Quote:
Originally Posted by muz
Obviously. But I think it would work in real life -- I had the idea before playing OOTP.
I think it would work because it's easy to find really effective relievers. There are a lot of mediocre starters who would be killer relievers -- in fact, that's where most relievers come from.
Right now, teams tend to employ mediocre starters as starters instead of converting them to the pen, because they are wedded to the 5 man rotation. If you're going to try to squeeze 150 IP out of your fifth starter, then you're better off running your mediocre pitcher in that role, rather than putting him in the pen and getting 65 really good IP.
But if you scrap the starter model, if you look to use all your pitchers on a 2 inning at a time, not more frequently than every other day type of system, I think it would work. It would keep injuries and payroll down. It's worth a shot for a lot of teams. What would the Royals have to lose?
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It's not like this has never been done. The Rockies did something like this recently. I remember Tony LaRussa doing it a bit when he was still with the A's (I think in that case, it was more of an injury thing...). I remember going to a game LaRussa pitched 3 guys for 3 IPs each.
I think the divergence from OOTP and MLB is the quality of RPs. In real life, RPs are generally guys that couldn't hack it for some reason as a starter. Either they are platoon matchups, or injury risks, or don't have good second and third pitches, etc... Basically, the starters are the best pitchers in baseball, save a few exceptions like Mariano Rivera. OOTP, on the other hand, tends to create good pitchers that in the game can't be good starters.
How would you create a real life 10-12 man staff of only good RPs?