My AI Manager keeps inserting my new Closer into the starting rotation

steady teddy · 08-10-2008, 11:30 AM

Sorry if this has been mentioned already but I couldn't find anything.

I prefer to play the role of GM and let the manager handle the lineups and pitching duties. I just started the 3rd season and so far my (AI) manager has done a decent job of handling the roster.

I signed a stud free agent closer during the off season. I already had a closer but changed his role to MR. The AI manager insists on using the closer as a starter. I already have 5 SPs on my roster and all of them have a higher endurance rating than the closer. He has high ratings but only 7 (out of 20) for endurance.

What might be the cause of the AI using him as a starter? Is there something else with his ratings which causes the AI to put him into the rotation?

I manually inserted him as a closer but the AI will put him back into the rotation.

Here is his profile:

hefalumps · 08-10-2008, 12:07 PM

I manage my own lineups, but I've noticed the AI do this occasionally with other teams - decide to mix things up and shift the closer as a starter or a starter as a closer. Not too different than what happens in real life I guess with guys like Wainwright, Papelbon, Smoltz, Eckersly, etc., etc.

That being said, I don't know what makes the AI decide to do it.

When the AI puts him in the rotation, is his role still listed as CL? Which current SP is being taken out of the rotation in order to put the CL in, and what are his ratings? Maybe the AI thinks your previous closer was just fine and thinks your rotation needs more beefing up than your closer did. I might be giving the AI more credit than I should here...

Tell us a little bit more about your rotation and which one your closer is bumping out.

markprior22 · 08-10-2008, 01:28 PM

I've seen this across my league with OOTP9. Teams that have lights out closers with great track records are moved into the rotation and new closers signed. I've mentioned this before and I see three main problems:

1) Something definitely changed because this didn't happen previously

2) This does happen in real baseball (see Ryan Dempster) but is very rare for an established closer. You may have a guy put in the closer role very early in his career (for lack of any other option) and moved into the rotation shortly. I'm talking about guys who are all star caliber closers.

3) They shouldn't be able to just move into the rotation with no issues. This is generally a move that would require a lot of preparation and a slow progression.

Would be interested to know why this is happening so often.

deadringer · 08-10-2008, 01:45 PM

My question to those seeing this is, how are those closers doing as starters? If they're as dominant as starters as they are as closers I'd be pretty disappointed but if they're suffering a little this would be pretty cool.

RchW · 08-10-2008, 02:01 PM

This surprises me because his endurance is low. How many innings does he go as a starter? Seems like he would only go 4 innings at best. What are his true ratings? Scouting may hide something.

I've had pitchers change roles before but usually in response to endurance increases.

deadringer · 08-10-2008, 02:21 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by RchW

This surprises me because his endurance is low. How many innings does he go as a starter? Seems like he would only go 4 innings at best. What are his true ratings? Scouting may hide something.

I've had pitchers change roles before but usually in response to endurance increases.

Well looking at Shaw above (with an incredibly small sample size) he's only averaging a little over 3 inning per outing (including 2 relief appearances) so unless those two relief appearances were each no out outings the AI isn't getting much out of him inning wise.

Whether a pitcher is worth more to a team at 4 innings or less per five games or an inning every other game is up to a completely different debate. My problem with the AI employing this kind of philosophy is that I doubt he's built his bullpen taking this kind of concept into account. If a human user were to use their closer this way they'd either carry more bullpen arms or stack their pen arms with endurance.

The Wolf · 08-10-2008, 03:11 PM

This is why we need a lock role function. Click it and it says "This is a closer (or 3B, or C). Mister AI manager, NEVER, EVER use him as anything else."

It's been asked for before. The game needs it, just like it needs mass select and mass delete. But our pleas sometimes fall on deaf ears.

deadringer · 08-10-2008, 03:31 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by The Wolf

This is why we need a lock role function. Click it and it says "This is a closer (or 3B, or C). Mister AI manager, NEVER, EVER use him as anything else."

