6-man rotation
 

I'm considering it this year, as I have about 6 arms of near equal talent. I don't want to throw the wrong guy into the bullpen, because we're talking FOOL and it's the whole season we're talking about here.

So I'm trying to figure out the best way to evaluate how to decide whether to go with a 5-man or a 6-man or a 4-man and using spot starters more often.

Thoughts?

One thing I've "noticed" and not necessarily done testing, or really analyzed much has to do with the use of the 5-man, start highest rested pitcher setup, which is what I think most people use.

I feel like if you use this set up, that your top pitchers should get more starts than they do, and that the only time the 5th starter should start is if there is no day off in the 5-day period. OOTP does not seem to do this. Again, this is just my observation, and I've never really even analyzed any of the scheduling to see how this works.

In real life I would say most teams use what would be called the strict order, using a 5-man rotation. Occasionally a 5th starter will get skipped though.

I guess what I would like to see is a 4-man rotation, and a spot starter who starts if all are tired, and not just in place of the 4th man.

I know this wasn't what you were referring to, just my thoughts on the game though.

I would have a hard time ever going with a 6-man rotation. I think if I was in that situation I would lean towards trying to trade a guy, in a league with a salary cap, preferably the guy with the highest salary.

At some point in the recent past, MLB started scheduling a lot more games in April. It used to be that a team didn't need the #5 slot more than once or twice before mid-May. It's very different now. The Braves, for example, had a string of 25 games scheduled in 26 days during April 2008. 20 years ago, the Braves took 33 days to play 25 games. in April/May. Looking at where the off days fell in '88, the fifth starter would have only had to be used once during that string, as opposed to five times in April '08. It's another reason I like using the NABA setup. I import schedules from years in the 70s and 80s and get much better SP5 usage that way.