[joefromchicago]

Originally Posted by Drstrangelove

I compared the top starters in the NL in both 1921 and in 2017, taking an average of 3 and 5 per team, respectively. (In other words, I chose the top pitchers by games started, counting 24 and 40 in 1921, and 45 and 75 in 2017.) That works out to an average of 3 and 5 per team.

So let me get this straight: in order to determine if teams had six-man rotations in 1921 and 2017, you're looking at each team's top five pitchers? Why wouldn't you look at the top six?

Originally Posted by Drstrangelove

That is pretty clearly not a 6 man rotation, but a 5 man rotation. And that's what one finds from the literature. People starting 8-11 games, less, were spot starters, used when needed, and in no way considered regular rotation starters.

Well, no, that wasn't a five-man rotation, or even a six-man rotation. That was a non-rotation, since baseball didn't have set pitching rotations until the late '30s at the earliest. Those pitchers who started 8-11 games could have done so for any number of reasons: they might have been primarily relievers or mid-season call-ups or send-downs or guys who sat on the bench because they were on the way up or on the way out or else they missed time due to injuries. Ray Caldwell, for instance, had 12 starts for Cleveland in 1921 because: (1) there were five guys on the staff who were better than him; (2) he was used primarily as a reliever; and (3) he was something of a head case. It's not, however, because he was the sixth man in the Cleveland rotation.

There's no question that, in the 1920s, a team's top starters got the majority of starts and the bottom of the staff picked up starts here and there when needed. The question is how best to simulate that in OOTP. As I mentioned, it's not ideal or even realistic to configure the staffs so that they have six-man rotations. Instead, that's a work-around made necessary because of the game's limitations. It would be better to get rid of rotations altogether for that era, but unfortunately we're stuck with what we have.

Originally Posted by Drstrangelove

So stamina would definitely need to work differently in 1921 than it does in 2017 so pitchers could do that, but that would then enable pitchers to throw a lot of innings.

There's a pitcher stamina setting under Stats & AI/General Strategic Tendencies. In my 1922 replay, I kept it at the historical setting (high, I think). That wasn't a problem at all. As I noted, if anything, my pitchers pitched too few innings.