It's been asked for before. The game needs it, just like it needs mass select and mass delete. But our pleas sometimes fall on deaf ears.

While I agree with you, that will only solve the human controlled teams half of the equation. I don't want to have to go through each AI team and lock their players for the best positions, the AI needs to be tweaked to do it itself.

james17 · 08-10-2008, 04:59 PM

I have also noticed the A/I moving closers with relatively low endurance but usually high control ratings into starting roles. It has worked out well for the A/I teams involved but I don't know how realistic it is and if the program is purposely designed this way or if it's a bug.

Bears5122 · 08-11-2008, 02:00 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by The Wolf

This is why we need a lock role function. Click it and it says "This is a closer (or 3B, or C). Mister AI manager, NEVER, EVER use him as anything else."

It's been asked for before. The game needs it, just like it needs mass select and mass delete. But our pleas sometimes fall on deaf ears.

There are more important things that need to be added such as one-legged albino leagues in Zaire.

The Wolf · 08-11-2008, 09:26 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bears5122

There are more important things that need to be added such as one-legged albino leagues in Zaire.

Trust me, the focus on weirdness and international baseball have driven me to distraction as well. You, I, and others want a first-class MLB-style baseball simulator and not an international role-playing game, but any focus on the quality of the simulation seems to go right out the window at the drop of a hat when something like "one-legged albino leagues in Zaire" comes up. Or other non-real-baseball weirdness.

It really is frustrating.

steady teddy · 08-11-2008, 10:22 AM

Thanks for the replies.

In reply to a couple of posts, here is the game log for the closer (Shaw) this year. Looking at his last two starts, he went 5.1 innings throwing 74 pitches and 5.2 innings throwing 97 pitches. That's a tad high for a 7 endurance rating, isn't it? At any rate, it looks like he's adapting quite well to the role as a SP, even though he can't get past the 6th inning. I'm not sure if this is a good or bad thing...

Here is the starting pitcher that he replaced in the rotation. His ratings are nowhere near as good as Shaw's, but he was #4 in the rotation in 2009 and had a decent year at 14-9 with a 4.89 ERA.

deadringer · 08-11-2008, 01:04 PM

This again is one of those things where Markus is at a cross roads. He either needs to start thinking of modeling specific pitch types for pitchers and hitters or he needs to tweak the existing endurance rating.

If endurance is simply going to mean the number of pitches a pitcher can throw in a given time frame before fatigue ensues then we need another rating added.

There are two reasons why a starter gets yanked; fatigue or losing effectiveness due to hitters seeing enough of his pitches and not being fooled. Markus has stated that there is a slight adjustment for pitchers each time a hitter sees them but I suspect that it's a global adjustment.

What I'd like to see is an endurance rating that works for fatigue and a rating that works backwards. Call it whatever you want but it basically needs to mean a downhill slope based on batters faced where the player's ratings (stuff, movement, control) goes down by some sort of percentage in a slope based on how many batters he faces. That way if a pitcher is used in short relief his ratings could be very, very high and the more times he goes through a lineup the lower his ratings go.

This would solve at least some of this issue. A closer would be great as a closer or in short appearances but if he had to start or work long innings he wouldn't be as effective.

Guys that had a sharp slope rating would be best used in the pen where guys with a flatter slope rating would be fine for long relief and starts.

StyxNCa · 08-11-2008, 10:42 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by The Wolf

Trust me, the focus on weirdness and international baseball have driven me to distraction as well. You, I, and others want a first-class MLB-style baseball simulator and not an international role-playing game, but any focus on the quality of the simulation seems to go right out the window at the drop of a hat when something like "one-legged albino leagues in Zaire" comes up. Or other non-real-baseball weirdness.

It really is frustrating.

""

Hador · 08-12-2008, 07:20 AM

I've noticed the same thing both when running the AI Manager on my own team but also on AI teams.

In my experience the closers turned starters are usually top notch closers but only very average starters and will hardly ever average more than 4 innings per game or so.

What is interesting is that in my experience this only seems to affect closers, I don't remember ever seeing any Reliever being taken into the starting rotation without explicit need.

