BBA Today #54 - Shawn Huber, the Uber Reliever

[aaronweiner]

Don't worry about it.

[HoosierVic]

Chicago is such a team that could have used some star power to move forward. Instead they've watched other teams pass them.

In fairness to us, we waved politely as they passed us by ...

[HoosierVic]

Hey - here's a question related to the Shawn Huber topic.

The Sox added Mitchell Purssell to the bullpen with the idea that we could form a stopper corps of 4 guys (all in the 80 to 70 overall range) to swoop into the game like avenging angels when things are on the line. Matt dropped a comment on that TN to the effect that he'd never had much luck with more than 3 stoppers and thought it might work best with two.

My own (brief) experience is that with 4 stoppers, only two of them got into games and the other two sat in bullpen munching peanuts. So, last sim I went with 3 stoppers and moved one of the elite group into long relief/high leverage and thought that worked better. They all got into games and did well.

Anyone else have experience with multiple "super reliever" types and how to maximize them?

[jleddy]

Anyone else have experience with multiple "super reliever" types and how to maximize them?

What are these "super reliever" types you speak of?

The fact that the stopper settings max at "7th (inning) & close game", you're only looking at three innings of usage split between your stoppers, so more than two (or three) is kind of useless unless you go into extra innings. Plus so many of our relievers have 7+ stamina, so going more than one inning isn't an issue, therefore the AI doesn't typically have to rely on more than two stoppers. Maybe in an ideal world, you could load your pen with three or four stoppers with a lefty or two so each pitcher is used with their strengths, but L/R match-ups, even with sliders set all the way up and having designated specialists, isn't a given with the AI.

I think what you did by having two elite stoppers then another elite reliever as high leverage is probably the best scenario.

[RonCo]

I use an amalgam of "stopper" "use more often" "long relief" and pitch counts on various starters to attempt to funnel innings to the guys I want to see the most innings. And I use "high leverage" and "avoid high leverage" in places to hope the better pitchers see more time in places that matter. It helps to have some flexible pitchers. Josh Henson is an interesting guy for us. He's essentially a two-pitch swing man who has had some success starting if I can match him up to proper competition. He's also been really useful in long relief when paired with the right starters.

[RonCo]

To be clear, though, I don't know if there is a right or wrong way to manage IP. I'm fairly constantly trying new things, then seeing how it went.

[jleddy]

There's definitely a wrong way.

[HoosierVic]

I use an amalgam of "stopper" "use more often" "long relief" and pitch counts on various starters to attempt to funnel innings to the guys I want to see the most innings. And I use "high leverage" and "avoid high leverage" in places to hope the better pitchers see more time in places that matter. It helps to have some flexible pitchers. Josh Henson is an interesting guy for us. He's essentially a two-pitch swing man who has had some success starting if I can match him up to proper competition. He's also been really useful in long relief when paired with the right starters.

Yeah, I went and tried to figure average pitches per inning and then set pitch counts to bring the bullpen into play starting after the 5th or 6th for all of the starters except Moelling and German.

The 3 stopper/1 long reliever definitely worked better than 4 stoppers. I'm thinking about making it 2 and 2 for the next sim to see how that works.

[HoosierVic]

@aaronweiner and @HoosierVic . Great discourse guys. If it didn't come across as well in the podcast (I have an idea and then Ron and I get to talking and ...), what Vic is going through right now is very similar to what I ran into with my mid 2020's Crusaders teams. He's got half the recipe and is trying to figure out how to piece together the other half without screwing up the part he's got right. It's really tough to do without starting with a complete tank job.

To expand on that last sentence. All talent erodes, but there is a "critical mass" of talent that suddenly puts you ahead of the pack, and through good trades and extensions, you can almost make that reaction self perpetuating. The easiest way to get there is to have 3-4 years of last place teams and accrue a ton of young stars through the draft and fire sales. If you don't do that, you can still get there, but there's a lot of trial and error, and the idea of not sapping away at your strength (be it hitting or pitching) to get the other half going is absolutely the right track from an "ease of seeing what you have" standpoint. In practice, there's no difference between a 5 win batter and a 5 win pitcher, but a mixed group 85 win team is much harder to mentally sort that a all pitching or all hitting 85 win team.

Yeah, unfortunately, I took over the team in mid-38, and we've been drafting in the mid-teens to twenties (29th this year), so we've gotten some decent guys, but definitely not a flood of franchise changers. So it's been more or less a slow build: I made the Purssell deal on the thought that if we could make at least on of the units (in this case, the bullpen) elite, and have a solid to better-than-solid starting rotation, maybe we could move ahead some. The jury, obviously, is still out on that one.

But you're right, Ted. It's a slow build if you're drafting in the middle of the pack consistently.

[bschr682]

Hey - here's a question related to the Shawn Huber topic.

The Sox added Mitchell Purssell to the bullpen with the idea that we could form a stopper corps of 4 guys (all in the 80 to 70 overall range) to swoop into the game like avenging angels when things are on the line. Matt dropped a comment on that TN to the effect that he'd never had much luck with more than 3 stoppers and thought it might work best with two.

My own (brief) experience is that with 4 stoppers, only two of them got into games and the other two sat in bullpen munching peanuts. So, last sim I went with 3 stoppers and moved one of the elite group into long relief/high leverage and thought that worked better. They all got into games and did well.

Anyone else have experience with multiple "super reliever" types and how to maximize them?

I rode a triple setup of stoppers to a landis for whatever that’s worth.

[Dington]

Damn. Nashville got no love in regards to being in Louisville’s way to the playoffs. Unless, of course, you’re assuming we’re a shoe-in

[usnspecialist]

Damn. Nashville got no love in regards to being in Louisville’s way to the playoffs. Unless, of course, you’re assuming we’re a shoe-in

i do believe the latter was the case there.

[DugoutDesperado]

From my Black Sox preview in the Media Guide:

(Sacramento omitted from this because, um.)

If my competitiveness was a person, you just kicked him straight in the balls.

You are assuming your competitiveness was a guy.

[shoeless.db]

From my Black Sox preview in the Media Guide:

(Sacramento omitted from this because, um.)

If my competitiveness was a person, you just kicked him straight in the balls.

You are assuming your competitiveness was a guy.

This reminds me of something my favorite coworker of all time once said to me (she was an RT at a hospital I worked):

I had a bad blood blister underneath one of my toenails. My coworker decided she'd take care of it for me by ramming a needle underneath the nail and relieving the pressure. I told her I'd have anyone do it but her. Then, after calling me a p*ssy, she said, "You know what? You're not even a p*ssy, because a p*ssy can take more of a pounding than you can."

I miss her.

[DugoutDesperado]

That is an epic one-liner/story.