Three days rest?

[imnotjesus]

In the aftermath of the MLB World Series this year, I got to wondering, can pitchers in OOTP be successful pitching on three days rest (in the playoffs, or otherwise)? What about four days? What are people's experiences?

[SteveP]

Originally Posted by imnotjesus

In the aftermath of the MLB World Series this year, I got to wondering, can pitchers in OOTP be successful pitching on three days rest (in the playoffs, or otherwise)? What about four days? What are people's experiences?

Well, there are some interesting aspects to this question. To start with the simplest answer: yes, they can be successful; they just won't pitch as many innings as they would if they were completely rested. The more interesting answer/question is: should their performance during the innings they pitch be compromised by starting not fully rested? And, if so, should the degree of this vary from pitcher to pitcher?

In any event, OOTP doesn't try to do anything along these lines. You can easily start a pitcher on short rest, but you will be into your bullpen sooner than otherwise. In fact, if you play historicals where there are a lot of doubleheaders, you will see pitchers on AI managed teams starting when they are quite fagged out (a problem with game design, but that's for another day ).

[AirmenSmith]

This is the way I wish pitching was right now in baseball. These guys are big babies IMO.

[mm7607]

Originally Posted by AirmenSmith

This is the way I wish pitching was right now in baseball. These guys are big babies IMO.

I totally agree with this. I didn't watch a single game all year until the playoffs.
Then I watch Cliff Lee with a 3 hit shutout and an 11 run lead. And what happens? They bring in Durbin for the 9th. If I'm Lee I am cussing the manager out left and right. I turned the game off and didn't watch another at bat the rest of the playoffs. Don't get me wrong, I love baseball but I hate the major leagues.

[AirmenSmith]

Originally Posted by mm7607

I totally agree with this. I didn't watch a single game all year until the playoffs.
Then I watch Cliff Lee with a 3 hit shutout and an 11 run lead. And what happens? They bring in Durbin for the 9th. If I'm Lee I am cussing the manager out left and right. I turned the game off and didn't watch another at bat the rest of the playoffs. Don't get me wrong, I love baseball but I hate the major leagues.

Even in the game now I push my pitchers as far as they can go. I changed my rotation to a 4 man rotation and fixed my manager and player strats so that my pitchers will go the distance. My first year trying this and my top 3 pitchers where getting 9+ complete games and avg 120 pitches a game.

Now this isn't all the players fault. The owners are just as bad with this. It is so hard to win a championship, I think if I was an owner I would want that championship as soon as I can get. They needto ride these pitches as far as they can. Look at the yanks and the brewers.(last year) they put there teams on C.Cs back so they could win now.

Basically, bring hack the complete games.

[drowtfs]

in my online league, some clubs use their best pitcher on 3 days rest throughout the entire season, racking up over 300 innings of work, making like 45 starts, all with great success.
I personally think that's kind of ridiculous... I would think it pretty reasonable if players that are used in this way for several seasons should collapse in spectacular ways and have their careers irreversibly shortened.
I mean, in real life, no matter how tough a player is, he's not gonna pitch 300 innings in a season, maybe back in the day they did, but then again major league pitchers didn't throw fastballs at 95mph back then... but there must be a reason teams don't rely on a single pitcher for 300 innings of play a year.

[Waninski]

I haven't had a whole lot of experience myself throwing any of my pitchers on three days' rest, simply because my rotation is strong enough that I don't need to nor would I want to. But I've seen enough of my starters trying to go when they aren't 100% rested to know that, for the pitchers in my rotation at least, it's a bad idea. I try to limit my starters to no more than 105 pitches unless I know I'm going to have a day off on the schedule to give them an extra day of rest, because I don't think I've had a game yet where one of my starters actually pitched a good game when they weren't fully rested. It's gotten to the point where I dread seeing someone at 89% rest so much that I almost consider calling up someone from AAA to make a spot start for me. Otherwise, it's a virtual guarantee that I'm going to get a mediocre performance at best where my offense better score five or seven runs.

[Valhoun]

If you have pitchers with decent stamina you can run a 4 man rotation easily. Not that it has anything to do with the game engine per se but sabrmetrics has a lot of good things to say about the 4 man rotation. Statistically speaking, the 5 man rotation doesn't create better pitching staffs and it doesn't cut down on injuries. And, well, it's always easier to find 4 good pitchers as opposed to 5.

It averages out that your 5 starter will take about 7.5 starts away from your top 2 guys. So, why have a mediocre pitcher take away 4 starts from your ace and 3.5 from your number 2 guy?

Getting back to OOTP, I benefit from actually having 5 high quality pitchers on my team but, if I didn't, I'd run a 4 man rotation the entire season. Maybe spot start every once and awhile to ensure that lower stamina starters weren't getting ground down.

[RchW]

Originally Posted by Waninski

I haven't had a whole lot of experience myself throwing any of my pitchers on three days' rest, simply because my rotation is strong enough that I don't need to nor would I want to. But I've seen enough of my starters trying to go when they aren't 100% rested to know that, for the pitchers in my rotation at least, it's a bad idea. I try to limit my starters to no more than 105 pitches unless I know I'm going to have a day off on the schedule to give them an extra day of rest, because I don't think I've had a game yet where one of my starters actually pitched a good game when they weren't fully rested. It's gotten to the point where I dread seeing someone at 89% rest so much that I almost consider calling up someone from AAA to make a spot start for me. Otherwise, it's a virtual guarantee that I'm going to get a mediocre performance at best where my offense better score five or seven runs.

I think we have to be careful with generalizations when we don't know how each persons league is set up. My experience is different than yours but my league set up may be quite different. Typically front line pitchers can go once or twice on 3 days rest and if they have exceptional (75++) endurance they can rack up a complete game and throw 120 or more pitches. Put a mediocre pitcher out there on short rest and you get what you deserve.

I'm actually quite impressed with OOTPX's new endurance/role model. It seems to show very realistic results and allows you to take chances on certain pitchers with no guarantees of course.

[SteveP]

Let me add another dimension to this:

OOTPers are familiar with the obvious performance curve for an SP during a game: OK to Tired to Exhausted. However, it is not generally known that there is a performance drop off that begins roughly 90% of the way to the pitch that causes them to be rated Tired. So, if an SP tires at 110 pitches when starting fully rested (it will always be the same pitch count, as long as his stamina rating hasn't changed), he will start to have this drop off somewhere in the 95-100 pitch range. The drop off is most obvious if you watch pitch speeds (particularly for fastballs). One can only speculate about any other performance issues at that point. IMHO, this drop-off does have a significant effect on WHIP, HRs, etc., that occur during that 10-20 pitch phase of the game.

My guess is that if someone were able to devise a test in OOTP, in which pitchers were graded on performance through 5 innings (for example), with only the rotation size varied, we probably wouldn't see any significant statistical difference.

But after 5 innings, the performance drop off curve kicks in at an earlier point in the game for pitchers that aren't fully rested. OTOH, for many reasons (including pitch count control by OOTPers, PHing for pitchers, etc.) SPs that are fully rested often don't hit that performance drop off before they are removed from the game.

Just something to take into account. FWIW

[Daern]

I've always preferred the 4-man in OOTP, and I wish it would be implemented in the MLB. I don't think pitchers are wimps these days--they throw harder and with more movement and therefore arm strain--compared to the guys who threw complete games and on "short rest". I am excluding Nolan Ryan and other freaks of nature from this post. xD

Anyways, I think that if more of a focus could be put on control and conditioning over power and movement, we would see pitchers getting comparable results to the times of the four-man rotation.