Aordolin · 08-12-2008, 09:53 AM

I saw this problem in previous versions of the game too. I didnt notice it in 9 yet because I havent really played a whole lot of it yet. But what I did to stop it before was to just manually edit the closers endurance down to 3 or 4 and it seemed to stop it. (I was using the 1-20 rating scale too) For some reason a rating of 7 is just enough that a manager is tempted to use a really good closer in the starters role.

CalvinHobbes · 08-12-2008, 10:16 AM

This has been mentioned before, but I thought I'd say it again. Pitchers with three good pitches will typically pitch as starters; pitchers with only one or two plus pitches will be relievers/closers. Endurance should not be an issue.

There are exceptions to the rule, such as Papelbon having three really good pitches, he could easily have been a starter, but Boston decided to keep as the closer. Then there is AJ Burnett, who really only has a plus plus fastball. His curve is erratic, but at least gives the batters something else to think about.

So that's why a player like Dempster can be a closer and an effective starter. Most players can be 'stretched out' so that he can pitch 5, even 6 effective innings, though there are some players who lose something on their pitches as they get deeper into games. I can think of Jake McGee in the Tampa organization as an example. In the first four innings he's lights out but gets his era goes up by about 2 runs in innings 5-7. There's an example of a pitcher who would probably be better suited to middle relief.

In essense, I would say that the endurance rating needs to be looked at, however, moving a pitcher with three plus pitches into a starting role should not be taken askance, really. Just my two cents.

Solonor · 08-12-2008, 11:48 AM

Endurance is not a great way to categorize pitchers. Any pitcher can go out and start a game every 5 days and physically last 9 innings (as long as he's not 50-years old and asthmatic). The key is how long is he able to fool and/or dominate hitters before he needs to be pulled, not some mythical "endurance" number.

The differences between a starter and a reliever are:

1. He wound up on a team that needed a starter or a reliever and got assigned to one job or the other.

2. How much stuff and/or brains does he have to keep fooling hitters and for how long.

Should switching roles mid-stream screw someone up? Yes! They aren't light switches. I'm not saying there isn't a different mentality involved in starting and closing. But if you take any closer with something other than a fastball as his pitch and covert him into a starter in Spring Training, the fact that he succeeds or fails has nothing to do with "endurance."

Now, maybe that's what Markus intended the endurance number to be, but I doubt it. In any case, I don't have a problem with the AI deciding that a closer would make a great starter if it makes sense for the team.

Cardinal Rule · 08-12-2008, 12:00 PM

I think the hard part here is many look at this game as the ultimate "what if" simulator.

For example - what if someone early in Mariano Rivera's career had said "this guy's stuff is so electric we need to get 6 or 7 innings out of him"? Or what if Randy Johnson had been a closer? Who would have thought 5 years ago Braden Looper would be anything but a late-inning guy? Or think about the fictional players who see a starter become a closer or vice-versa and say "wow, this game is great - guys do this in real life, just like John Smoltz or Kerry Wood!"

So what I think Markus has done is try to model the fact that some pitchers can successfully make the move from one role to another. But the issue I see is that in some cases the AI takes a guy that may have trouble going 6 innings with any consistency and puts him as a starter. And that leads me to the big question - is it more effective to get 4 or 5 great innings from a low-endurance stud every 5 days, or to get 1 great inning from him maybe 3 or 4 days a week? I don't have the answer to that one...

deadringer · 08-12-2008, 12:13 PM

I think my biggest concern on this situation is whether or not the closer is being properly "handicapped" when moving from closer to starter. I have zero doubt that many big league closers could start but what would facing that many more batters do to their numbers?

I agree to the notion that endurance (the rating currently in the game) shouldn't be tied specifically to pitches / day (or week) but it should be tied to how long they can last before the lineup starts "figuring" them out.

