Super Hal Bullpen Roles

The Super Hal Bullpen Roles system allows you to specify, in greater detail, which of your relievers you would like used in which game situations. You do this by assigning Roles to your pitchers, which are defined by inning, score, and batter circumstances.

Super Hal Bullpen Roles is available for leagues using Bullpen v2 (which is the default for all leagues as of June 27, 2009).

Note: Strat-O-Matic Online is not to be held responsible for managers who are unable to use the Bullpen Roles interface because of an old web browser. The interface has been tested on Internet Explorer 7 and above, Firefox 3 and above, Safari 3 and above, and Chrome 2 and above. We are doing everything we can to maintain compatibility with as many browsers as possible.

Available Roles

 * Closer: Inning: 9+; Leading by 1-3 runs
 * Setup: Inning: 7-8; Leading by 1-3 runs
 * LH Specialist: Inning: 7+; Leading or trailing by 1-3 runs or tied; LH batters
 * RH Specialist: Inning: 7+; Leading or trailing by 1-3 runs or tied; RH batters
 * Tied & 9th+: Inning: 9+; Tied
 * Tied & Late: Inning: 7-8; Tied
 * Behind & Late: Inning: 7+; Trailing by 1-4 runs
 * Middle Man: Inning: 1-6; Leading or trailing by 1-4 runs or tied
 * Mopup: Any inning; Leading or trailing by 7+ runs
 * Closer vs. L: Inning: 8+; Leading by 1-3 runs; LH batters
 * Closer vs. R: Inning: 8+; Leading by 1-3 runs; RH batters

How the Roles work
When the computer manager makes the decision to pull a pitcher currently in the game, the Super Hal Bullpen Roles system kicks in, searching through the Role assignments you've defined, in priority order, for a match. For the first match it finds, if the pitcher is fresh*, he will be brought in. Note that this means a pitcher won't always be called upon the instant a game enters a matching situation for his Role - otherwise complete games would be very rare and your bullpen would be overworked. The game engine has to make the decision to pull the current pitcher first, before Roles are considered.

How to assign Roles to your bullpen
On the left side of the page are your currently assigned Roles; on the right side are your remaining available Roles. To assign an available Role to a pitcher, click on the "add" link next to the Role's name, which will move it to the bottom of your current Role list. Then, select your desired pitcher from the pulldown menu. Finally, drag and drop the Role box to its appropriate order in your list, if necessary.

You may assign up to 2 different pitchers for each Role (e.g. 2 different Closers); the one you place at a higher priority will be used first, and the one you place at a lower priority will be used if the higher priority pitcher is not available.

You may assign one single pitcher to any number of different Roles (e.g. Sparky Lyle as Closer, Setup, LH Specialist, and Mopup), but do so at your own risk.

Note that when you assign a pitcher to be a LH Specialist (or RH Specialist), the interface will automatically check the "Avoid RHB" (or "Avoid LHB") and "Quick Hook" settings for the pitcher, because they are part of the definition of the Role. The checkboxes will turn yellow to indicate that they were automatically checked for you. You may explicitly un-check either setting at your own risk - keep in mind that doing so will affect the behavior of the Role.

Priority order
All of your Role assignments are held in one big list, in a single order of priority. The Roles at the top of the list are of the highest priority, and the ones at the bottom are of the lowest. This is the exact order in which the system will search through the Roles for a matching situation. This is important because 1) you may want to have a primary and backup Closer, and 2) there are a few Roles that have overlapping criteria - for example, a Setup and a LH Specialist are both eligible for 8th inning situations. In both of these cases, you'll want to set to the higher priority the pitcher you want considered first when a qualifying game situation arises.

An example
Closer: Eckersley, D. (R, R2) Closer vs. L: McGraw, T. (L, R3) Closer vs. R: Tekulve, K. (R, R3) Closer: Fingers, R. (R, R3) LH Specialist: McGraw, T. (L, R3) Tied & Late: Drabowsky, M. (R, R4)

In this example, Eckersley is the star Closer who will be the first option for all 9th inning save situations. If Eckersley were not available, this bullpen strategy prefers to use a lefty-righty pair of McGraw and Tekulve to close out games... and if either or both of THEM are unavailable, Fingers would be considered.

Furthermore, for 7th/8th inning situations when the score is tied, this bullpen strategy prefers to use McGraw as a LH Specialist (if appropriate) before Drabowsky is called upon to work.