Switching MR or CL to SP and a troubled season

[Panchobamba]

Born under a bad sign.
My team has been devastated by season ending injuries this year. Three SP's are out for about 5, 6 and 7 months. LF for 5 weeks.
In a period of 8 days, exactly two days apart for each, I lost 4 players, 2 for the season.
Replacements have gone down for 2 weeks, outfielders have had two suspensions of 9 or 10 games. (By the way have you ever noticed how a player suspended because of drugs can become 'Disliked' in his popularity?)
It's July and the season is slipping away, can't trade away anymore and minor leaguers are trying to salvage the year so I've got three dedicated Relievers in the starting rotation.
Is there an advantage to switching an MR or CL to an SP?
For instance, when I set my CL to SP, his stuff drops from 19 to 14, but weirdly his rest status after two days and throwing 60 pitches goes from 96% Rested to 40% Tired. What is the correlation to real life capabilities here? Doesn't seem right. At 96% I could start him again with the CL designation. His stamina's only an 8.
I can understand a relief pitcher coming in for one inning and being sharper than if he had to pitch six innings, but after throwing 60 pitches, shouldn't he be just as tired whether he's designated an SP or a CL?

[McGuiser]

I have never seen, or at least never noticed, any ratings changes except overall/potential when changing a pitcher among SP, MR and CL settings.

Those two ratings are relative (compared to all other pitchers with the same position), and the other ratings (e.g. stuff, stamina) are inherent to the pitcher himself -- so in theory there should be no changes.

I do not know how extensive your monitoring has been, so it is possible that the tired/rested oddities were randomized. We have all seen short-stamina pitchers sometimes pitch very well for many innings, and long-stamina pitchers pitch poorly in the first inning -- so we probably have a combination of randomization and coding inconsistencies (too opaque to pinpoint) as an explanation.

Others know better, but my guess is that there is no advantage/disadvantage to changing a pitcher's position. In my several tests, changing the position does not even affect other teams' attitudes towards trades (e.g. changing an SP to MR or CL does not sour a close deal).

By the way, I have never seen a "disliked" player -- obviously the fans are more generous to my players than I am.

On injuries, let me nag about the McGuiser Doctrine: once a long-term injury happens, I disable the injury setting. When the player returns, the injury setting gets reset to "on." Stouter gamers might do this after two injuries, or more.

[Panchobamba]

The McGuiser Doctrine could have done me well. I also lost starting CF & RF in late Aug. Somehow I limped into a wild card, 1 game out of 1st place, but lost in that round.
As far as the pitcher Stuff ratings go, they are visible when you change position, swipe away from screen, then return. Screenshot included.
The tired/ rested bizarreness shows up after a few days and I've been aware of it for a long time with many pitchers. Screenshot included.
Also a screenshot of the most disliked player that's ever played for me.
The 2 pitch CL did an excellent job, getting 10 Quality Starts out of 15 and his ERA dipped even lower. Maybe he'll be one of my starters next year.

[Sam_15]

Originally Posted by Panchobamba

The McGuiser Doctrine could have done me well. I also lost starting CF & RF in late Aug. Somehow I limped into a wild card, 1 game out of 1st place, but lost in that round.
As far as the pitcher Stuff ratings go, they are visible when you change position, swipe away from screen, then return. Screenshot included.
The tired/ rested bizarreness shows up after a few days and I've been aware of it for a long time with many pitchers. Screenshot included.
Also a screenshot of the most disliked player that's ever played for me.
The 2 pitch CL did an excellent job, getting 10 Quality Starts out of 15 and his ERA dipped even lower. Maybe he'll be one of my starters next year.

Yeah I've noticed that MR's and CL's have better "stuff" ratings than SP's even though individual pitch ratings aren't affected. It shows when you trade for a SP prospect that the AI has listed as an MR (probably to get bullpen work before becoming part of the rotation or something) and then you switch the player's position back to SP, you notice their stuff potential drops.

As for the tiredness, I can't explain that either...but I've seen that before as well. I've also seen SP's have a 10 pitch game (bullpen September call-up) and be listed as "exhausted" even though they have good stamina ratings.

As for your CL-turned-SP situation, I personally don't like having SP's with less than 3 pitches (exception: knuckleballers). I don't think the game does either and that's probably why he has 1/2 star.

But I've said this before, and I'll say it again: I think pitcher stamina ratings should go up if they see workload increases and spot starts. I'd love converting some of my 3+ pitch MR's into SP's, especially in historical replays. Pitchers like Steve Carlton, Nolan Ryan, Phil Niekro, Adam Wainwright, etc. all have awful stamina ratings when you draft them and they're stuck as bullpen guys for their careers. I hope they address the pitcher stamina concept in future games.