What era are these games being played in? Topic

savoybg
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Every league I am in seems to have way too much offense. There are multiple teams with ERAs over 5.00 all the time. Is there a particular era that these games are being played in?

I have 4 great relievers on my current team. Here are their ERAs after 24 games:

1974 Mike Marshall - 6.59
1979 Jim Kern - 4.88
1971 Jim Brewer - 6.94
2010 Billy Wagner - 3.86

This was my main strategy, to have like 500 relief innings available with great relievers. Brewer's real life WHIP was 0.97. So far here he's at 2.14.
7/16/2023 9:33 PM
06gsp
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You probably have their max pitch counts set too high.
7/16/2023 9:48 PM
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06gsp
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there's no baseline era in WIS

as I said with a blind guess, your pitch counts are too high. IP/G is the key stat to use when setting pitch counts. the general rule is you get approximately 15 pitches for every one IP/G. If you go beyond this, the pitcher will quickly become cannon fodder and start throwing batting practice.

so for Marshall and Kern, you should never let them throw more than 30 pitches. Brewer should be capped at 20 and Wagner, who didn't even throw 1 inning per appearance, I'd set at 10/10.

Lack of understanding of this concept is probably the number one reason the sim is so hitter friendly.
7/17/2023 8:39 AM
redcped
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Posted by 06gsp on 7/17/2023 8:39:00 AM (view original):
there's no baseline era in WIS

as I said with a blind guess, your pitch counts are too high. IP/G is the key stat to use when setting pitch counts. the general rule is you get approximately 15 pitches for every one IP/G. If you go beyond this, the pitcher will quickly become cannon fodder and start throwing batting practice.

so for Marshall and Kern, you should never let them throw more than 30 pitches. Brewer should be capped at 20 and Wagner, who didn't even throw 1 inning per appearance, I'd set at 10/10.

Lack of understanding of this concept is probably the number one reason the sim is so hitter friendly.
Excellent advice. It's extremely difficult to get full use of Marshall's innings. I ran a league a couple years ago at 80M where everyone had to use Marshall and there was a prize for the lowest ERA with at least 162 innings. (Note: I wouldn't use him at much higher a cap because the hitting quality will be too good for him, but he's also an inefficient use of money at a lower cap. This makes him a challenging player to roster, IMO.)

The owners that got the most out of him maxed him out at 25-35 pitches, and those who had him much higher really got burned. The tricky thing was that he suffered fatigue from pitching too many games in all, so getting 100 games/200 innings proved quite difficult. I basically rested him every other game and then tried to get 2 innings out of him every other day.

I can't actually recall how many people managed 200 innings out of him, but it wasn't many.
7/17/2023 12:11 PM
contrarian23
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Re: the OP's question, the assumption of the log5 normalization method is that the "era" is a weighted average of the hitter's season and the pitcher's season.

Re: Marshall, he is one of the textbook examples of the problem with the site's pitcher fatigue algorithm. Marshall achieved his 200+ innings by averaging 2 IP per appearance, but on 20 occasions (by my count) he pitched 3 innings for more, including 6 innings on 8/19 and 5 innings on 9/14. In SLB, his fatigue will kick in hard after 2 innings (or more precisely, after about 30 pitches, as described above), so it is impossible to get him his actual innings unless you are willing to let him get shelled on occasion during individual games, or to pitch him when he is already fatigued from previous work.

I don't mind quite as much when modern relievers get hit hard after exceeding an inning or so. It's still not ideal, nor terribly realistic, but it does at least force SLB owners to use modern RPs more or less the way they are actually used today: low PC, typically one inning max, pulled at the first sign of trouble or to gain the platoon advantage.

But for Marshall, or more generally the high-IP relievers of the 60s-70s, or guys who split their season between starting and relieving (e.g., 92 Schilling) or the SPs from earlier decades who frequently relieved in addition to their starting duties (e.g., Mordecai Brown in 1909-1911, Lefty Grove in 1930-31), basing fatigue on AVERAGE IP/G leads to unrealistic results.
7/17/2023 12:39 PM
savoybg
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Posted by 06gsp on 7/17/2023 8:39:00 AM (view original):
there's no baseline era in WIS

as I said with a blind guess, your pitch counts are too high. IP/G is the key stat to use when setting pitch counts. the general rule is you get approximately 15 pitches for every one IP/G. If you go beyond this, the pitcher will quickly become cannon fodder and start throwing batting practice.

so for Marshall and Kern, you should never let them throw more than 30 pitches. Brewer should be capped at 20 and Wagner, who didn't even throw 1 inning per appearance, I'd set at 10/10.

