you like to micromanage you're going to do it as much as you want. (I.e. when I use tandems I switch the roles back and forth after every game. I hate it when you have one guy go like 2-24 and the other vultures his way to 40-8.) But on the original topic, the longer your rotation and the shorter your bullpen, the more you will be forced to nitpick.

Posted by point_piper on 2/21/2019 5:26:00 PM (view original):

Posted by bagchucker on 2/20/2019 4:01:00 PM (view original):
you love what i hate

the micromanaging, the shuttling up and down between AAA and the bigs

my favorite thing is to draft a ballclub and make NO CHANGES all season long

rarely happens of course

Yeah. When I used to run 15-20+ teams at a time I did try to figure out how to use advanced settings to minimize game-to-game tinkering. But I never really got it down so I spent waaaaaay too much time managing. Keeping it to 3-4 teams at once makes it marginally more sane.

Basically, if you like to micromanage you're going to do it as much as you want. (I.e. when I use tandems I switch the roles back and forth after every game. I hate it when you have one guy go like 2-24 and the other vultures his way to 40-8.) But on the original topic, the longer your rotation and the shorter your bullpen, the more you will be forced to nitpick.

Who cares who gets the wins? Recently in a theme I used Tommy John and Scott Garrelts in a tandem, out of necessity, to be my 3rd starter.... John got no wins, Garrelts got 28, all in relief. I don't think Tommy is gonna seek reparations. ..

In my OL experiment with 4 tandems, the B guys are a combined 28-6. Nobody's complaining...

Posted by DoctorKz on 2/22/2019 5:37:00 PM (view original):

Posted by point_piper on 2/21/2019 5:26:00 PM (view original):

Posted by bagchucker on 2/20/2019 4:01:00 PM (view original):
you love what i hate

the micromanaging, the shuttling up and down between AAA and the bigs

my favorite thing is to draft a ballclub and make NO CHANGES all season long

rarely happens of course

Yeah. When I used to run 15-20+ teams at a time I did try to figure out how to use advanced settings to minimize game-to-game tinkering. But I never really got it down so I spent waaaaaay too much time managing. Keeping it to 3-4 teams at once makes it marginally more sane.

Basically, if you like to micromanage you're going to do it as much as you want. (I.e. when I use tandems I switch the roles back and forth after every game. I hate it when you have one guy go like 2-24 and the other vultures his way to 40-8.) But on the original topic, the longer your rotation and the shorter your bullpen, the more you will be forced to nitpick.

Who cares who gets the wins? Recently in a theme I used Tommy John and Scott Garrelts in a tandem, out of necessity, to be my 3rd starter.... John got no wins, Garrelts got 28, all in relief. I don't think Tommy is gonna seek reparations. ..

In my OL experiment with 4 tandems, the B guys are a combined 28-6. Nobody's complaining...

LOL.

that's how it goes when you don care if its anything like baseball