Rust and Pinch Hitting

[J P Falcon the 3rd]

I have been reading about the in game feature "rust" and how it applies to Spring Training and the Disabled List. My question is does rust come into play for your bench players? My pinch hitters seem to be automatic outs, for the most part, and I have started to wonder if this might be due to not giving my bench players enough playing time. Thoughts?

[mattb_222]

I have had the same problem year after year. For instance, I had a guy who was hitting about .260 for the year, 5 hrs, about 150 ABs and as a pinch hitter he was 1 for 28. One year, I had Rafael Furcal as a bench player and he went 0 for 40 as a pinch hitter. I would guess that over 5 years of my dynasty my pinch hitters have hit about .150 or so and that might even be high... They also seem to strike out about half the time. Unfortunately I don't have a solution. The first guy I noted filled in for an injury and never got better at pinch hitting.

[fintach]

As I recall, officially rust only accumulates on the DL and during the offseason. Players on the active roster are supposed to train constantly and progress even without steady playing time.

In my experience, however, players do not seem to live up to expectations as pinch hitters. I must say, though, that the small sample size of pinch hitting might be the reason.

[BrosiusForHoF]

After one season, my two main pinch hitters, Matt LaPorta and Travis Snider (both quite decent if non-star hitters--LaPorta has Contact of 61/100, Power of 78/100 and Eye of 62/100; Snider has Contact of 52/100, Power of 61/100 and Eye of 71/100), in only their pinch-hitting appearances are:

105 AB, 10 H (!), 0 HR, 6 BB, 54 K (!).

So that's a batting average of below .100 and a strikeout in more than half of their at-bats. Compare to batting numbers for my four pitchers with the most at-bats:

Ubaldo Jimenez (Contact rating 36/100): 66 AB, 13 H, 3 BB, 18 K
Ricky Nolasco: (Contact rating 30/100): 63 AB, 9 H, 5 BB, 21 K
Kevin Slowey: (Contact rating 9/100): 72 AB, 5 H, 5 BB, 40 K
Zack Greinke (Contact rating 15/100): 86 AB, 6 H, 42 K

So two of my starting pitchers had a better batting average than LaPorta and Snider, and all but one struck out less often. I also thought it was a sample size problem but after reading these posts I am not so sure.

[hopeful1212]

This reminds me of this old discussion about OOTP 10 pinch hitters...

http://www.ootpdevelopments.com/boar...-too-much.html

[mike0xlittle]

I've been wondering about this too.

Seems like out of every 10 PH appearances, 5-6 will be K's, 2-3 will be ground/pop outs and maybe 1 will actually get the job done.

As I'm mainly PH'ing for pitchers, I'll usually keep the pitcher in and try to get lucky on a bunt as PH'ing doesn't seem to be worth it for the most part.