Bullpen Idiots

[Dargone]

Originally Posted by ohiodevil

Another baseball game on the console has a Loosen option when managing the bullpen, and if I recall you can change a guy from Warming Up to Loosen and it lessens the fatigue. I need to check if that is still the case since I just got it today

I see both sides of the argument but to keep people from doing what Matt said earlier in the thread, you need to have some sort of penalty for having a guy doing something other than sitting on the bench.

Hmmm, I just got another baseball game today too

[texasmame]

Originally Posted by ohiodevil

Well if you are sure you are going to bring him in to pitch the 8th, why not sub him in for your current pitcher? Then he stops throwing (and won't get tired in the bullpen) and when you take the field he is in the game.....granted he was already warm/ready when the inning is over.

If you *know* you want a certain guy to come in, yes, I've done that. But if you don't - say, it depends on if you score or not - then we're still back to the initial problem.

Maybe they don't get tired between innings? Something. ANYTHING!

[Dargone]

Originally Posted by RchW

Tony never made a mistake though. Just ask him.😀

Yeah, I really am enjoying "The Last Strike" and I loved "3 Nights in August. " However, nobody loves Tony more than Tony loves Tony

[injury log]

Originally Posted by ohiodevil

Well if you are sure you are going to bring him in to pitch the 8th, why not sub him in for your current pitcher? Then he stops throwing (and won't get tired in the bullpen) and when you take the field he is in the game.....granted he was already warm/ready when the inning is over.

You can't do that. If you're an NL team, you might want to PH for the pitcher before replacing him. But more importantly, as soon as you insert a pitcher, he becomes the pitcher of record. So if you change pitchers while you're at bat, then take the lead, the new pitcher will get the W. The stats-keeping in the game is designed on the assumption that you only change pitchers when your pitcher is actually going to start pitching. And it's a coding nightmare to change that.

[injury log]

I have several problems with the tiring feature as it's currently implemented:

- it doesn't achieve its goal, if the goal is to prevent me from warming up my relievers in the first inning and having them available whenever I want them. I can easily do that - I just warm a guy up in the 1st, sit him down when he starts tiring, then start warming him up again a few batters later. He'll always be somewhere in the 'Warming' to 'just Tiring' range, and one well-timed mound visit will make him 'Ready' whenever I want him.

- the problem in the above is that I'm letting a guy throw 150 pitches in the bullpen at no penalty. That's also the problem when there is no tiring mechanism. I don't think a system makes sense where you get a guy warming up, he passes a certain threshold and gets tired, you sit him for a few minutes and he gets un-tired, and you can repeat that cycle ad infinitum. That's not what happens to your starting pitcher between innings, so why does it happen to your bullpen pitchers? It seems to me instead the game should track total pitches thrown in the bullpen, and once a guy is tired, he is tired. But it should take a ton of pitches to get there, because the pitcher isn't likely going to be stupid enough to throw 200 warmup pitches.

- if the game is going to require me to micromanage my bullpen, it needs to make it easy for me to do that. Right now the only way I can check on my bullpen status is to switch to my lineup screen. In the most important and what should be the most fun innings of the game, I'm tediously switching back and forth every at bat between the game and my substitution screen just to see what my RPs look like. There needs to be some way to monitor this stuff from the in-game screen. That's my biggest problem with the feature right now - it makes the game less fun.

I do not want to turn bullpen warmup off. I don't want it to be true that I can get my LH specialist reliever in the game 'for free' when my opponent inserts a LH masher as a PH. I should have planned for that. But I also don't want all the micromanagement that a bullpen coach would deal with in real life.

[Matt Arnold]

Quick points:
I do want to make the UI simpler, so that you can manage it from the main screen.
Tiring != tired. Maybe we need a better word for it, but it just eats pitches off of him, doesn't make him less effective when he comes in.
Guys will "sit down" or "soft toss" when you're AB. So you can leave a guy warming up, bring them in at the top of the next inning, and you're fine. If you want to delay a couple batters, then yeah maybe you need to manage it better.
Let me repeat again: tiring is not the same as tired. You'd have to leave a guy in the pen for multiple innings for him to actually enter the game tired.

And yeah, eventually we'll get to a few more of injury_log's points.

