That's What Cheesehead: 37.33 - Evander Kilkenny Award and Pitching Usage

[7teen]

It was a very unique season for the Madison Wolves when you look at the usage of starting pitching. The Wolves didn't publicize it often throughout the season, but the team used some sort of a "Brooklyn Hybrid" style of rotation usage this season. Granted, General Manager was once quoted as saying "we're trying something different this season. Trying something along the lines of Brooklyn even though we're not exactly sure what they're doing honestly but it seems to be working." Well, what Madison did was rotate guys in and out of the rotation and bullpen. In some sims, they didn't list anyone as a starting pitcher and chose to just put everyone in the bullpen and utilize the freshest man as a starter, and if needed, they'd long relieve later in the sim. It definitely led to some unique pitching stats for the Wolves this season when you look at these numbers:

- 13 different guys started a game this season
- Only guys started 20 or more games
- Esteban Sanchez was the only guy who didn't at least make a relief appearance. But he was acquired later in the season via a trade with Huntsville.
- Madison used 20 pitchers this season and only 7 of them failed to make a start at some point during the year.

But back to the top starting pitcher and the Evander Kilkenny Recipient. It really wasn't a tough choice after you take those aforementioned stats and see who's left. Mario Gonzalez rises to the top of the heap (and heap may be an accurate term to describe our rotation this season.) And when you break it down again, Mario is the ONLY choice.

- 10 wins (led the team)
- 34 starts (led the team)
- 183.0 Innings Pitched (led the team)
- 116 strikeouts (led the team)
- 3.8 WAR (led the team)

So there really wasn't another choice. The 39 year old southpaw signed a 1-year contract extension for next year where fans can pull for the aging veteran to reach 200 career victories. It was documented in an earlier TN that Gonzalez's overall numbers this year would have likely been better had the Wolves put a better defense behind him or perhaps he played for a team that focused more on it. And who knows what next year holds in store for Mario. Perhaps he'll get a chance to record more wins if the Wolves use him as a daily long reliever and continue to use "openers" to start the game. As things stand now, it appears Madison will have to continue a creative approach in terms of starting pitching for 2038 as the team only has a few true starting pitching options heading into next season.

[Ted]

It would be interesting to know what Madison would have looked like had you not done this. As we have (somewhat acrimoniously) discussed, I was not high on your team. When you look at the pitching results, they are not great, but may have gotten a big performance boost with your strategy. More "relief innings" does seem like an exploitable feature in OOTP (perhaps on purpose as it seems to be the case in actual baseball, or maybe the sim is good enough that it just mirrors the truth in MLB).

[7teen]

It would be interesting to know what Madison would have looked like had you not done this. As we have (somewhat acrimoniously) discussed, I was not high on your team. When you look at the pitching results, they are not great, but may have gotten a big performance boost with your strategy. More "relief innings" does seem like an exploitable feature in OOTP (perhaps on purpose as it seems to be the case in actual baseball, or maybe the sim is good enough that it just mirrors the truth in MLB).

Yeah I don't know if there is a way to really tell how much of an effect it really had. I felt that overall my relievers were "better" than most of my starters so I used a variety of strategies all season such as: Limiting starters to 50 pitches; using relievers as starters for 30-50 pitches; using no set starters and just using rested guys to start and letting arms float between starting and relief.

Other crazy stats are guys like Ken Vazquez who made 18 starts and had 0 Quality Starts. Soong had 12 starts and only 2 quality starts. Gonzalez only had 8.

This largely due to the very strict and limited pitch counts I had these guys on to limit their usage in a starters role and allow the bullpen to come in and get short spurts of outs.