If the rating was designed like that you wouldn't have to worry about this sort of thing because the AI wouldn't need to pull these closer to starter conversions because of how many pitches they'd thrown in the game but by the fact that each time the batting order cycles through he gets hit harder and harder. Sure, they'd be good for 90 pitches every five days but they'd only get three or four innings before the hitters could make adjustments to them.

This would also better simulate guys like Gagne who couldn't make the rotation but was a successful reliever.

The thing to remember here is that most good starters (like Smoltz) would make good closers because they have the kind of tools already but many closers wouldn't make good starters because they only throw one or two pitches.

08-10-2008, 11:30 AM	#1
steady teddy Major Leagues Join Date: May 2003 Location: Macomb, Michigan Posts: 407	My AI Manager keeps inserting my new Closer into the starting rotation Sorry if this has been mentioned already but I couldn't find anything. I prefer to play the role of GM and let the manager handle the lineups and pitching duties. I just started the 3rd season and so far my (AI) manager has done a decent job of handling the roster. I signed a stud free agent closer during the off season. I already had a closer but changed his role to MR. The AI manager insists on using the closer as a starter. I already have 5 SPs on my roster and all of them have a higher endurance rating than the closer. He has high ratings but only 7 (out of 20) for endurance. What might be the cause of the AI using him as a starter? Is there something else with his ratings which causes the AI to put him into the rotation? I manually inserted him as a closer but the AI will put him back into the rotation. Here is his profile:

08-10-2008, 02:01 PM	#5
RchW Hall Of Famer Join Date: Jul 2004 Location: Toronto ON by way of Glasgow UK Posts: 15,629	This surprises me because his endurance is low. How many innings does he go as a starter? Seems like he would only go 4 innings at best. What are his true ratings? Scouting may hide something. I've had pitchers change roles before but usually in response to endurance increases. __________________ Cheers RichW If you’re looking for a good cause to donate money to please consider a Donation to Parkinson’s Canada. It may help me have a better future and if not me, someone else. Thanks. “Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition …There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.” Frank Wilhoit

08-12-2008, 10:16 AM	#17
CalvinHobbes Major Leagues Join Date: Jan 2004 Location: Calgary Posts: 424	This has been mentioned before, but I thought I'd say it again. Pitchers with three good pitches will typically pitch as starters; pitchers with only one or two plus pitches will be relievers/closers. Endurance should not be an issue. There are exceptions to the rule, such as Papelbon having three really good pitches, he could easily have been a starter, but Boston decided to keep as the closer. Then there is AJ Burnett, who really only has a plus plus fastball. His curve is erratic, but at least gives the batters something else to think about. So that's why a player like Dempster can be a closer and an effective starter. Most players can be 'stretched out' so that he can pitch 5, even 6 effective innings, though there are some players who lose something on their pitches as they get deeper into games. I can think of Jake McGee in the Tampa organization as an example. In the first four innings he's lights out but gets his era goes up by about 2 runs in innings 5-7. There's an example of a pitcher who would probably be better suited to middle relief. In essense, I would say that the endurance rating needs to be looked at, however, moving a pitcher with three plus pitches into a starting role should not be taken askance, really. Just my two cents. __________________ In my opinion, we don't devote nearly enough scientific research to finding a cure for jerks.

08-12-2008, 11:48 AM	#18
Solonor Hall Of Famer Join Date: Mar 2003 Location: Maine Posts: 4,459	Endurance is not a great way to categorize pitchers. Any pitcher can go out and start a game every 5 days and physically last 9 innings (as long as he's not 50-years old and asthmatic). The key is how long is he able to fool and/or dominate hitters before he needs to be pulled, not some mythical "endurance" number. The differences between a starter and a reliever are: 1. He wound up on a team that needed a starter or a reliever and got assigned to one job or the other. 2. How much stuff and/or brains does he have to keep fooling hitters and for how long. Should switching roles mid-stream screw someone up? Yes! They aren't light switches. I'm not saying there isn't a different mentality involved in starting and closing. But if you take any closer with something other than a fastball as his pitch and covert him into a starter in Spring Training, the fact that he succeeds or fails has nothing to do with "endurance." Now, maybe that's what Markus intended the endurance number to be, but I doubt it. In any case, I don't have a problem with the AI deciding that a closer would make a great starter if it makes sense for the team. __________________ Solonor's Groovy Computer Baseball League - Making baseball a hobbit since 2003! "Beings will come, Frodo. The one constant through all the years has been baseball. Middle Earth has rolled by like an army of Mumakil. It has been erased like a slate, rebuilt and erased again. But baseball has marked the time. This field, this game: it's a part of our past, Frodo. It reminds of us of all that once was good and it could be again. Oh... beings will come Frodo. Beings will most definitely come." - Gladden Field of Dreams

