How important is a good pen?

[thomamon]

I can't even begin to explain how important it is. I am currently in three leagues at the moment. All 3 of my teams are pretty good. One team is built on offense and starting pitching with a an average pen. The other team is a good team all around, no real weakness' but no super strong points. The other team has a no better then average offense, a better then average SP, but an absolute stud of a bullpen.

Well, the team with the super strong bullpen is by far the best team of the three. I don't think it is a coinceadence etiher. SO my tip, if you want to build a winning team, it starts with a strong pen!

[DerekJeter2]

Yes. It took me a while to realize that the bullpen is the most IMPORTANT part of the team actually. My current 2 best teams have studly bullpens and went 114-48 and 109-53 in the past year of the online league. You can't stress this enough and this is what the beginners don't realize.

[canadiancreed]

it's intresting, as I've won with leagues that have both good pens (closer, setup, and MR, all three had ratigns 7/7/7 and above), and I've had wins where the pen was just where I shoved my former starters, but I had realyl good rotations.

It depends on your other strenghts I guess

[Malleus Dei]

Given a choice between great starters and a great pen, I'll take the great starters every time. Your mileage may vary.

[thomamon]

A good pen will definitely help your rotation, especially if it is week. A strong pen and rotation should have you piling up the W's, even with a weaker offense.

[canadiancreed]

Originally Posted by Malleus Dei

Given a choice between great starters and a great pen, I'll take the great starters every time. Your mileage may vary.

agreed. A good pen and weak starters is useless, as your starters will be blowing games left and right before the pen can do anything.

As for the other way around, get guys with 9's and 10's in endurance and you can minimize the damage.

[sfgiants88]

Originally Posted by DerekJeter2

Yes. It took me a while to realize that the bullpen is the most IMPORTANT part of the team actually. My current 2 best teams have studly bullpens and went 114-48 and 109-53 in the past year of the online league. You can't stress this enough and this is what the beginners don't realize.

Well, I don't know about that. A great offense can lead a team to a good record by itself. So can a great rotation. But a great bullpen by itself? I don't know...

What I think you mean is that a bullpen is the most important relative to how hard it is to improve? It is much easier to improve a bullpen as compared to rotation/offense, and for each "buck" you spend on bullpen, you get more "bang" than you would for the same "buck" on offense/rotation.

[Arakiss19]

Originally Posted by DerekJeter2

Yes. It took me a while to realize that the bullpen is the most IMPORTANT part of the team actually. My current 2 best teams have studly bullpens and went 114-48 and 109-53 in the past year of the online league. You can't stress this enough and this is what the beginners don't realize.

Thanks for the tip. Noted.

[Comedian2004]

I have a strong pen also, but you are asking at a bad time, as my closer just blew 2 games in a row in the 9th.

Sort of like those dumb reporters asking someone 'How does it feel' after winning the World Series or something. You always want someone to say, 'Ah, well, it is not as good of a feeling that i expected, maybe because of this gas I have right now'.

[Adrockski]

Originally Posted by Comedian2004

Sort of like those dumb reporters asking someone 'How does it feel' after winning the World Series or something. You always want someone to say, 'Ah, well, it is not as good of a feeling that i expected, maybe because of this gas I have right now'.

Hah. Well said.

Reporter: "Can you put into words how you feel right now?"
Player: "No, I can't. It's unbelieveable."

You gotta love sports reporters. But I digress...

thomaman, thanks for your insight on the bullpen. I have a crap pitching staff right now, and I've noticed that the SP (although they're underachieving by a great deal) can hold their own most of the time, but it's often the pen that puts the game out of reach for my high-powered offense. That's definitely where I'll look to improve in the offseason.

[SSG Troyer]

I dunno. My rotation is great enough I don't need a great pen. My starters almost always pitch to the 8th or so, my offense generally gets me the lead, and the pen seldom has much to do. I'm last in the league in relief appearences, and my closer (who is quite good) is middle-of-the-pack in Saves. Not because he blows them, but because he so seldom gets into save opportunities ...

Give me starters and offense every time.

[atlbraves]

Hmm I dont know. I tend to look at it like the SPs are more important than the bullpen since they usually pitch for more than half the game. I think its very important to have a good setup man and a good closer though. A good closer can make sure you seal the game up without any sweat.



I have one question though... does consistently and clutch do anything to the player's value? Not lots of people look at that rating but is it fairly important especially in Closer role?

[Xenimus0]

This is my Baltimore Orioles team in 2009 who won the World Series. I used the 2005 all-in-one installer for the rosters.



This is year before, we went 97-65, #1 in the division but lost in the league championship.

[DiMaggio5CF]

If you sim your games, this is irrelevant, but if you play out all your games, don't be afraid to sign a real left-handed specialist.

My bullpen is great overall right now, but two of my lesser relievers are J.C. Romero and Ricardo Rincon. Rincon comes in to face lefties in the sixth or seventh, and Romero gets lefties in the seventh or eighth.

