[IBL] comments on mid-season ballot

[Sean Sweda]

On Jul 25, 2014, at 9:31 PM, Noel Steere wrote:

> "The BF system will undoubtedly be refined over the course of time, let's not make perfection a requirement for having something better."
> 
> I'm just looking for "not seriously flawed". :-)

How does the old system hold up under the standard of "not seriously flawed"?  Even if one were to concede that you've found a "serious flaw" (FWIW, I disagree on the severity of the problem), how does the impact of that compare to these "serious flaws" with the old rules:

- starting pitchers being able to throw unlimited number of innings without fatiguing if they are under 8 baserunners
- starting pitchers on short rest being able to throw unlimited number of innings without fatiguing if they are under 6 baserunners
- relief pitchers being able to throw 5 innings without fatiguing if they are under 4/6 baserunners
- relief pitchers being able to throw 5 innings over consecutive days (2IP, 3IP) and only required to rest for one day

Compare that to:
- I know when the opposing starting pitcher is likely to be removed

No contest, really.

> Something as simple as "next baserunner on/after BP" should work just fine.  You're still penalized by not being able to go at full strength on 3 days rest (am I reading that correctly?  You get to your BF, get relieved, and can go again at the same BF on 3 days rest?)

Once a pitcher has gone past the BF limit for 3 days he must rest 4 days in order to start with full SP BF fatigue, otherwise it is on short rest with -8 BF adjustment.

> Re roster crunch:  The problem I'm concerned about is that by going to BF, we may end up without BF available to finish a full season.  As things currently stand, we can determine if we have enough IP to play the season.  If we go to BF, you won't know if you have enough BF to get the 9 * 81 + 8 * 81 innings needed at a minimum, since you could get unlucky and give up more baserunners than expected.  This is especially more likely for rebuilding teams, since by definition they'll have worse pitchers, which means they'll need to eat up more roster spots just to get enough IP to pitch the season.

For most pitchers pseudo-BF usage is going track closely to IP usage, it's only going to make a big difference for the bad ones.  We've got years of IBL history that shows that in most circumstances teams give their bad players just enough usage to get to 75%.  What's likely to happen is that crappy pitchers who were being left in because they need outs for usage will have their innings shifted to better pitchers, since there's no longer an incentive to leave them in to get pounded.  Perhaps that means bad teams will have to carry a couple effective pitchers on their active roster, I don't really consider that to be a problem.

The worst two pitching staffs in the IBL last year had the following stats
XXX    162  49 113  .302  28 1427.2 1693  919  839 179  500 1137   5.29
YYY    162  47 115  .290  28 1428.1 1688  940  836 193  548 1129   5.27

XXX pseudo-BF total:  1427.2 * 3 + 1693 + 500 = 6476
YYY pseudo-BF total:  1428.1 * 3 + 1688 + 548 = 6521

MIN AL 2013 pseudo-BF total:  1450 IP, 1591 HA, 458 BB = 6399
HOU AL 2013 pseudo-BF total:  1440 IP, 1530 HA, 616 BB = 6466

It doesn't look to me like bad IBL pitching staffs are facing a whole lot more pseudo-BF than bad MLB pitching staffs.  I have a really hard time believing any team is going to run into a situation where all their pitchers are running too close to 133% BF-usage that wouldn't also have exactly the same problem under a IP-usage system.

Sean