08-12-2008, 12:00 PM	#19
Cardinal Rule All Star Starter Join Date: Mar 2002 Location: Omaha Posts: 1,199	I think the hard part here is many look at this game as the ultimate "what if" simulator. For example - what if someone early in Mariano Rivera's career had said "this guy's stuff is so electric we need to get 6 or 7 innings out of him"? Or what if Randy Johnson had been a closer? Who would have thought 5 years ago Braden Looper would be anything but a late-inning guy? Or think about the fictional players who see a starter become a closer or vice-versa and say "wow, this game is great - guys do this in real life, just like John Smoltz or Kerry Wood!" So what I think Markus has done is try to model the fact that some pitchers can successfully make the move from one role to another. But the issue I see is that in some cases the AI takes a guy that may have trouble going 6 innings with any consistency and puts him as a starter. And that leads me to the big question - is it more effective to get 4 or 5 great innings from a low-endurance stud every 5 days, or to get 1 great inning from him maybe 3 or 4 days a week? I don't have the answer to that one... __________________ "Go Crazy Folks!" Jack Buck

08-10-2008, 12:07 PM	#2
hefalumps All Star Starter Join Date: Mar 2003 Posts: 1,378	I manage my own lineups, but I've noticed the AI do this occasionally with other teams - decide to mix things up and shift the closer as a starter or a starter as a closer. Not too different than what happens in real life I guess with guys like Wainwright, Papelbon, Smoltz, Eckersly, etc., etc. That being said, I don't know what makes the AI decide to do it. When the AI puts him in the rotation, is his role still listed as CL? Which current SP is being taken out of the rotation in order to put the CL in, and what are his ratings? Maybe the AI thinks your previous closer was just fine and thinks your rotation needs more beefing up than your closer did. I might be giving the AI more credit than I should here... Tell us a little bit more about your rotation and which one your closer is bumping out.

08-10-2008, 01:28 PM	#3
markprior22 All Star Starter Join Date: Apr 2002 Location: springfield, illinois Posts: 1,235	I've seen this across my league with OOTP9. Teams that have lights out closers with great track records are moved into the rotation and new closers signed. I've mentioned this before and I see three main problems: 1) Something definitely changed because this didn't happen previously 2) This does happen in real baseball (see Ryan Dempster) but is very rare for an established closer. You may have a guy put in the closer role very early in his career (for lack of any other option) and moved into the rotation shortly. I'm talking about guys who are all star caliber closers. 3) They shouldn't be able to just move into the rotation with no issues. This is generally a move that would require a lot of preparation and a slow progression. Would be interested to know why this is happening so often.

08-10-2008, 01:45 PM	#4
deadringer All Star Reserve Join Date: Feb 2002 Location: La Grande, Oregon Posts: 994	My question to those seeing this is, how are those closers doing as starters? If they're as dominant as starters as they are as closers I'd be pretty disappointed but if they're suffering a little this would be pretty cool.

08-10-2008, 04:59 PM	#9
james17 All Star Starter Join Date: Nov 2004 Posts: 1,305	I have also noticed the A/I moving closers with relatively low endurance but usually high control ratings into starting roles. It has worked out well for the A/I teams involved but I don't know how realistic it is and if the program is purposely designed this way or if it's a bug.

