I was mowing the lawn and stumbled on another idea with my wandering thoughts:

Make SP unavailable with more than zero energy in relief as in previous years but make SP an option in the LRP slot. That way, you can use one full or partial strength starter in relief if you want to.

The issue of SP in relief is stamina. SP are good for 3-4 quality innings before stamina becomes a factor and RP only get 3-4 batters. I would argue that my idea is much more realistic too since it’s rare to see SP in relief and rarer still to see more than 1 SP in relief.

@janoosh said in Starters out of the pen:

I played a game last night where I faced Kluber, Sale, and Ohtani with no true bullpen arms. It’s an option in the game so that’s fine and not salty about it but it got me thinking about a way to mitigate it:
Similar to weekly fantasy baseball lineups, having a weekly DD roster just for RS would help, especially as the year goes on and more SP become available to churn as relievers without repercussions. The major issue I see with it is that it would prevent you from using a new card until the weekly roster reset.

Thoughts?

Would never happen. Honestly would YOU even really want that? Unlock a card you're pumped about, but can't use it for a week? Unlock a new starter and you're absolutely horrible with him but can't switch him out?

Yeah, not a great idea.

Only realistic solution that I've seen and can think of is tweaking the stamina formula.

• RPs need to last a bit longer out of the pen (no more yellow stamina after 1 or 2 batter type thing...I know they can throw more than 10 pitches)
• SPs out of the pen need to lose stamina faster
• SP stamina regen needs to be nerfed. If a guy goes 6+ and throws a significant amount of pitches, it should take a legit 3 full games of innings played to refill.

I think part of the issue is players regen stamina every game...so if you play and quit (or get someone to quit early) you get a full games worth of stamina regen (untested...but feels this way based on event games, etc).

I played a game last night where I faced Kluber, Sale, and Ohtani with no true bullpen arms. It’s an option in the game so that’s fine and not salty about it but it got me thinking about a way to mitigate it:
Similar to weekly fantasy baseball lineups, having a weekly DD roster just for RS would help, especially as the year goes on and more SP become available to churn as relievers without repercussions. The major issue I see with it is that it would prevent you from using a new card until the weekly roster reset.

Thoughts?

Would never happen. Honestly would YOU even really want that? Unlock a card you're pumped about, but can't use it for a week? Unlock a new starter and you're absolutely horrible with him but can't switch him out?