Starters on TWO player controlled teams, skipped by AI for 3 days

[rudoggy]

I have 2 teams i control. I sim each game. The day starts normal, i check each pitchers stamina, both are healed and rested. i have no pitcher set as a "spot starter" guy, and i run "strict order".
But on this day, both teams, start the first reliever, or the mop up guy. I even taskbar crashed out to test again. 4 times give the same results. The logs show nothing unusual, just that the wrong pitcher starts, and after the game, the pitcher page shows the correct next guy in line to start, and starts him.
The date is Sept 24, 2013 if that means anything, which it shouldn't.
This happens for 2 more days, which happen to be the 2 days leading into the playoffs. Both teams make the playoffs, and the first game correctly starts the starter assigned. From this point onward, the pitchers follow their assigned slots. But, by this point, both bullpens are exhausted from starting the last few games!

I have advanced passed this date now as the playoffs worked in my favor 8)

Any thoughts? This can not be the AI resting starters after clinched playoffs, that would make no sense when it cooks the bullpen.
I have never seen this before.

thanks.

[Jabs]

From what I've seen in my solo league, if your team has clinched a playoff spot, the AI will automatically "rest" your top starters in the last few regular season games. It will take a MR and throw them into a spot start, which is good to rest your top starters, but bad managing in my opinion.

I understand resting a top starter to keep him fresh for the playoffs, but would a team really throw one of their top MR's into that situation IRL and risk injuring a setup man going into the playoffs? Obviously not. It's not like OOTP is pitching these MR's for 1 inning each in that last game, I've had MR's throw CG's on the last day of the season. So now my starters are all rested, but my MR is shot for the first game or two of the playoffs.

I think that unless you manually change your rotation, the AI should stick to the rotation if your Rotation setting is on Strict Order.

[rudoggy]

I dont think i have ever run into this before, and i have clinched several times.
I really cant believe this could be coded in, as if you have a bunch of short relievers, like i do. The AI ends up using all of them for each of the last few days. Then you go into playoffs and they are burnt out.
This makes no sense.
The only way i made it through the first round was that my first 2 starters ended up going 8 innings each, otherwise i hand them the first few games.

Anyone else had this?

[RchW]

Originally Posted by Jabs

From what I've seen in my solo league, if your team has clinched a playoff spot, the AI will automatically "rest" your top starters in the last few regular season games. It will take a MR and throw them into a spot start, which is good to rest your top starters, but bad managing in my opinion.

I understand resting a top starter to keep him fresh for the playoffs, but would a team really throw one of their top MR's into that situation IRL and risk injuring a setup man going into the playoffs? Obviously not. It's not like OOTP is pitching these MR's for 1 inning each in that last game, I've had MR's throw CG's on the last day of the season. So now my starters are all rested, but my MR is shot for the first game or two of the playoffs.

I think that unless you manually change your rotation, the AI should stick to the rotation if your Rotation setting is on Strict Order.

The bold I've never seen. In fact I try like hell to rest my starters by starting even a AA pitcher on the last three days and the AI will bring my No 1 starter in as a relief pitcher. I surely hope that v11 of this game will have a "rest starting pitching until playoffs" check box for each SP.