Quote:
Originally Posted by Garlon
I really do not use the allow starters in relief option when I play but I suspect that comes in to play when basically all of the other relievers are unavailable. It may be difficult to code the game to allow starters in relief for some high leverage situations. If not done properly you will have your staff ace making 35 relief appearances and missing many starts. There would need to be some very specific criteria met like the game needs to be in extra innings and it cannot be a SP who just pitched recently, and the game needs to be tied or something. I think working out the strategy for how this could work in the game may be difficult.
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I don't think it would be that difficult at all (although I have very unrealistic ideas about what it takes to do computer coding - I suspect it's all magic somehow). There's an option to give every member of the starting rotation a secondary role, and that includes a "high leverage" role. In my experience, though, the AI
never assigns a secondary role to any starter. This is a huge wasted opportunity, in my opinion, and again it's a feature that's already in the game that could be utilized to improve historical accuracy without overhauling the pitching model.
As for how that might work in practice, I don't think a lot of additional "if-then" coding would be needed. If a starter with a secondary role of "high leverage" is too tired to pitch, then the game won't select him to pitch. That seems pretty straightforward to me. But, as I've pointed out before, a slightly tired starter is still usually a better choice to pitch in a save situation than a washed-up pitcher who is only in the bullpen because he's not good enough to start - which was usually the situation with "relievers" in those days.
And yes, top starters did lose starts because they were picking up relief opportunities. But that's historically accurate. It was not uncommon for the pitcher with the most IP on a team's staff to have the
second-most starts. HOFers like Lefty Grove, Jesse Haines, Waite Hoyt, Ed Walsh, and Three-Finger Brown appeared 20% or more of the time out of the bullpen. And if the gamer doesn't want to see his top starter lose starts because he pitches in relief, there's a menu option already that will prevent starters from relieving. No need to make any changes to the AI.
So I don't think an overhaul of the AI would be needed. Just make the AI choose secondary roles for members of the starting rotation. That option is already there. For some reason, though, the game never uses it.