[joefromchicago]

THE SIMULATION (SIM1)

I followed a "set it and forget it" style of managing for the most part. That was made easier by the fact that my pitchers suffered no injuries of any kind during the season, which means that I only used eight pitchers in total. Their stats (games-games started-innings pitched) in the sim and in real life are as follows:

Hermann Pilette (sim): 38 G, 32 GS, 256.2 IP
Hermann Pilette (RL): 40 G, 37 GS, 274.2 IP

Howard Ehmke (sim): 35 G, 31 GS, 254 IP
Howard Ehmke (RL): 45 G, 29 GS, 279.2 IP

Red Oldham (sim): 34 G, 29 GS, 226 IP
Red Oldham (RL): 43 G, 28 GS, 212 IP

Hooks Dauss (sim): 38 G, 22 GS, 206 IP
Hooks Dauss (RL): 39 G, 25 GS, 218.2 IP

Ole Olsen (sim): 27 G, 26 GS, 184 IP
Ole Olsen (RL): 37 G, 15 GS, 137 IP

Syl Johnson (sim): 15 G, 14 GS, 87 IP
Syl Johnson (RL): 29 G, 8 GS, 97 IP

Bert Cole (sim): 42 G, 0 GS, 74.1 IP
Bert Cole (RL): 23 G, 5 GS, 79.1 IP

Lil Stoner (sim): 46 G, 0 GS, 83.1 IP
Lil Stoner (RL): 17 G, 7 GS, 62.2 IP

The biggest differences, of course, are the stats for the two pitchers who were used exclusively in relief in the sim: Cole and Stoner. Although their IP numbers are surprisingly close to their real-life totals, the way that they racked up those innings was definitely not. In 1922, only four pitchers in the AL finished with more than 45 appearances, and they all had at least 32 starts. Hub Pruett of the Browns led the AL with 31 relief appearances, but even he started eight games.

Had any of my starting six suffered an injury, Cole and Stoner would surely have had a chance to get in a few starts. But that's not how Cobb used his pitchers in 1922. He also had a fairly stable pitching staff - Dauss may have started the season injured (he didn't make his first appearance until April 24, twelve days after the opener) - but in general Cobb used his top eight pitchers fairly consistently throughout the season.

What Cobb didn't do was use a six-man rotation, or a rotation of any sort. By the second half of the season he would occasionally fall back on a starting sequence of Pillette-Ehmke-Oldham-Dauss, but that was by no means a regular occurrence. In general, I think Cobb did what most managers at that time did: he picked the best pitcher who appeared rested and ready that day to start. There may also have been some lefty-righty percentages at play. Oldham, the only left-hander who started consistently (Cole was the other lefty on the staff) had ten of his 28 starts against Washington, a team whose best hitters were all left-handed.

With only two men in the bullpen, the starters in the sim all had chances to relieve. Dauss's sim numbers are surprisingly close to his real-life totals: I'm not sure what was going on there, but it's a least a promising sign. Oldham appeared more often as a reliever in real life than in the sim, probably because he was reliable and left-handed. Johnson, at the bottom of the rotation, still got 14 starts, six more than in real life. And despite having two pitchers who were strictly limited to relief, the sim Tigers still compiled more complete games (72) than the real-life Tigers (67). That's in line with my previous simulations, which also saw this paradoxical result.

So OOTP still can't replicate the way pitchers were used in the pre-reliever era - at least not with my settings. Are the out-of-the-box settings any better? We'll see....

CONTINUED