Some help with in-game bullpen management

[Yankee Hotel Foxtrot]

Hi,

so as I was saying in another post earlier, this is probably my fourth attempt at getting into OOTP over a span of maybe 10 or so years. And it's finally stuck, and I've become very immersed in an alternate historical universe as the Yankees.


Now, I've extremely limited baseball knowledge, but am starting to come around as I watch and try things.


However I am still in the dark about when and how I should go about managing my bullpen during a game.
I think I'm starting to pick up on cues that I might wanna start getting my guys warmed up, but I have ZERO baseball knowledge to incorporate here.


I'd really appreciate advice to help me get more involved in this aspect, as I suspect my game day coach managing this aspect is being way to slow at pulling a guy (even though I've got the strategy set to pull starters quickly).


Again any help would be greatly appreciated.

[LansdowneSt]

My first in-game recommendation would be to elect to not require relief pitcher warm-ups at this point. You can choose that as the default when you start the game in the settings and it may even be in the league settings (I mostly control it as I enter the game).

Best to first just get conformable with the other aspects you are working through. How patient to be, looking at R/L matchups, watching stamina, know who is rested in the first place, looking for a DP or a K in a given situation, etc. You could be doing everything right but just starting relievers too early or too late in the warm-ups. I'd take that variable out for now.

[TheMaus2]

There are a few tells, you want to be wary once a guy has gone through the order a couple times through the order, and when the stamina/pitch count bar turns orange, once your guy allows a couple baserunners in his first 3 batters faced is a good sign you should pull him. usually it takes about 3 batters or half an inning to get a reliever ready and you can obviously cheat a little bit with a mound visit.

[drksd4848]

One thing to look for is if he is consistently falling behind in the count. The first sign of fatigue isn't necessarily velocity, but location. The arm starts to drag a bit (although you can't really see that in OOTP).


I tend to be a bit old school. I let my starters pitch deep into games and let them finish if they are in control in the later innings. Even so, I always start the 8th and 9th with someone up and throwing in the bullpen.


If the kid is throwing a two hit shutout going into the 9th and the tying run gets on.. off to the showers!!

[Pelican]

If you have sufficient room (and resolution) on your monitor, you might want to add the widget for pitch location and speed to your display. This enables you to look for several indications: a noted decrease in pitch speeds, a lack of control (either balls or "fat" strikes), and a change in the mix of pitches thrown. Each can be an indication that a pitcher is tiring or losing effectiveness.

Bullpen management goes back to roster management. How many RP do you want to carry, and what skill sets? With a 25-man roster, I normally carry twelve pitchers, five SP and seven RP. I designate a closer, two setup guys, a "stopper", a couple of middle relievers, and a long guy who can double as an emergency SP. I might also designate a lefty as a "specialist" against lefty hitters.

If you embrace the disturbing modern trend toward fewer and fewer innings and pitches for SP, you might need another long reliever (or two). I'd rather have my SP throw up to 100 pitches, and get through the fifth inning at least. If you go all-in with "openers", you'll have to structure your bullpen accordingly.

Pitch count for SP is critically important in OOTP. Depending on pitcher stamina, you won't expect to get beyond one hundred pitches for modern players, and a pitcher's effectiveness can drop off quickly, in my (unfortunate) experience.

As others will suggest, the best way to get a better feel for bullpen usage is to manage a team over a season, learning by trial and error what works and what does not. Over a season, you'll promote and demote guys to and from AAA and AA. You may make trades or look for free agents. Guys will inevitably have hot and cold streaks. We're all still in learning mode all the time.

[Yankee Hotel Foxtrot]

Really appreciate the depth and breadth of responses. I'll keep returning to this to remind me of some of the elements to be on the look out for.

If I play with warm ups on, How long should I warm up my relievers roughly for and how long is too long? I know there will probably be variation depending on player characteristics, but as someone who has no physical experience with playing baseball I don't have a natural feel or reference point for it.

[ezpkns34]

The one thing that I think is necessary to ask before offering any advice is what years are this historical sim happening? Bullpen management could vary wildly depending on the answer

[84Hammy]

I tend to convert mediocre starters to relievers and in a modern game, designate them as long relief and followers. This ensures that if I have to pull a guy early, 2nd-5th inning, I can bring in a guy who will give me some innings. Also, do not become attached to a reliever. If he sucks, move him back to the minors or try to trade him.

[Yankee Hotel Foxtrot]

Thanks for that, I'd actually popped back on here to ask a question about this very thing.

