AI Teams are rostering less than 13 pitchers

[albanianexcellence]

In the year 2035 of my sim and barely any teams have 13 pitchers on the roster on opening day. Most have something between 9-12 pitchers, rostering 3-4 1B or 7-8 OF instead. Roster size rules haven't changed, and the general roster AI settings still have the default settings of 13 pitchers/13 position players

[Lukas Berger]

Would you (or anyone else seeing this) be able to upload your league files for this league to Dropbox or Google Drive and post a link here so we can check into this? Thanks!

[albanianexcellence]

Originally Posted by Lukas Berger

Would you (or anyone else seeing this) be able to upload your league files for this league to Dropbox or Google Drive and post a link here so we can check into this? Thanks!

Uploaded it via FTP, it's MLB01.lg.7z

[DJessup]

Is that an error on the game? Just because you CAN do more than the minimum (which is 4 SP, 4 RP and later increased to a soft "10"), does that mean that if they don't carry more, then they are doing something wrong? Is it actually a thing to where "You can not have less than 50% of your active roster be pitchers"?

I would CERTAINLY bring in 15 position players and 11 pitchers almost every year. (But I am not sold on this "5 man rotation is not enough" thing. Baseball functioned excellently with a 4 man rotation until the mid 90s, a 3 man rotation until the 60s, etc...)

I question if the AI having a smaller pitching staff is a problem. What is the official MLB ruling on "the 26th man"? I know the rule prohibits more than 13 pitchers, but it absolutely does not say you are not allowed to have LESS than 13...

Edit:
I know this is not necessarily your issue. Your league settings say 13/13. But that is not a mandatory hard rule, as far as the settings are concerned, although it looks like it should be an exact number as such. I do believe that setting allows for a variation, probably +/-2. And if I'm wrong, ok! I'm only replying based on the "BCS rule".

[albanianexcellence]

Originally Posted by DJessup

Is that an error on the game? Just because you CAN do more than the minimum (which is 4 SP, 4 RP and later increased to a soft "10"), does that mean that if they don't carry more, then they are doing something wrong? Is it actually a thing to where "You can not have less than 50% of your active roster be pitchers"?

I would CERTAINLY bring in 15 position players and 11 pitchers almost every year. (But I am not sold on this "5 man rotation is not enough" thing. Baseball functioned excellently with a 4 man rotation until the mid 90s, a 3 man rotation until the 60s, etc...)

I question if the AI having a smaller pitching staff is a problem. What is the official MLB ruling on "the 26th man"? I know the rule prohibits more than 13 pitchers, but it absolutely does not say you are not allowed to have LESS than 13...

Edit:
I know this is not necessarily your issue. Your league settings say 13/13. But that is not a mandatory hard rule, as far as the settings are concerned, although it looks like it should be an exact number as such. I do believe that setting allows for a variation, probably +/-2. And if I'm wrong, ok! I'm only replying based on the "BCS rule".

It's an issue because the Braves only rostered 9 pitchers the previous year and lost over 110 games despite having a top 3 offense in the league. They had a bullpen ERA over 9, due entirely to the fact that they only carried 9 pitchers on the 26-man roster and were using exhausted relievers the entire season. Having a little more bullpen depth is much more useful than carrying 25 overall first basemen that are only used sparingly in pinch hitting situations.

[Tesla51P]

I am seeing this issue as well using 25.3.57 and it seems to be pretty prevalent across the league. To see this issue, all I did was start a standard MLB league, disabled the league evolution, and changed the draft reveal date to be a little earlier (shouldn't be related). I then simmed 20 years. After 20 years, many teams are running 12 man or less pitching staffs with some running only 9. I enabled 100% accurate scouting afterwards to see the true ratings of players.

The AI appears to be trying to resolve the issue by claiming pitchers off waivers, signing minors FAs, but it then ends up DFA'ing the players it obtains. When you look at the 40 man rosters, the teams are prioritizing hitters over pitchers. Many teams only have the pitchers on their MLB roster on the 40 man. The most pitchers on any 40 man is 18. I am guessing this is because the pitchers all appear to have lower potential and overall's than the hitters, so the AI is prioritizing keeping the higher rated players, but at the expense of having a valid pitching staff.

[Lukas Berger]

We took a look at this and should be able to keep this from happening for the next patch.

[Tesla51P]

Originally Posted by Lukas Berger

We took a look at this and should be able to keep this from happening for the next patch.

That is great to hear. Thanks for the notice. What is the rough timeline on patch #4? I know #3 still has to be made official yet so I realize it may be a few weeks.