Everything You Wanted To Know About Pitching But Were Afraid To Ask...

[Hazza]

A small few of us may have begun our time with OOTP with a limited know-how of the game of baseball itself.

So this thread is to enlighten people like me who didn't know a Mop-Up Reliever from a can opener.

Of course I fully expect the wise men on the board to correct the numerous oversights and misleading information, that is what they are there for after all...

I : Types Of Pitcher.

First off, you have your three types of pitcher (To being with), Starter, Reliver and Closer.

Starter:

Your starter is, as the name suggests, the guy who starts the game. WIth him you're shooting for six to seven innings worth of pitching goodness, at which point he can hand the game over to the...

Reliver(s):

Pitching is a gruelling undertaking, and such it is rare for a pitcher to be able effectively play through the whole nine innings. This is where the reliver(s) come in to play. They pick up the slack when the starter either tyres, gets smacked about the park (So, in about the third innnings for the Yankees ) or any other reason.

These dudes normally pitch for one to two innings at a time an are either used as a stop gap, or as a game winning/momentum play later in the game (We'll get to that later.)

After they're done they hand the ball to...

The Closer:

This guy has three distinct and unique jobs in a game of baseball. They are, out one, out two and out three. That's all they are there to do. The teams have these guys for those situations where they other team are behind by up to about 5 runs in the last inning, and they come in and just blow the last three guys over with their awsome stuff.

Simple.

II - Pitching Strategy. Aka, what the hell are all those relivers for?

First off the teams normally have five starters, ranked in order of talent. (Pretty much.)

First off you have your Ace, he's the guy you want to win most of the games you start with. What do you want from him? Everything, he's gotta have all the skills in all the areas (plus good endurance). Obviously different starters will have better skills in better areas, but in general you'll want to have a bit of everything.

Second, third, and maybe fourth you'll have your other guys, who are good, but not AS good as the ace. The ammount you have is pretty much down to your ootp budget, and obviously more is better.

Fifth you have your guy who isn't going to start as many games as hopefully by the time your number four has played you are ready to play your number one. But don't freak out about him, most teams (well, I do anyway) have a up and comer or a Wakefield type player in this position. Solid but un spectacular.

Okay, here is your example:

Boston Red Sox.

First off you have Beckett, who is on fire at the moment sitting on a 10-1 ratio at the moment. The Red Sox play him to win games.

Second off, you have Schilling and Dice-K. These guys are good, but not as good as Beckett at the moment.

Fourth you have Tavarez who alternates between bull pen and the rotation.

And last (but not least) is Tim Wakefield. He's there backup guy that they can get a fairly standard performance from across a season.

Relievers:

This is where it threw me early in the game. But here is is.

You have three types (We'll still pretend that the Closer is different, as the game treats them as such.)

Middle Reliever, Mop Up and Set Up.

Middle Relievers come into the game where the starter tyres or gets spanked around the fifth inning or so. These guys just do the best they can until you can bring on the set up or closer.

Mop Up reliever arn't in every team, but are basically the guy you bring on when your starter gets injured early in the game. You want strong endurance for these guys.

Set Up relivers are where your two best relievers go, these are the closers before the closers and like Riviera in the old days, attempt to end the game in the 8th inning.

What do you want? Well highest priority in my opinion is the setup guys. I'll strive to have two five star relievers (Remember, MRs are cheap as chips in the game) as set up, a lefty and a righty (Remember, they can still be played anytime.)

The skills you are looking for ain a setup would be stuff and movement over everything else, strikeouts and not being belited for HRs are key.

Mop-Up guys? If you have one, high enduarance (Normally put him in as a spot starter) and possibly good movement for a low ERA.

Middle Relievers are your third best pitchers behind the Starters and the Setup guys. You'd like to have some stars here, but if you've got a solid starting rotation then you don't need middle guys as much. Shoot for some 3-4 star guys.

I normally look for movement and control in my middle relievers, but it's up to you how you play your baseball here.

Last up is the Closer. You want him to end the game in the 9th inning through strike outs and awsome pitching. In real life you'd look for outstanding stuff and speed, but apparently OOTP doesn't factor ball speed into the game, so what you want is Stuff first and everything else second. You don't need much endurance as they're only pitching on inning.

III - What do the ratings mean?

Well, we'll keep this brief.

Stuff: Strikeouts, Era.

Stuff is stuff. What it means is how good your guy is at striking people out.

Movement: Era, HR Against, Strikeouts

How much he can move the ball, keeps the runs down and limits homers.

Control: Era, walks etc.

Limits wild pitches and walking.

IV - So what should my lineup look like?

It's all personall preference, but a a winning squad should look like:

Rotation:
1 *****
2 ****
3 ****
4 ***
5 *

MR
1 ***
2 **
3 *
4 *

Setup
1 *****
2 ****

Cl
1 *****

In summary: Starting Rotation and Closer are key to keep your head above water, after that you'll be looking at improving your bull pen. Focusing on this is the difference between you having a Yankee's season or a Red Sox season.

[mjlewis]

Good writeup!

A couple minor additions:

The "mop-up man" is generally the guy who comes in when you're way behind and don't want to use a valuable reliever, just someone who can eat up some innings.

If possible, you'd like to have a good mix of left-handed and right-handed relievers, since you can use them when you have the platoon advantage to get a slightly bigger edge.

- Mike

[injury log]

Originally Posted by Hazza

A small few of us may have begun our time with OOTP with a limited know-how of the game of baseball itself.

You've made me curious- are there many OOTP players who started with a limited knowledge of baseball? I think it's fantastic if there are.

A couple of comments on an interesting writeup:

Originally Posted by Hazza

First off, you have your three types of pitcher (To being with), Starter, Reliver and Closer.

While OOTP doesn't have a separate category for situation relievers, many real-life teams will carry a 'situational lefthander', also known as a LOOGY (lefthanded one-out guy) who they will often bring in only to face one lefthanded batter during a crucial game situation. If you manage all of your games, you could use one of your pitchers in this way- it's debatable whether it's a good use of a roster spot, but many MLB teams do it.

Originally Posted by Hazza

III - What do the ratings mean?
Stuff: Strikeouts, Era.

Movement: Era, HR Against, Strikeouts

Control: Era, walks etc.
Limits wild pitches and walking.

There is actually a separate value (hidden in the Profile screen, but visible in the player editor) which determines the number of wild pitches a pitcher throws; it shouldn't be influenced by Control. Movement should also only have a very minimal effect on strikeouts- it primarily determines HRs allowed.

Originally Posted by Hazza

It's all personall preference, but a a winning squad should look like:
...
Cl
1 *****

It should be noted that, when determining star ratings, closers aren't compared with all relievers, only with other closers- i.e. only against the best relievers in the league. So a 5-star closer is actually a superhuman pitcher- very good to have! Often a 2-star closer will be a better pitcher than a 4 or 5-star reliever, and will often do a decent job. You'll see this immediately if you open your closer's player profile, and set his position to MR; his star rating will increase. At least, this is true in the default setup, where star ratings are determined only by comparing players to others at the same position.

[Curtis]

"Reliver(s):

Pitching is a gruelling undertaking, and such it is rare for a pitcher to be able effectively play through the whole nine innings. This is where the reliver(s) come in to play."

Personally, I only bother with relivers if my starter has cirrhosis, but your mileage may vary.

Thank you for posting this. Are you going to do something similar for batters?