Does pitcher stamina need to be changed?

[joefromchicago]

Originally Posted by scurvycure

I am using 5 man rotations with most teams set to Strict, occasionally highest rested. Use of relievers is set to normal.

Other settings: Hook starter -2 (quick); Hook reliever +1 (I'm not sure what those mean or what impact they have, but those were the settings the game implemented when I ran my initial setup.)

Pitcher stamina Normal, PH for pitchers Normal
Starting pitcher stamina = 1.013 and RP stamina is 1.000

I wonder if the league stamina setting of "normal" is too low. In 1972 starters were still routinely throwing 250+ innings and completing about a quarter of their starts. A five-man rotation shouldn't be running into fatigue problems on a regular basis in 1972, although I would advise against strict rotations for the reasons I mentioned earlier. This might be one of those situations where the game would benefit from assigning "emergency starter" roles to some of a team's more durable relievers.

[joefromchicago]

Originally Posted by ALB123

The bigger reason why I was using Strict Order was that in my MLB world I have been using OOTP Default settings for Stamina, as I've already mentioned...and with a 5-man strict rotation, let's say after the first 5 games, Pitcher 1 is next to start and then P2, P3, etc... Pitcher 1 will be at 100% rested just in time to take the mound. P2 will always be somewhere between 75-80% rested. P3 will be lower, etc... So, in my mind the "Highest Rested" will always be the pitcher due to pitch because my 5-man rotation will always have 5 pitchers listed.

That's a fair point, but it's not the way most managers actually used their pitching staffs. Apart from the cascading fatigue that I mentioned earlier, the other reason managers didn't follow strict rotations is because they'd use off days to skip their worst pitchers in order to give their best pitchers extra starts.

Again, I'll use the 1995 Braves as an example. Bobby Cox was absolutely committed to a strict five-man rotation that year. Here's a rundown of the Braves' starts from opening day through the end of May:

1-Maddux
2-Glavine
3-Avery
4-Mercker
5-Smoltz
0-off day

1 2 3 4 5 0 1 2 3 4 5 1 2 3 4 5 1 2 3 4 5 1 2 3 4 5 0 1 2 3 4 5 1 2 0 3

A couple of interesting points about this: at least at the beginning of the season, there was no opportunity to move Greg Maddux up. The first two off days occurred on days when Maddux would have pitched. But when the Braves had an off day on May 30, which would have been Scott Avery's day to pitch, Cox stayed with the rotation and didn't skip Avery. And later in the season, when Cox could have skipped Mercker or Smoltz, he didn't do it.

That's dedication! Contrast that with the Astros. They also had a fairly stable rotation that year, but manager Terry Collins clearly had a different philosophy when it came to taking advantage of off days to move his top-end starters up in the order. Here's what Houston's starting assignments looked like at the beginning of 1995:

1-Drabeck
2-Reynolds
3-Kile
4-Hampton
5-Swindell
0-off day

1 2 3 4 5 0 1 3 2 4 5 1 3 2 0 5 1 3 4 0 2 5 1 3 2 5 1 3 2 0 5 1 3 2 0 5

Collins had a five-man rotation, just like Cox, but unlike Cox, Collins didn't adhere to the 1-2-3-4-5 strict rotation after the first week of the season. Shane Reynolds, it seems, was quickly demoted to the third spot after being shelled in his first start, and then Collins skipped Mike Hampton's spot when there was an off day on May 10. That meant that Doug Drabeck kept his regular spot when it came up on May 12 instead of being pushed back a day. And that would hold true for the rest of the season: Collins had Drabeck start on four days of rest (and occasionally on three days of rest) regardless of where he was in the rotation. The rest of the starting staff was then re-jiggered to accommodate Drabeck.

I think that, through history, there have been a lot more Terry Collinses than Bobby Coxes. Cox had the luxury of a strong pitching staff (when John Smoltz is your number-five starter, you're in pretty good shape), so he didn't need to skip anyone's turn. But that was really unusual, at least until around 2002. Much more common was the situation that Collins found himself in, with a couple of solid pitchers at the top of the rotation and some questionable ones at the bottom. When you're in that kind of situation, it makes sense to ditch the strict rotation in order to give as many starts as possible to your best guys.