You don't need two, but I'd recommend at least one.

But if you let the computer sim the games, the computer won't use him right, and he's useless.

[ctorg]

It really depends, obviously, on what era you are in. The later you get, the more important the bullpen is. What I've found is that you can do just one or two good guys in the pen if you manage the team intelligently within the games. Use the other guys during blowouts and your good guys when you really need to keep it close. Bullpen management is a lot more important than having a good bullpen. The AI doesn't do it well, but a human can.

As for left-handed specialists, I can see the argument for them, but I tend to feel like it's a wasted roster spot that could go to either an extra guy for pinch running situations (I'm big on these) or a more universally useful reliever.

[Y0DA55]

When I saw the thread title today, my answer was "Yeah, it is very important. If you don't, then you have to scribble to make sure the ink is solid, or you have to go through the process of shaking the pen out so that the ink is in the right spot."

Then I read the first post and agreed. I tend to play my games out (the later innings anyway) and I usually have 1 or 2 guys other than my closer who I feel pretty confident about. But having a good pen is essential.

[SandMan]

Originally Posted by Y0DA55

When I saw the thread title today, my answer was "Yeah, it is very important. If you don't, then you have to scribble to make sure the ink is solid, or you have to go through the process of shaking the pen out so that the ink is in the right spot."

Then I read the first post and agreed. I tend to play my games out (the later innings anyway) and I usually have 1 or 2 guys other than my closer who I feel pretty confident about. But having a good pen is essential.

I was thinking that a great pen is better that a great sword!!! I will throw this out for thought though, I have a team that has dominated for the last 5 years in a solo fictional league I was using as a test league. I have 5 starters with 4.5 to 5 stars with very high endurance ratings, so I have a pen of a bunch of stiffs none better than the closer who is 3.5 stars.....Offense is great, starters are great, bullpen sucks. I still average 108 wins a year.

Now I did a test with the same team with pitching changes. I go back to my backup 5 seasons.. I put a bunch of 3 star or less starters on the team( 1.5 star was the lowest starter), had the pen consist of 6 guys all rated 5 stars. I got 100 wins exactly the first season just like I did in the first play, but after that my team started going down hill. I average 92 wins over the 5 year period and was only the league champion 3 of the 5 years...... now I did have one CEI so the offense was not exactly the same, but one guy does not make 16 more losses a year......

The bull pen was good still but they were very inconsistent. Starters actually did better than I thought they would, perhaps because the relievers were not allowing as many runs to score... but still there was a 16 game difference.

Conclusion: I will take a good rotation and offense over a good pen any day. They are not consistant and do not get enough innings to be worth any real salary, dollars that I prefer to spend on the rotation or the offense....

[ctorg]

Originally Posted by SandMan

Conclusion: I will take a good rotation and offense over a good pen any day. They are not consistant and do not get enough innings to be worth any real salary, dollars that I prefer to spend on the rotation or the offense....

That's my normal approach when signing players. Another consideration is that good MRs are pretty common in OOTP. I almost always have some minor league guy on his way up who has 2 or 4 blue stars, and you can usually pick up middle-of-the-road relievers very cheaply, sometimes even for less than a million a year. I don't think the difference between having a middle-of-the-road guy and a very good guy in the pen justifies the millions of dollars more the very good guy demands. I'll go for a good closer and maybe one other guy, but unless I have extra cash, the rest of the bullpen is usually made up of no-names, sometimes even starters who didn't make the rotation.

[endgame]

The bullpen, for me, remains a variable I can adjust to the season or even during the season. I do count on a reliable closer, but beyond that it has a lot to do with - in my league and in my case - defensive capability coupled with the rotation's expected mix of durations. I'm a bit old school in trying to keep bonafide long relievers available, both left and right-handers, for a staff mix or outings that go south. In addition, I like a stable pair of setup relievers with a standby who can come in preferably in situations where I have a good lead so I can spare any setup use at all which can be slightly risky if you give up too much quality in that arena.

Summarizing, it's important but not essential even with an average staff if you are able to control the number of runs scored against you by equitable means such as field defense. There again, even if that means giving up power in the offensive lineup. To show you how relative and situational this kind of method can be when developing strategies for pitching staff -- consider the current status of my team (as described above) with a shaky rotation, fairly reliable but "iffy" pen, a confident closer, and an overall highly defense-oriented field: by far the highest number of 1-run games and a successful record currently of approximately 29-5 in that category while at the same time about 19th or 20th in total runs scored in 32 team league.

It's very situational and while some minor strategies can be applied univerally, I'm inclined to believe the pen evaluation must be personalized to meet the needs of your particular team and league settings.

[Aordolin]

doesnt really matter if you have a good closer anyway since the game will still put in some scrub MR to get saves for no reason. Might as well get 5 great starters bump up your endurance settings and pretend you dont have a bullpen.