Welcome to the community, Scott!
You said you watch a lot of baseball games. Is it through MLB.tv or does some UK station broadcast them? I'm continuously surprised by how many UKers become fans of OOTP.
What do you mean by "player form"?
As for looking what to do with respect to your team, you can be a micro-manager, making lots of changes trying to take advantage of any little opportunity or you can be a more macro-manager. Personally, I tell myself not to worry too much if my team isn't doing so well in their last week or so. Baseball is a long season and it's only natural that you'll have ups and downs. I also believe in the notion that some of one's best moves are the moves you don't make. So, if you want to try to trade players, pick them off waivers, or promote guys from the minors, go for it, but keep in mind that your current guys might just be in a down swing, but over the long season might do better than any new guys you bring in.
As for the bullpen, are you wanting definitions of the different roles? In the current era managers usually put their best reliever as the closer who usually only pitches the 9th inning. The setup guy is usually the next best reliever and pitches the 8th. For long relief you want a guy with higher stamina, maybe a would-be (if he was better) starter. The middle relief roles you can just place there whoever is left. I'm not sure what the specialist role does, maybe something like a LOOGY, a guy who only comes in to face left-handed hitters. This all can change somewhat if you're not playing in the modern era though.
To learn about trades/waivers and the like, you can google "mlb transactions primer". There are some pretty good sites on that stuff, but they can go into a lot more detail than you really need so just read the sections you want to know about and skip the others until you want to know about them.
I'm not comfortable enough with the in-game play to give you info on it. I'm sure others will though.
Good luck and have fun!
