The PTCS stuff using a 5 man rotation

[zevus]

4 man rotation is appropriate for 1969, not 5 man. Since I set all my stuff up for 4 man, they're going to do very poorly

Probably the info should be displayed somewhere when setting up teams

or, rather, 2 out of 4 already lost, a 3rd is down 4-1 and managed to win two games with starters at ~75% (and no way to fix this, as the team was put together with, well, four starters)

The final team got lucky and won the first series in 5 games and I happened to have drafted a 5th player that could be a starter,

despite it telling me that it was using 1969 settings.

it looks like in 2 out of those 3 cases, it was lost to a malformed team with 5 starters on 1969 settings. In one of the cases, it looks like the guy logged on early enough after tourney started to "fix" his roster to the wrong settings, as his 5th starter was still displaying the "reliever" tag and one of his starters had pitched on 4 days rest. As is appropriate for 1969, but not for PTCS using 1969 settings.

[cwhitman]

Originally Posted by zevus

4 man rotation is appropriate for 1969, not 5 man. Since I set all my stuff up for 4 man, they're going to do very poorly

Probably the info should be displayed somewhere when setting up teams

or, rather, 2 out of 4 already lost, a 3rd is down 4-1 and managed to win two games with starters at ~75% (and no way to fix this, as the team was put together with, well, four starters)

The final team got lucky and won the first series in 5 games and I happened to have drafted a 5th player that could be a starter,

despite it telling me that it was using 1969 settings.

it looks like in 2 out of those 3 cases, it was lost to a malformed team with 5 starters on 1969 settings. In one of the cases, it looks like the guy logged on early enough after tourney started to "fix" his roster to the wrong settings, as his 5th starter was still displaying the "reliever" tag and one of his starters had pitched on 4 days rest. As is appropriate for 1969, but not for PTCS using 1969 settings.

1969 has never been 4 starters in PT. it has always been 5.


1959 is the first year you can use 4. And 1917 or so is the first with 3.

[zevus]

I guess some quick AI searches talk about the 5 man rotation becoming more common in the 1970's, but really it's more like the 80's and 90's and pretty clear to see.

re; 1969, you can just look at individual player stats, such as;

https://www.baseball-almanac.com/pla...nkife01&y=1969
https://www.baseball-almanac.com/pla...rryga01&y=1969
https://www.baseball-almanac.com/pla...laide01&y=1969
https://www.baseball-almanac.com/pla...rlejo01&y=1969
https://www.baseball-almanac.com/pla...aveto01&y=1969
https://www.baseball-almanac.com/pla...ngebi01&y=1969
https://www.baseball-almanac.com/pla...ttodo01&y=1969
https://www.baseball-almanac.com/pla...antlu01&y=1969

and on and on and on, to see all the starters going on 4 days rest and still pitching complete games, apparently not being at whatever "70% rest" status signifies and getting gassed at 75 pitches, like what was happening in the PTCS.

re; 1960's being 5 man rotations -- OK, so it's always been wrong ... so the teams weren't malformed then, there is just some inside information that isn't actually presented in the game itself for some reason or another and goes against standard rotation sizes used in the 60's.

A better question than why the rotation size is wrong, would be why this information isn't presented in the game when you're forming your team, right?

Why does it always default to 5 starters, even when asking AI to set up rotation?

... and the last two months I've been using 4 man rotations on stuff like the 1968 "Saturday Can't Sleep Clown Will Eat Me", becauase ... well, 4 man rotation was the standard in 1968, just like 1969. Why would I even think that it'd be leaving my starters at 70% effectiveness?

I guess *there* is a reason to look at the results, to find out if OOTP is using non-standard rotation sizes .. you certainly aren't provided with any other useful information

[TwinsFan86]

Originally Posted by zevus

I guess some quick AI searches talk about the 5 man rotation becoming more common in the 1970's, but really it's more like the 80's and 90's and pretty clear to see.

re; 1969, you can just look at individual player stats, such as;

https://www.baseball-almanac.com/pla...nkife01&y=1969
https://www.baseball-almanac.com/pla...rryga01&y=1969
https://www.baseball-almanac.com/pla...laide01&y=1969
https://www.baseball-almanac.com/pla...rlejo01&y=1969
https://www.baseball-almanac.com/pla...aveto01&y=1969
https://www.baseball-almanac.com/pla...ngebi01&y=1969
https://www.baseball-almanac.com/pla...ttodo01&y=1969
https://www.baseball-almanac.com/pla...antlu01&y=1969

and on and on and on, to see all the starters going on 4 days rest and still pitching complete games, apparently not being at whatever "70% rest" status signifies and getting gassed at 75 pitches, like what was happening in the PTCS.

re; 1960's being 5 man rotations -- OK, so it's always been wrong ... so the teams weren't malformed then, there is just some inside information that isn't actually presented in the game itself for some reason or another and goes against standard rotation sizes used in the 60's.