So I started at earliest historical date, and simmed through to 1921 when the deadball era finished and took over the Yankees.
I've got the league set up to evolve historically, and without players being assigned to their historical team; they go into the draft/free agency pool.

I've noticed, and I'm in 1927 now, that starting pitchers play deep into games, past when I'd be wanting to pull them for a reliever or closer, depending on the inning.

Any advice for handling pitching rotation and bullpen in this era would be greatly appreciated.

[Yankee Hotel Foxtrot]

Originally Posted by ezpkns34

The one thing that I think is necessary to ask before offering any advice is what years are this historical sim happening? Bullpen management could vary wildly depending on the answer

Sorry, my previous reply was specifically directed to this post, I neglected to quote it.

[kq76]

There's a lot of good stuff in here. The only thing I'd disagree with is the suggestion to turn off needing to warm up your pitchers. I get why it's suggested, but I just think it's the biggest key to getting good at bullpen management and so if you're turning it off you're not really dealing with the most crucial aspect. I'm glad you're choosing to still deal with it.

Originally Posted by Yankee Hotel Foxtrot

...
If I play with warm ups on, How long should I warm up my relievers roughly for and how long is too long? ...

You warm them up until it says they're ready. And how long is that? TheMaus2 already said, "about 3 batters or half an inning". I find it can depend, however, as I think I can sometimes get away with it only taking 2 batters. But then sometimes it seems to take longer than normal. I figure the game is taking multiple factors into consideration like # of pitches thrown, maybe some relievers just take longer to warm up for whatever reason, etc.

Then you kind of have to make a decision when to sit them down as they could tire. I mean, say you're worried that you might need to bring in a reliever so you warm him up, but by the time he's ready your current pitcher has proven that he's still good, he just had a hiccup. Should you then bring in that reliever just because or do you ride with the guy still in the game? Personally, I like to go with the pitcher already in the game until they've proven to me that they don't have it anymore, but if you think that you're just lucky that they haven't given up the game already, then maybe you really should bring in that reliever. I don't have a hard rule on this.

I'm not sure OOTP penalizes us for doing this, but I've heard real life managers say you really don't want to warm up a reliever more than twice without using them (I guess because you're tiring them out by doing that). So I try not to do that either (I'll warm someone else up), but again, I'm not sure if we're penalized for it in OOTP like IRL managers seem to think they are.

drksd4848 makes the point that he always starts the 8th and 9th with someone warming up. It depends on the era you're playing of course, but what I do is tell myself that once the 5th or 6th rolls around that I should really start paying attention to my starter. It's like an alarm clock, "wake up! it's the 6th inning!" Sometimes I'll do exactly like drksd4848 does, start an inning warming up a reliever even when the current pitcher hasn't yet shown signs of faltering. But when I do, it's only because their gas bar tells me they're close to running out of gas. I might even start a 6th or 7th doing that.

And while I agree with everything TheMaus2 says, I play it more by bad events. And by that I mean, if my pitcher gives up a combination of 2 or 3 bad events, like a couple of hard hits, then I start to get nervous and start warming someone up. A lucky weak single or two doesn't bother me, it's things like hard hits, wild pitches, and walks that do. And even then, only one doesn't bother me, not even a solo HR. It's when I see more than 1 bad event in an inning that I start to really lose confidence in the pitcher. (EDIT: If you take away anything from my post, I recommend it be that last point.) The problem is when you do this (that is, wait), it might be too long before you can get that reliever ready. Maybe you really should have started the inning warming them up. Now hopefully your current pitcher can get out of the jam themself, but even if they can't, then hopefully they can stall long enough or only give up an inconsequential run or two until your reliever is ready.

It's not always easy, but that's what makes managing your bullpen fun. Should you use your relievers now, maybe tire them out, and not have them available for the next game? Should you wait and maybe get away with not having to use them this game which will allow them to be available for the next game? I myself don't go any further than controlling substitutions, but boy do I like controlling them, especially the bullpen. It can be intimidating at first, but once you get the hang of it, it's a lot of fun!

[Yankee Hotel Foxtrot]

Originally Posted by kq76

There's a lot of good stuff in here. The only thing I'd disagree with is the suggestion to turn off needing to warm up your pitchers. I get why it's suggested, but I just think it's the biggest key to getting good at bullpen management and so if you're turning it off you're not really dealing with the most crucial aspect. I'm glad you're choosing to still deal with it.



You warm them up until it says they're ready. And how long is that? TheMaus2 already said, "about 3 batters or half an inning". I find it can depend, however, as I think I can sometimes get away with it only taking 2 batters. But then sometimes it seems to take longer than normal. I figure the game is taking multiple factors into consideration like # of pitches thrown, maybe some relievers just take longer to warm up for whatever reason, etc.