[BeanballComin]

Well, when the warm-up rule is on, I'd like to know when the opposing team puts in / pulls their relievers from the pen,
(to sit back down). Any chance that could get added?

[old fat bald guy]

I'm with the OP. What's unrealistic is the idea that if the manager forgets a guy is still throwing and doesn't sit him down, nobody will catch the mistake and correct it.

[jeffw3000]

Originally Posted by Dargone

I understand your point and it is a fair one. Maybe the game could be coded in such a way to prevent that? If you start warming up a reliever in the first inning with the intention of bringing him in around the fifth inning, then perhaps the pitcher would sit down after a bit of time and be cold if you simply put him in the game at a much later date. There would be a window in other words of getting a guy up and him sitting down and getting cold again.

Maybe that's a stupid idea? I'm simply trying to think of a solution. It's a tough pill to swallow that relievers can warmup too much and be tired. Again, this would never happen in real life; however, you do make a fair point in your post. It's an interesting discussion regardless and I appreciate your thoughts.

I agree with Matt that the option could be exploited in, but another option would be to always have the pitcher automatically sit down at the end of a half an inning.

[jeffw3000]

Originally Posted by Matt Arnold

Quick points:
I do want to make the UI simpler, so that you can manage it from the main screen.
Tiring != tired. Maybe we need a better word for it, but it just eats pitches off of him, doesn't make him less effective when he comes in.
Guys will "sit down" or "soft toss" when you're AB. So you can leave a guy warming up, bring them in at the top of the next inning, and you're fine. If you want to delay a couple batters, then yeah maybe you need to manage it better.
Let me repeat again: tiring is not the same as tired. You'd have to leave a guy in the pen for multiple innings for him to actually enter the game tired.

And yeah, eventually we'll get to a few more of injury_log's points.

I did not realize that was how it works thanks for clarifying. I thought once he started tiring he was already less effective.

[maximus33]

I like warming them up as well, but they all got tired on me also. So I had to turn off warming up. I have seen a coach get them ready in the third and then they pitch in the 8th. I think the tired option should be off.

[jeffw3000]

Originally Posted by BeanballComin

Well, when the warm-up rule is on, I'd like to know when the opposing team puts in / pulls their relievers from the pen,
(to sit back down). Any chance that could get added?

I would really like to see this as well. It would be nice to see the bullpens on the main screen, or have it mentioned in the PBP when pitchers warm up or sit down.

[Chomps]

Originally Posted by Matt Arnold

Quick points:
I do want to make the UI simpler, so that you can manage it from the main screen.
Tiring != tired. Maybe we need a better word for it, but it just eats pitches off of him, doesn't make him less effective when he comes in.
Guys will "sit down" or "soft toss" when you're AB. So you can leave a guy warming up, bring them in at the top of the next inning, and you're fine. If you want to delay a couple batters, then yeah maybe you need to manage it better.
Let me repeat again: tiring is not the same as tired. You'd have to leave a guy in the pen for multiple innings for him to actually enter the game tired.

And yeah, eventually we'll get to a few more of injury_log's points.

I also agree with the OP. The way the whole Bullpen process is implemented in OOTP is not realistic and does not do the game justice.

Please focus on re-working this area of the game and the way fatigue is modeled, because as others have stated, this is a critical part of managing every game.

Also, why can a bullpen pitcher show as Tired, and then when placed in the game his status shows as Ok??

[Boozie1580]

Originally Posted by Reggie

Seems a simple solution is add a "keep warm" feature that you can click on that lasts a half inning or a certain number of batters after he is warmed up.. Then after that is used up you get a notice that he sat back down.

Keep warm mode would be the guy in real life who is watching the game and throwing an odd pitch or two every minute or so. I see that happen on TV all the time.

This. This is the answer. This is how it happens in real life.

[RBPD5015]

I think the problem people have with it is having to change screens and drag and drop the pitcher back down.

It should work like this, as a HEAD Coach you have assistants and they should notify you the pitcher is warmed up, and then notify you when the pitcher is warmed up with an hornet to make a mound visit, sit pitcher or two pitch to wait. If you tell him to wait, the pitcher will continue to throw lighter and when he gets tired your assistant coach will notify you again. This would make this process more realistic.

