[uruguru]

I have been running a sim recently, trying to create a challenge to build a winning team. In my seventh season, I finally won the pennant and even beat the Yankees in 7 games. I was super excited until I noticed that the Los Angeles Angeles finished last with a 42-120 record. That is an incredibly bad record, even for a bad team in a bad season, so I figured something was up...

Then I realized... oh no, I'm not playing with minor leagues.

It was the pitcher stamina problem. Please bear with me while I explain what it is and what I do to fix it. I am posting this because I still believe that this is the biggest single structural problem in OOTP and something eventually needs to be done about it.

THE PROBLEM:

1) Pitcher stamina in OOTP does not reflect ability... it reflects usage. What this means is that pitchers have high stamina ratings in years in which their team used them as starters, and low stamina ratings for seasons in which their team used them as relievers. Which means OOTP managers are constrained in how they use their pitchers by however the real-world managers chose to use them. It can remove some agency from the player (you dont want to move Dennis Eckersley or John Smoltz to the bullpen? too bad)

2) For any given season, there are a finite number of pitchers capable of starting games. This problem really only becomes an issue if you are playing without minor leagues. In other words, the pool of available starters is about 5 per team, and what every team needs is 5.

3) When some teams have more than their share of starters, other teams are forced to replace them with relievers or starters who normally would not even be on an MLB roster. This is what happened to the Angels. Look at the attached screenshot of their pitching staff;

1. Dean Chance - 2.5 stars. quality major league starter. Threw 267 innings with 3.43 ERA

2. Bo Belinsky - 1.5 stars. does not belong in a MLB rotation but the Angels had no choice. 184 innings, 6.26 ERA

3. Aubrey Gatewood - 0.5 star. Did not even play in 1968! Should not even be on a team, but he is the only other pitcher they have with stamina. Went 0-18 with 74 innings (lol) and a 12.28 ERA. WTF is going on here.

4 & 5. Bob Lee and Bob Miller. 1.5 star relievers with 1/5 stamina. Forced to start.

So there you have it. 1 quality starter and 4 garbage starters, so the bullpen is massively overworked.

And the kicker? They have Wilbur Wood in the bullpen, a guy who would move to the rotation in the real world a few years later and throw multiple 300+ innings seasons. The Angels should have been able to move him to the rotation in 1968 instead of waiting for White Sox to do it in the real world a few years later.


Why is pitcher stamina implemented this way?

Obviously, I am not an OOTP dev and can't speak for them, but it seems to me that you need this for historical accuracy. When you are running a historical sim, you want real-world starters to be starters in your sim, and real-world relievers to be relievers in your sim. It makes perfect sense.

But as soon as you start allowing non-historical trades and injuries into the game, which are inevitable unless you are playing with real-world transactions, then eventually some team is going to end up like the Angels and not have enough starters.

You also see this problem A LOT with expansion teams. The existing teams will preferentially protect their starters, leaving few or none for the new expansion teams. In the real world, expansion teams would simply throw their drafted relievers into the rotation and carry on as usual. But this doesn't work in OOTP so it's not that uncommon to see expansion teams lose 140 games in their first few seasons.


How do you solve this problem?

If real-world transactions are turned on, then you don't. Everything is fine. But if you are allowing trades and injuries, then you need to create a mechanism for allowing relievers to start.

It doesn't have to be complicated or perfect, just allowable. One solution I am having a lot of success with is simply editing relievers. At the beginning of each off-season, when ratings are recalculated, I simply update the stamina rating for each pitcher to a minimum of 100. If they are already higher (max is 250), then I obviously don't lower it.

This correlates to a 3/5 stamina and technically allows any pitcher to qualify as a starter. Of course, the pitch selection of many prevent this, but at least there is no shortage of starters anymore..

A configurable 'minimum pitcher stamina' (0=no minimum) would basically slay this dragon with one swing.

You would be surprised at how well this approach works. Yes, a few historical relievers get moved into the rotation but honestly, if you look at their milb stats, most of them were starters in the minors anyway so it's not really that unbelievable. I guess the pitch selection criteria could be tightened if this were a big problem.

The pitchers in the bullpen are generally the pitchers not good enough to crack the starting rotation, which is typically how it always works.

Anyway. Be forewarned that this will eventually bite you if you play without minors!