Then you kind of have to make a decision when to sit them down as they could tire. I mean, say you're worried that you might need to bring in a reliever so you warm him up, but by the time he's ready your current pitcher has proven that he's still good, he just had a hiccup. Should you then bring in that reliever just because or do you ride with the guy still in the game? Personally, I like to go with the pitcher already in the game until they've proven to me that they don't have it anymore, but if you think that you're just lucky that they haven't given up the game already, then maybe you really should bring in that reliever. I don't have a hard rule on this.

I'm not sure OOTP penalizes us for doing this, but I've heard real life managers say you really don't want to warm up a reliever more than twice without using them (I guess because you're tiring them out by doing that). So I try not to do that either (I'll warm someone else up), but again, I'm not sure if we're penalized for it in OOTP like IRL managers seem to think they are.

drksd4848 makes the point that he always starts the 8th and 9th with someone warming up. It depends on the era you're playing of course, but what I do is tell myself that once the 5th or 6th rolls around that I should really start paying attention to my starter. It's like an alarm clock, "wake up! it's the 6th inning!" Sometimes I'll do exactly like drksd4848 does, start an inning warming up a reliever even when the current pitcher hasn't yet shown signs of faltering. But when I do, it's only because their gas bar tells me they're close to running out of gas. I might even start a 6th or 7th doing that.

And while I agree with everything TheMaus2 says, I play it more by bad events. And by that I mean, if my pitcher gives up a combination of 2 or 3 bad events, like a couple of hard hits, then I start to get nervous and start warming someone up. A lucky weak single or two doesn't bother me, it's things like hard hits, wild pitches, and walks that do. And even then, only one doesn't bother me, not even a solo HR. It's when I see more than 1 bad event in an inning that I start to really lose confidence in the pitcher. (EDIT: If you take away anything from my post, I recommend it be that last point.) The problem is when you do this (that is, wait), it might be too long before you can get that reliever ready. Maybe you really should have started the inning warming them up. Now hopefully your current pitcher can get out of the jam themself, but even if they can't, then hopefully they can stall long enough or only give up an inconsequential run or two until your reliever is ready.

It's not always easy, but that's what makes managing your bullpen fun. Should you use your relievers now, maybe tire them out, and not have them available for the next game? Should you wait and maybe get away with not having to use them this game which will allow them to be available for the next game? I myself don't go any further than controlling substitutions, but boy do I like controlling them, especially the bullpen. It can be intimidating at first, but once you get the hang of it, it's a lot of fun!

I agree with the sentiment here, and I will turn this back on in a season or two I think as I get more familiar managing other aspects.

Already I'm getting some sensibility for when I might want to pull a starter.
Do you know if the game has some sort of penalty for that if I pull starters earlier than was the historical norm of the era? Or am I overestimating the OOTP AI smarts under the hood here?

[kq76]

Originally Posted by Yankee Hotel Foxtrot

Do you know if the game has some sort of penalty for that if I pull starters earlier than was the historical norm of the era? Or am I overestimating the OOTP AI smarts under the hood here?

While I could try to answer your historical league questions (my primary league is set in the 1930s after all, but it is fictional), I think it's best you get an answer from someone who plays more real historical leagues than I do.

[kq76]

Originally Posted by kq76

...And by that I mean, if my pitcher gives up a combination of 2 or 3 bad events, like a couple of hard hits, then I start to get nervous and start warming someone up...

I thought I should revisit this. I think when I wrote it I must have been thinking about relieving a good starter or at least one you trust in more than not. For starters than I don't have a lot of trust in, I find that I'm more often starting to warm someone up after they've given up only 1 hard hit.

And another thing I should have mentioned is: as long as you're not concerned about tiring out too many of your bullpen guys, warm up more than 1 guy at a time. Or at least stagger them a bit so if you bring in the first reliever and you quickly find out he doesn't have his best stuff today either, then you can pretty quickly bring in another reliever.

A while ago I was watching a jomboy video and he made an interesting discovery. He was watching some old games, 80s games IIRC, and he noticed that they were always warming up 2 pitchers at a time back then when today we very rarely do that. And thinking back, I think he's right, I do seem to remember more often seeing 2 pitchers warming up at once back then. I wonder why we went away from that. Did we discover that they're more reliable than we thought or do we not want to tire others out or do relievers warm up faster now? If his observation and my memory are correct, something must have caused the change. Whatever the reason, definitely consider warming up more than 1 reliever at a time.