Just my 2 cents
Matt

[oldtimey]

Originally Posted by jeffw3000

I would really like to see this as well. It would be nice to see the bullpens on the main screen, or have it mentioned in the PBP when pitchers warm up or sit down.

I have lurked this forum during every release since v13, waiting, hoping that the bullpen issues have been fixed. I have not purchased since v13 for this one reason. I may be one of the smallest minority whose immersion is in the GAME of baseball and not the BUSINESS of baseball. I also let the AI run all in-game aspects while I watch history unfold. I take all eight months to finish one baseball season, game-by-game, from spring training to the World Series. My favorite part of the adventure of the baseball season is, what I have called in past posts, "bullpen drama." This simulation does not provide that through the in-game AI, so I can't immerse. It is a deal-breaker for me.

[Calvert98]

Originally Posted by Reggie

Seems a simple solution is add a "keep warm" feature that you can click on that lasts a half inning or a certain number of batters after he is warmed up.. Then after that is used up you get a notice that he sat back down.

Keep warm mode would be the guy in real life who is watching the game and throwing an odd pitch or two every minute or so. I see that happen on TV all the time.

Originally Posted by Boozie1580

This. This is the answer. This is how it happens in real life.

This could be a cool addition. Adds some immersion, and still keeps the strategy and consequences in-place.

[hefalumps]

I like the solutions that people are posting here. I too get bit by the "tiring" bug quite a bit, so here's what I think should happen - because yes, sometimes I do *forget* that I had someone warming up.

I think when I drag someone to the bullpen, he starts warming up. When he's "Ready", he should sit down (ideally I should get a notification on the main game screen). I then have the next few batters to bring him in and still have him be "Ready". If I wait too long, his status will go back to "Warm" and eventually "Cold" if I wait more than an inning or so.

Right now I feel like I hit "Tiring" too quickly, and then I have to sit him for a few batters to wait for him to bounce back to "Ready". It would be nice if the AI could do that for me automatically - as soon as he goes from "Ready" to "Tiring", sit him down (and maybe let me know), and I'll figure out what to do from there.

That's my wish.

[Dargone]

Originally Posted by oldtimey

I have lurked this forum during every release since v13, waiting, hoping that the bullpen issues have been fixed. I have not purchased since v13 for this one reason. I may be one of the smallest minority whose immersion is in the GAME of baseball and not the BUSINESS of baseball. I also let the AI run all in-game aspects while I watch history unfold. I take all eight months to finish one baseball season, game-by-game, from spring training to the World Series. My favorite part of the adventure of the baseball season is, what I have called in past posts, "bullpen drama." This simulation does not provide that through the in-game AI, so I can't immerse. It is a deal-breaker for me.

Great post. It is always interesting to read how people play the game. So many different ways to enjoy OOTP. I'm like you in a way. I'm primarily a historical simmer that likes to watch history unfold. Although, instead of game by game, I like to watch season by season. I like to see how various careers turn out, dynasties develop and rivalries play out. I do watch games such as the playoffs/World Series. I don't think that I've managed a game in like 10 versions?

Since you are a game by game guy, I can see how the bullpen issue would be a deal breaker for you. I'll just say this - a lot has changed for the good since OOTP 13, so I think you would be surprised how much value you would pick up for $35; however, I understand your frustration and decision to not upgrade.

[Dargone]

Originally Posted by Matt Arnold

Quick points:
I do want to make the UI simpler, so that you can manage it from the main screen.
Tiring != tired. Maybe we need a better word for it, but it just eats pitches off of him, doesn't make him less effective when he comes in.
Guys will "sit down" or "soft toss" when you're AB. So you can leave a guy warming up, bring them in at the top of the next inning, and you're fine. If you want to delay a couple batters, then yeah maybe you need to manage it better.
Let me repeat again: tiring is not the same as tired. You'd have to leave a guy in the pen for multiple innings for him to actually enter the game tired.

And yeah, eventually we'll get to a few more of injury_log's points.

Thanks for the clarification of tiring Matt. I'm also glad to know that they soft toss while you are up to bat.

Having said that, check out oldtimey's post. I suspect there are more players like him as well. It seems like the bullpen aspect needs a little cleaning up? Perhaps this is something you can talk to Markus about? Thanks for reading.