Quote:
Originally Posted by Matt Arnold
In real life, if you get a pitcher up, you should plan to bring him in. If you decide not to bring him in, then you should sit him down and then get him back up when you're ready to use him.
If pitchers in the pen never got tired, then you could do like in the past and get a pitcher up and ready in the 5th inning, keep him up until you need him in the 7th, and he'd be in perfect shape. Heck, you could start a guy warming in the 1st without any detrimental effect.
And anyways, just because a guy warming up switches to "tiring", it's not like he immediately loses all effectiveness. Keeping a guy "tiring" for a couple batters is probably not going to noticeably affect him at all. If you keep him warming up for an inning without using him, then yeah, that would have an effect, but I'm pretty sure that that would also be the case in real life, and that's why guys will start sitting down as soon as they know they're not coming in soon.
Basically, if you like the strategy of deciding when to get a guy warming up to get ready to come in, the strategy of making sure that he's not in the pen for too long is basically no different.
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I understand your point and it is a fair one. Maybe the game could be coded in such a way to prevent that? If you start warming up a reliever in the first inning with the intention of bringing him in around the fifth inning, then perhaps the pitcher would sit down after a bit of time and be cold if you simply put him in the game at a much later date. There would be a window in other words of getting a guy up and him sitting down and getting cold again.
Maybe that's a stupid idea? I'm simply trying to think of a solution. It's a tough pill to swallow that relievers can warmup too much and be tired. Again, this would never happen in real life; however, you do make a fair point in your post. It's an interesting discussion regardless and I appreciate your thoughts.