A better question than why the rotation size is wrong, would be why this information isn't presented in the game when you're forming your team, right?

Why does it always default to 5 starters, even when asking AI to set up rotation?

... and the last two months I've been using 4 man rotations on stuff like the 1968 "Saturday Can't Sleep Clown Will Eat Me", becauase ... well, 4 man rotation was the standard in 1968, just like 1969. Why would I even think that it'd be leaving my starters at 70% effectiveness?

I guess *there* is a reason to look at the results, to find out if OOTP is using non-standard rotation sizes .. you certainly aren't provided with any other useful information

AI isn’t even remotely a credible source on a lot of research, so I’d always take that with a grain of salt.

Congratulations on finding a few exceptions to the rule, and even at that, they had plenty of starts on 4+ days of rest. 3 days of rest wasn’t the norm at all. If you look at, for example, the Mets and Orioles in 1969 they both had 5 pitchers that were predominantly starters. I think what’s much more likely is that when there was an opportunity the 5th and even 4th starters were skipped. You could feasibly make an argument for guys with higher stamina recovering slightly better so that occasionally 3 day of rest is doable, but to claim that it was just the standard for everyone is simply wrong.

[LeeD]

There were a lot more rainouts, a lot more doubleheaders, thus a lot more days off in the Sixties. Teams could get by on four primary starters, but they weren't starting every fourth day very often. Most teams had a top three or four plus a swing man or two to cover the doubleheaders and the stretches without a scheduled day off.

Tom Seaver won the Cy Young Award in 1969 on 35 starts and a single two-batter relief appearance. He only started eight times on three days' rest, and three of those were during the pennant chase in September (six September starts, six complete games, six wins, sheesh).

[cwhitman]

I've seen a lot of people think 1969 is 4 starters lately, and I don't think it's just historic (mis)information. Has someone been telling people that 1969 is 4? If so, we definitely need to tell them to stop doing that.

[zrog2000]

Originally Posted by cwhitman

I've seen a lot of people think 1969 is 4 starters lately, and I don't think it's just historic (mis)information. Has someone been telling people that 1969 is 4? If so, we definitely need to tell them to stop doing that.

It's pretty easy to find the statistics. Several teams only used 4 in 1969. Dodgers had 3 starters with 40+ starts and that was still a 154 game schedule. 59 pitchers had more than 200 innings. 9 got to 300. Obviously, pitcher stamina should be way higher in 1969 than it is now and starters shouldn't be at 0% when they threw 95 pitches.

[zrog2000]

Originally Posted by LeeD

There were a lot more rainouts, a lot more doubleheaders, thus a lot more days off in the Sixties. Teams could get by on four primary starters, but they weren't starting every fourth day very often. Most teams had a top three or four plus a swing man or two to cover the doubleheaders and the stretches without a scheduled day off.

Tom Seaver won the Cy Young Award in 1969 on 35 starts and a single two-batter relief appearance. He only started eight times on three days' rest, and three of those were during the pennant chase in September (six September starts, six complete games, six wins, sheesh).

And Tom Seaver was tied for 47th in starts that season.

[cwhitman]

Originally Posted by zrog2000

It's pretty easy to find the statistics. Several teams only used 4 in 1969. Dodgers had 3 starters with 40+ starts and that was still a 154 game schedule. 59 pitchers had more than 200 innings. 9 got to 300. Obviously, pitcher stamina should be way higher in 1969 than it is now and starters shouldn't be at 0% when they threw 95 pitches.

well, that's also objectively wrong. here's the plot of stamina from PTCS. every pitcher (except 1) that is a red dot was at 5% or lower. 6% for the most part is the cutoff. every pitcher 60 stamina or higher can throw 120 pitches easily.

[LeeD]

Originally Posted by zrog2000

It's pretty easy to find the statistics. Several teams only used 4 in 1969. Dodgers had 3 starters with 40+ starts and that was still a 154 game schedule. 59 pitchers had more than 200 innings. 9 got to 300. Obviously, pitcher stamina should be way higher in 1969 than it is now and starters shouldn't be at 0% when they threw 95 pitches.

The schedule changed to 162 games long before 1969. The 1969 Dodgers, along with the Cubs, were outliers among the teams competing for playoff spots. What did they have in common? Killer one-two punches in the bullpen. Dodgers had Jim Brewer and Pete Mickelsen throw 170 innings in relief. Cubs had Phil Regan and Ted Abernathy throw just shy of 200 innings(!) in relief.