Lack of understanding of this concept is probably the number one reason the sim is so hitter friendly.
That's insane. Wagner is going to throw more than 10 pitches almost every time he appears in a game. The major league average is 17-18 pitches per inning. Marshall and Kern threw more than 30 pitches lots of times in those seasons, especially Marshall. Wagner threw 1102 pitches in 71 games, that's an average of 15.5 per game. He was over 20 pitches lots of times and over 30 pitches a few times.

You may be 100% correct about how this sim works, but if you are then that's another thing wrong with it.

I particularly don't like how low inning starters have to wait like 15-20 games before they can pitch again. A starter who has 60 real life innings was most likely in the rotation for like 10 starts before getting hurt or being demoted or something. With this sim you have to carry that guy on your roster even though most of the time he is totally useless.

I'll try lowering each guys cap some. Instead of 20-30 I'll got to 15-25, something like that.
7/17/2023 1:39 PM
savoybg
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It sounds like the sim handles ALL relief pitchers as if they were pitching nowadays when relievers almost never go more than 2 innings, and usually only go one inning.
7/17/2023 1:51 PM
contrarian23
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Yes, fatigue works the same for ALL pitchers, regardless of how they were actually used. Are there flaws in that model? Definitely. But a significant key to winning at this game is understanding it and findings ways to exploit it to get maximum value from your staff.

There is a thread from way way back that gives detailed instructions on how to calculate the right pitch counts for your pitchers. I can't immediately locate it but maybe someone can bump it.
7/17/2023 2:14 PM
contrarian23
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I just bumped the relevant thread. Interestingly, about a year ago just4me bumped the same thread, and he specifically cites that we was doing it for the OP...
7/17/2023 2:18 PM
06gsp
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yeah Marshall is in the category of pitchers where you can't possibly get max value out of him. anyone who appeared in more than half their teams games you can't possibly get them to throw their real life IP total + 10% without frequently using them fatigued.

7/17/2023 3:29 PM
savoybg
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Posted by 06gsp on 7/17/2023 3:29:00 PM (view original):
yeah Marshall is in the category of pitchers where you can't possibly get max value out of him. anyone who appeared in more than half their teams games you can't possibly get them to throw their real life IP total + 10% without frequently using them fatigued.

I'm doing very good now with Marshall. His ERA is 3.48 in a league with an ERA of 4.90 league wide.

He's thrown 75 innings in 65 games, and is allowing a slash line of just .237/.277/.340.

I mainly use him as the Long A where he pitches 2 or sometimes 3 inning from the 5th through the 8th. My starters are all guys who go 5 or 6 at the most unless they have a real low pitch count. He's 4-1 with 4 saves. One save was a 3 inning save in a blowout where his pitch count was low so they let him finish the game. I usually set him at 25-35 on the pitches.

Kern and Brewer are gone, Here's the current bullpen.

1974 Marshall
2010 Billy Wagner
2004 Smoltz
2006 Trevor Hoffman
2015 Brad Ziegler


7/30/2023 2:33 PM
savoybg
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The Marshall Watch.

The team has played 73 games and Marshall has thrown 80.1 innings and has appeared in 46 games. His ERA is 3.59 and he's yielding a slash of .248/.288/.352.

If this keeps up he'll appear in 102 games and throw 178.1 innings.
8/2/2023 1:34 AM
savoybg
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Marshall update

1974 Marshall, after 87 games he's been in 55 games and pitched 91.2 innings. ERA is 3.73 in a league with an ERA of 4.81

8/7/2023 2:37 PM
savoybg
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Marshall update

1974 Marshall, after 135 games he been in 91 games with 142 innings, He's 7-1 with 7 saves and a 3.61 ERA.
8/22/2023 7:47 PM
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