08-11-2008, 10:22 AM	#12
steady teddy Major Leagues Join Date: May 2003 Location: Macomb, Michigan Posts: 407	Thanks for the replies. In reply to a couple of posts, here is the game log for the closer (Shaw) this year. Looking at his last two starts, he went 5.1 innings throwing 74 pitches and 5.2 innings throwing 97 pitches. That's a tad high for a 7 endurance rating, isn't it? At any rate, it looks like he's adapting quite well to the role as a SP, even though he can't get past the 6th inning. I'm not sure if this is a good or bad thing... Here is the starting pitcher that he replaced in the rotation. His ratings are nowhere near as good as Shaw's, but he was #4 in the rotation in 2009 and had a decent year at 14-9 with a 4.89 ERA.

08-11-2008, 01:04 PM	#13
deadringer All Star Reserve Join Date: Feb 2002 Location: La Grande, Oregon Posts: 994	This again is one of those things where Markus is at a cross roads. He either needs to start thinking of modeling specific pitch types for pitchers and hitters or he needs to tweak the existing endurance rating. If endurance is simply going to mean the number of pitches a pitcher can throw in a given time frame before fatigue ensues then we need another rating added. There are two reasons why a starter gets yanked; fatigue or losing effectiveness due to hitters seeing enough of his pitches and not being fooled. Markus has stated that there is a slight adjustment for pitchers each time a hitter sees them but I suspect that it's a global adjustment. What I'd like to see is an endurance rating that works for fatigue and a rating that works backwards. Call it whatever you want but it basically needs to mean a downhill slope based on batters faced where the player's ratings (stuff, movement, control) goes down by some sort of percentage in a slope based on how many batters he faces. That way if a pitcher is used in short relief his ratings could be very, very high and the more times he goes through a lineup the lower his ratings go. This would solve at least some of this issue. A closer would be great as a closer or in short appearances but if he had to start or work long innings he wouldn't be as effective. Guys that had a sharp slope rating would be best used in the pen where guys with a flatter slope rating would be fine for long relief and starts.

08-12-2008, 07:20 AM	#15
Hador Minors (Single A) Join Date: May 2005 Location: Hannover, Germany Posts: 65	I've noticed the same thing both when running the AI Manager on my own team but also on AI teams. In my experience the closers turned starters are usually top notch closers but only very average starters and will hardly ever average more than 4 innings per game or so. What is interesting is that in my experience this only seems to affect closers, I don't remember ever seeing any Reliever being taken into the starting rotation without explicit need.

08-12-2008, 09:53 AM	#16
Aordolin All Star Reserve Join Date: Apr 2004 Location: Houston, TX Posts: 586	I saw this problem in previous versions of the game too. I didnt notice it in 9 yet because I havent really played a whole lot of it yet. But what I did to stop it before was to just manually edit the closers endurance down to 3 or 4 and it seemed to stop it. (I was using the 1-20 rating scale too) For some reason a rating of 7 is just enough that a manager is tempted to use a really good closer in the starters role.

08-12-2008, 12:13 PM	#20
deadringer All Star Reserve Join Date: Feb 2002 Location: La Grande, Oregon Posts: 994	I think my biggest concern on this situation is whether or not the closer is being properly "handicapped" when moving from closer to starter. I have zero doubt that many big league closers could start but what would facing that many more batters do to their numbers? I agree to the notion that endurance (the rating currently in the game) shouldn't be tied specifically to pitches / day (or week) but it should be tied to how long they can last before the lineup starts "figuring" them out. If the rating was designed like that you wouldn't have to worry about this sort of thing because the AI wouldn't need to pull these closer to starter conversions because of how many pitches they'd thrown in the game but by the fact that each time the batting order cycles through he gets hit harder and harder. Sure, they'd be good for 90 pitches every five days but they'd only get three or four innings before the hitters could make adjustments to them. This would also better simulate guys like Gagne who couldn't make the rotation but was a successful reliever. The thing to remember here is that most good starters (like Smoltz) would make good closers because they have the kind of tools already but many closers wouldn't make good starters because they only throw one or two pitches.