In OOTP terms, then, Cox followed a "strict rotation," while Collins was more of a "strict rotation, occasionally highest rested" kind of manager, although I'd be more inclined to characterize him as following a "start highest rested" approach. So this might be the sort of thing that is best handled with manager strategies rather than a league-wide setting.

Originally Posted by ALB123

Speaking of...I might just have terrible Google Fu, but at some point in every ootp season I say to myself, "Hmmm...I'd like to see what the Yankees opening day 25-man roster was this season..." and I can almost never find that information. 40-man roster? Yes...All MLB Yankees that year? Yup. But the basic 25-man I can't usually find it.

I don't know if this information is collected anywhere. The Sporting News would always publish the MLB opening-day rosters, but back issues are behind a pay wall and those only go to 2003.

[Garlon]

I started a new game and am now in the 1914 season. There are 119 pitchers in the league that have a Stamina rating above 82. This is about 7 per team. I am using base pitcher stamina on career statistics. So I think there really is currently plenty of pitchers that have the stamina to make starts if needed.

[ALB123]

Originally Posted by joefromchicago

That's a fair point, but it's not the way most managers actually used their pitching staffs. Apart from the cascading fatigue that I mentioned earlier, the other reason managers didn't follow strict rotations is because they'd use off days to skip their worst pitchers in order to give their best pitchers extra starts.

Again, I'll use the 1995 Braves as an example. Bobby Cox was absolutely committed to a strict five-man rotation that year. Here's a rundown of the Braves' starts from opening day through the end of May:

1-Maddux
2-Glavine
3-Avery
4-Mercker
5-Smoltz
0-off day

1 2 3 4 5 0 1 2 3 4 5 1 2 3 4 5 1 2 3 4 5 1 2 3 4 5 0 1 2 3 4 5 1 2 0 3

A couple of interesting points about this: at least at the beginning of the season, there was no opportunity to move Greg Maddux up. The first two off days occurred on days when Maddux would have pitched. But when the Braves had an off day on May 30, which would have been Scott Avery's day to pitch, Cox stayed with the rotation and didn't skip Avery. And later in the season, when Cox could have skipped Mercker or Smoltz, he didn't do it.

That's dedication! Contrast that with the Astros. They also had a fairly stable rotation that year, but manager Terry Collins clearly had a different philosophy when it came to taking advantage of off days to move his top-end starters up in the order. Here's what Houston's starting assignments looked like at the beginning of 1995:

1-Drabeck
2-Reynolds
3-Kile
4-Hampton
5-Swindell
0-off day

1 2 3 4 5 0 1 3 2 4 5 1 3 2 0 5 1 3 4 0 2 5 1 3 2 5 1 3 2 0 5 1 3 2 0 5

Collins had a five-man rotation, just like Cox, but unlike Cox, Collins didn't adhere to the 1-2-3-4-5 strict rotation after the first week of the season. Shane Reynolds, it seems, was quickly demoted to the third spot after being shelled in his first start, and then Collins skipped Mike Hampton's spot when there was an off day on May 10. That meant that Doug Drabeck kept his regular spot when it came up on May 12 instead of being pushed back a day. And that would hold true for the rest of the season: Collins had Drabeck start on four days of rest (and occasionally on three days of rest) regardless of where he was in the rotation. The rest of the starting staff was then re-jiggered to accommodate Drabeck.

I think that, through history, there have been a lot more Terry Collinses than Bobby Coxes. Cox had the luxury of a strong pitching staff (when John Smoltz is your number-five starter, you're in pretty good shape), so he didn't need to skip anyone's turn. But that was really unusual, at least until around 2002. Much more common was the situation that Collins found himself in, with a couple of solid pitchers at the top of the rotation and some questionable ones at the bottom. When you're in that kind of situation, it makes sense to ditch the strict rotation in order to give as many starts as possible to your best guys.

In OOTP terms, then, Cox followed a "strict rotation," while Collins was more of a "strict rotation, occasionally highest rested" kind of manager, although I'd be more inclined to characterize him as following a "start highest rested" approach. So this might be the sort of thing that is best handled with manager strategies rather than a league-wide setting.