Oh, and the Dodgers finished fourth. The Cubs collapsed down the stretch and finished eight games out. Could it be that Fergie Jenkins, who led the league in starts, ran into a stamina wall? While Seaver was fresh enough to toss complete games in his last eight starts (all of them wins, with a 1.00 ERA to boot), Jenkins struggled to an 11-10 record with an ERA near 4 from July first until the end of the season.

Moving on from the Dodgers and Cubs, let's look at the two teams that won their divisions and played in October. Those would be the Mets and the Braves. Both teams used five-man fronts, with the ace being an occasional exception. The only guys who started on three days' rest more than a few times were Seaver, Phil Niekro, Gary Gentry, and Ron Reed. Reed got beat up pretty much every time. Gentry was a mixed bag. Seaver and Niekro are Hall of Famers...

----------------------------------

which is really the crux of the issue. People assume that four-man, three-days'-rest rotations were the norm in the late Sixties. They weren't. We get here because we remember the top pitchers going out there every fourth day (which they actually didn't do with any kind of consistency, except for late in the season when every win or loss could make the difference). Look at all the starters who threw high-two hundreds innings pitched in 1969. Seven of the top sixteen are in the Hall of Fame. Most of the rest were staff aces, guys like Lolich and Mike Cuellar and Dave McNally. We don't remember the guys like Ron Reed, who clearly couldn't work on three days' rest, and we certainly don't remember the swing men who filled in to keep those staff aces fresh.

[zevus]

The optimum rotation for "Thursday Dude, Where's My Cards?" which supposedly is utilizing 1938 era strategy & stats is three starting pitchers.

The AI sets your roster up for 5.

I included the Grok LLM response, maybe it hallucinated some stuff, I didn't double check.

I set my roster up for 4 .. it's what I always thought it was, and it aligned with cwhitman's response as well, but ... alas,

Would it be so difficult to include the number of starting pitchers in a rotation that OOTP thinks is proper after the part about whether or not there is a designated hitter?

re; 4 man rotation in 1969, and "late in season" and such, well, these are treated as playoff games in that they don't have ghost runners in extra innings (for modern settings) ... so let's extend that to 1969 games. yes, you'd be going on the 3 days rest

[atomzero]

The 1969 scheduling that allowed this is not the same as PT tournament scheduling. You might play every day in a PT tournament.

[cwhitman]

that is definitely not a 3 SP format. 1938 is 4. it doesn't turn to 3 until 1917 or so.

[zevus]

The "Saturday Shrinkage", I had written in my notes that the 3 man rotation was what to use as the game was giving those starters 100% rest after just the 2 days off,

but I checked it just now and it seems to have shifted to a 4 man rotation, as my guy that had pitched 3 days prior was at 66%.

It's not like this # of pitchers in starting rotation is even some decision for the player to make, there is an obvious optimum that the "powers that be" decide on.

You can always try putting one less starter in the rotation and using that "emergency SP" but if the game decides to use your "Emergency SP" pitcher and you don't win a series quick enough, well, you're screwed.

... but why doesn't the game just tell you how many starting pitchers it deems is the "standard" for the selected era?

What's the point of the guesswork?

and why was "Saturday Shrinkage" changed? I guess it occurred sometime in the last month. Was this documented somewhere? How to find out that the optimum number of starting pitchers has changed before drafting your team?

[zevus]

Originally Posted by cwhitman

that is definitely not a 3 SP format. 1938 is 4. it doesn't turn to 3 until 1917 or so.

yeah, my mistake there, it *is* indeed set to a 4 man rotation as optimum.

I lost to a team with a 3 man rotation and just looked at his pitchers, the fatigue wasn't displaying anymore as the tourney had progressed to a point where his team had been eliminated.

I just looked @ what I'm attaching and had a kneejerk response to the 100+ pitches ... but it was 1938 settings, after all. The 115 pitch totals are in finished games, probably Bill Holland could go 135+ if completely rested

I checked the two finalist teams and the fatigue is indeed ~66% after 3 days.

... but, again, why aren't we given this information prior to drafting? It's not like there's even a gray area here.

I'm sure a valid argument could be made that Fergie Jenkins pitching on 3 days rest is worse than 4 days rest, but the game will put him and any other pitcher @ ~66% for pitching a day "early".... not something like 90%, where maybe you would choose to go with a 4 man and probably would make a lot more sense with the supposed 1969 settings

[cwhitman]

Originally Posted by zevus

The "Saturday Shrinkage", I had written in my notes that the 3 man rotation was what to use as the game was giving those starters 100% rest after just the 2 days off,

but I checked it just now and it seems to have shifted to a 4 man rotation, as my guy that had pitched 3 days prior was at 66%.

It's not like this # of pitchers in starting rotation is even some decision for the player to make, there is an obvious optimum that the "powers that be" decide on.

You can always try putting one less starter in the rotation and using that "emergency SP" but if the game decides to use your "Emergency SP" pitcher and you don't win a series quick enough, well, you're screwed.

