THE SET-UP
This series of posts will continue my examination (see
this thread) of the way that OOTP handles pitchers in the pre-reliever era (roughly pre-1940). Briefly summarized, I believe that the most accurate results possible under the game's current pitching framework can be achieved by making the number of pitchers on a staff equal the number of pitchers in the pitching rotation. That would mean that all (or at least six) members of the staff will be starters. Prior to about 1915 there shouldn't be any relievers, and between approximately 1915 and 1940 there should only be a few relievers in certain limited circumstances.
In this test, I played as the Detroit Tigers in the 1922 season. The reason I chose the Tigers is that they had a relatively straightforward pitching staff that year. The team used only eleven pitchers during the entire season, and of them three pitched a total of 30 innings, meaning that the top eight pitchers accounted for 98% of all innings pitched for the club. Since I planned to limit pitching staffs to eight members, I felt that would make it easier to compare the game's results with the stats for the real-life team.
As mentioned, I changed the default settings, which are set at nine-man pitching staffs and 25-man rosters. Instead, I set pitching staffs at eight men and rosters at 23. I believe this is more realistic, even though teams in 1922 were allowed 25 men on their rosters. In practice, I don't think any teams carried this many players, and the fact that the Tigers in 1922 got along for most of the season with eight pitchers seems to bear this out (in fact, they probably carried fewer than 23 - only 16 non-pitchers suited up for Detroit that season).
I set the league's rotation size at six and the rotation mode at "start highest-rested." I ranked the starting rotation in order of the number of starts that each pitcher recorded in real life. So Herman Pillette headed the rotation, even though OOTP wanted to make him into a reliever (must have something to do with his ratings). Here's the starting rotation, with the number of real-life game starts for each pitcher:
Herman Pillette - 37
Howard Ehmke - 29
Red Oldham - 28
Hooks Dauss - 25
Ole Olsen - 15
Syl Johnson - 8
Having eight-man staffs meant that two pitchers would necessarily become relievers. In this case those were Bert Cole and Lil Stoner. It might be argued that Johnson was really a reliever - he had 19 relief appearances in 1922 as opposed to only eight starts, but Cole and Stoner were likewise predominantly used in relief (18 relief appearances and 5 starts for Cole, 10 and 7 for Stoner). Plus, I was tickled that I had
Olsen & Johnson at the bottom end of my rotation. So sue me.
Ty Cobb, as the skipper of the 1922 Tigers, was slightly ahead of his managerial counterparts in his use of relievers. His club ranked last in the AL in complete games and trailed only the Browns in the number of "retrospective saves." That could be the result of some innovative thinking on the Georgia Peach's part, but I believe it had more to do with the generally mediocre quality of his staff. In that respect, he probably got more out of his pitchers than he is generally given credit for, as his team finished with a 79-75 record, good enough for third place. The fact that Detroit used relievers more often than normal, I thought, might actually yield more realistic results given the limitations of the OOTP pitching model.
There is no pre-set strategy profile for Cobb, and there are only a smattering of managerial profiles suitable for 1922. By default, I set any team that did not have a manager with a profile (such as Connie Mack and John McGraw) to Pat Moran, who was the manager for the Reds. Moran was also something of a leader when it came to the use of relievers, but I'm not sure if his strategy profile really reflects that fact. According to the manager background file: "Pat wants his starters to pile up innings but will remove his relievers quickly if necessary." Whatever that means.
CONTINUED