I don't know if this information is collected anywhere. The Sporting News would always publish the MLB opening-day rosters, but back issues are behind a pay wall and those only go to 2003.

Yup. My rotation settings (Strict) have always been just like Bobby Cox, in your example. If we had a day off, whoever would have pitched that day if it weren't off will just start the next day. So, it'll be 1 2 3 4 5 all season long. Like I said because I'm a human and I don't sim a week or more at a time, as soon as I see my SP just injured himself and won't be ready by his next scheduled start, I manually move in one of my Long Relievers who can work as an Emergency SP here and there. Otherwise, I switch over to my AAA pitching staff screen and pick someone to come up and replace my injured pitcher...

If I simulated two weeks at a time and didn't have anyone in my bullpen listed as an emergency SP it would skip the spot of my recently injured pitcher and start the next guy...like they often do in real life!! But, I always worried about that because with Pitcher Stamina at Low, that meant every single day, until I manually stop it or we get a day off, every SP of mine would be taking the mound approximately 80% rested.

I changed Pitcher Stamina to High based on the recommendation of Garlon's chart he's been sharing in this thread and *PRESTO!* now things are working realistically. Using a 5-man rotation, pitchers will be 97-100% rested the day before they're scheduled to pitch. So, if my scheduled starter slipped at the strip club the night before and broke his big toe, the pitcher behind him could step in and pitch without burning out after 2.5 innings. So, thank you, Garlon! Making that change also made bullpen usage much more realistic, in my opinion, as well.

Now, if I bring in Mariano Rivera (he's my 1995 setup guy until next year) and he throws 18-27 pitches, hopefully, we win the game and we all get a good night's sleep. The very next day, if I need to call on Mariano again for the second straight night, he'll be entering the game at around 92% to 94% and have no problem at all giving you another 20-30 pitches. So, by taking the advice of both Garlon and Joe, I'm certain the AI is going to be a more formidable opponent throughout the season now that they're not locked into a Strict rotation running on Low Stamina.

I am so happy about this. I know readers are probably thinking, "Well, why didn't you just try this on your own?" I did make adjustments to the Relief Pitcher Stamina modifier previously, but I'd rather not mess with modifiers if I can help it. And then, honestly, I don't know why I didn't try setting the main Pitcher Stamina setting to High. I didn't want to give myself any additional help even though setting it to High is actually helping the AI even more than me and that's great! That's what I wanted, hence my change to allow the AI teams to carry 1 additional reliever and bench person, but not me.

I didn't mean to derail the original purpose and discussion of this thread. I sincerely appreciate the help of everyone. And I really do appreciate people like you guys who are doing more research and testing than "playing" with OOTP which will ultimately lead to overall improvements in the sim, so newer players like myself can have a great time.

Oh, scurvycure...I was just curious what year you were playing just so I could try to visualize things from that point of view since we all know baseball changes significantly over the years. By the way, I'll bet if you go pick up a couple of big cartons of orange juice, you'll take care of that scurvy right away.

[Garlon]

When it comes to the strategy settings, think of them as having to do with fictional leagues. Even though a setting might not seem right for a historical league, it may be the correct one to use. This is in part because of the historical league totals modifiers that keep things on track. Another thing you may want to do is adjust how the league totals modifier calculates pitcher stamina. By default it out 50% of the weight on IP/GS and 50% of the weight on complete game percentage. I think that IP/GS is far more important than CG. When the game targets CG too much you can actually end up getting significantly more IP from SP than they should be getting. I suggest you check your league statistics and see how many IPouts/GS your league is getting and compare it to the historical totals of that season. I can give you additional assistance on this. I set the modifier to calculate as 99% weight to IP/GS and 1% of the weight to CG because I want a more precise usage from relief pitchers.

As for the Hook settings, I asked that we get an option to turn those off for historicals. They really make no sense. If you notice sometimes the SP Stamina League Totals Modifier is below 1, but yet the Hook rating for SP is Slow...so the game is decreasing SP stamina but also trying to leave them in the game longer for some reason. This makes the game less precise. Before the Hook settings were introduced I was getting IPouts/GS for any given season to +/-0.1 outs. That is not 1 full out either way, but a tenth of an out, so about as precise as you could ask for, but after the Hook settings were put into the game things are not quite as accurate.