... but why doesn't the game just tell you how many starting pitchers it deems is the "standard" for the selected era?

What's the point of the guesswork?

and why was "Saturday Shrinkage" changed? I guess it occurred sometime in the last month. Was this documented somewhere? How to find out that the optimum number of starting pitchers has changed before drafting your team?

the shrinkage is a rotating era format. just as many other drafts are rotating stadiums.

[rburgh]

They still had Sunday doubleheaders in 1969. That left a handful or two of starts for a swing man, while making it easier for the studs at the top of the rotation to start 40+ games. The 1969 season started on April 7th and ended on October 2nd, so there were 24 + 31 + 30 + 31 + 31 + 30 + 2, or 179 days in the season.

A guy that started every 4th day could conceivably have started 45 games. Every 5th day starters would get 36 starts. Guys who started at least 36 games:

36 - Marichal, Jim Perry, Lolich, Merritt, Joe Coleman, Bill Stoneman
37 - Dierker, Peterson, Tiant, Lemaster
38 - McDowell, Boswell
39 - Stottlemyre, Cuellar, Holtzman, Gaylord Perry
40 - Singer, McNally
41 - McLain, Osteen, Hands, Sutton
42 - Jenkins

Take Jenkins, for example. He started on one day's rest once; he had been knocked out in the 3rd inning of the first game of a series against the Dodgers so they brought him back to start game 3. Bad idea, he only lasted 5 that day, and the Cubs lost both games. BBR also credits him with starting on 2 days rest twice, and on 0 days rest once. But this sequence happened - June 13th he started against the Reds on the road and lasted 5 innings, facing 26 batters. June 14th he came in with 2 outs in the bottom of the 10th to get the last out and did so. June 17th he started the first game of a doubleheader in Pittsburgh and suffered an 8 inning CG loss by a 1-0 score. So really, he started on 3 days rest, the appearance on the 14th was not a start. And late in the season he started another game on two days rest after having been shelled by the Pirates and lasting only 2 1/3, facing 16 batters.

Vague memories are that it was commonplace for a team to start its ace on short rest after a bad start. Jenkins was not a poster boy for this practice, the Cubs lost both of the games he started on short rest after being shelled. But he did make 28 starts on 3 days rest with no relief appearances intervening, and ended up winning 21 games. And the Cubs were only 5-5 in the games he started with 4 days rest, so he must have done well in his starts on exactly 3 days rest.

But Fergie was a very large man for his time, he was 6'-5. Most of the other guys who made 40 starts were within an inch of 6' even.

[Torgonius]

Originally Posted by rburgh

They still had Sunday doubleheaders in 1969. That left a handful or two of starts for a swing man, while making it easier for the studs at the top of the rotation to start 40+ games. The 1969 season started on April 7th and ended on October 2nd, so there were 24 + 31 + 30 + 31 + 31 + 30 + 2, or 179 days in the season.

A guy that started every 4th day could conceivably have started 45 games. Every 5th day starters would get 36 starts. Guys who started at least 36 games:

36 - Marichal, Jim Perry, Lolich, Merritt, Joe Coleman, Bill Stoneman
37 - Dierker, Peterson, Tiant, Lemaster
38 - McDowell, Boswell
39 - Stottlemyre, Cuellar, Holtzman, Gaylord Perry
40 - Singer, McNally
41 - McLain, Osteen, Hands, Sutton
42 - Jenkins

Take Jenkins, for example. He started on one day's rest once; he had been knocked out in the 3rd inning of the first game of a series against the Dodgers so they brought him back to start game 3. Bad idea, he only lasted 5 that day, and the Cubs lost both games. BBR also credits him with starting on 2 days rest twice, and on 0 days rest once. But this sequence happened - June 13th he started against the Reds on the road and lasted 5 innings, facing 26 batters. June 14th he came in with 2 outs in the bottom of the 10th to get the last out and did so. June 17th he started the first game of a doubleheader in Pittsburgh and suffered an 8 inning CG loss by a 1-0 score. So really, he started on 3 days rest, the appearance on the 14th was not a start. And late in the season he started another game on two days rest after having been shelled by the Pirates and lasting only 2 1/3, facing 16 batters.

Vague memories are that it was commonplace for a team to start its ace on short rest after a bad start. Jenkins was not a poster boy for this practice, the Cubs lost both of the games he started on short rest after being shelled. But he did make 28 starts on 3 days rest with no relief appearances intervening, and ended up winning 21 games. And the Cubs were only 5-5 in the games he started with 4 days rest, so he must have done well in his starts on exactly 3 days rest.

But Fergie was a very large man for his time, he was 6'-5. Most of the other guys who made 40 starts were within an inch of 6' even.

Any semblance between real life baseball and PT is purely coincidental.