[ALB123]

Originally Posted by Garlon

When it comes to the strategy settings, think of them as having to do with fictional leagues. Even though a setting might not seem right for a historical league, it may be the correct one to use. This is in part because of the historical league totals modifiers that keep things on track. Another thing you may want to do is adjust how the league totals modifier calculates pitcher stamina. By default it out 50% of the weight on IP/GS and 50% of the weight on complete game percentage. I think that IP/GS is far more important than CG. When the game targets CG too much you can actually end up getting significantly more IP from SP than they should be getting. I suggest you check your league statistics and see how many IPouts/GS your league is getting and compare it to the historical totals of that season. I can give you additional assistance on this. I set the modifier to calculate as 99% weight to IP/GS and 1% of the weight to CG because I want a more precise usage from relief pitchers.

As for the Hook settings, I asked that we get an option to turn those off for historicals. They really make no sense. If you notice sometimes the SP Stamina League Totals Modifier is below 1, but yet the Hook rating for SP is Slow...so the game is decreasing SP stamina but also trying to leave them in the game longer for some reason. This makes the game less precise. Before the Hook settings were introduced I was getting IPouts/GS for any given season to +/-0.1 outs. That is not 1 full out either way, but a tenth of an out, so about as precise as you could ask for, but after the Hook settings were put into the game things are not quite as accurate.

I would love to make this more historically accurate. Unfortunately, I have absolutely no idea what IP/GS or IPout/GS is. I'm assuming those are numbers I'm going to have to calculate myself? Is the first one Innings Pitched divided by Games Started? Gosh, I feel so stupid...I appreciate your willingness to help me out with this. When I have it explained to me once, I should be good to go anytime in the future. Right now, there is quite a bit of confusion bouncing around my brain...

joefromchicago, I experienced my first benefit of using (Strict, on occasion highest rested) - I was so excited. LOL I've had a tiny bit of bad luck recently with two SP's dealing with injuries. They happened days apart, so for the first instance, let's say my pitching staff of 1 2 3 4 5 was missing the #4 SP. If I kept it on Strict I would have been dealing with 1 2 3 x 5 and things would not be ideal if I had been simming a week at a time once it hit the SP slot for SP 4. Well, by using (Strict, on occasion highest rested), it seamlessly had my rotation go 1 2 3 5 1 2 and so on.

Because I have changed my overall Pitcher Stamina to High, like Garlon suggested, my #5 pitcher was ready to fill in for the missing #4 SP without any issues whatsoever. I must have had a smile from ear to ear on my ugly face because now I know for sure that the AI teams won't suffer anymore from my mistake of putting them on a Strict rotation.

The happiness didn't end there! I had that second SP go down, leaving me with only 3 SPs. So, I called up a AAA SP and slipped him into slot #5. He's only a 2-star SP. There was a day off, after pitcher #2 threw, then pitcher #3 had his turn on the mound. We already know #4 is empty due to the first SP injury. Imagine my surprise when the scheduled starter the very next day was my ace, Randy Johnson the #1 slot pitcher. OOTP knew to skip over my so-so #5 pitcher because my #1 stud was as rested as possible, well ready to go. That made my day... It all happened just as you described Joe, just like real life.

[Garlon]

When the game calculates the modifiers it does so from a custom file that I originally put together for the game. This is how each season the League Totals Modifiers keep things accurate. So in say 1993 the game will output a Batting Average of .265 as the league really did in that season. For every modifier that is there it models dynamically from the real historical data and takes into account your current league settings. So it technically doesn't matter if you set your SP stamina to Normal or High, because the modifier will provide the correct IPouts/GS, or outs per game started by pitchers, however, you will see that with the High setting your best pitchers do perform better than on the Normal setting. There is no need to calculate any of those values yourself, the game automatically references the file and generates new modifiers according to your settings on Opening Day. When you proceed to Opening Day you will see the game tell you that it is calculating the modifiers, or essentially calibrating our league to match historical results.