BWB Primer #5 - The Starting Pitching Queue

The BWB Primer is a series of commentaries to provide rule interpretations and hints - something a bit more than you get out of the rules. See the Primer Index for the entire series.

Your starting pitching rotation consists of your "normal rotation" - P1 through P5, and your "spot starters" (S1 & S2). In recent years, we've also allowed backup relief appearances to come from the spot starter postion, but for our discussion here, we'll consider them as starters.

One of the main ways in how your normal pitching rotation differs from your two spot starters is the size of the start queue.

The 3-start Queue

Your rotation has the ability to queue up 3 starts, beginning as soon as you put them into the rotation. It's a "first-in, first-out" queue, so when the pitcher's next start occurs in Benchwarmer Baseball, we pull out the earliest start remaining in his queue to use in the game. This allows us to have starts available whenever it's his turn to pitch in BWB.

For example, let's say your 4th pitcher is in real-life an Opening Day starter - and that MLB team will be starting off with a 4-man rotation for a couple weeks...

• So he'll pitch in MLB games #1, #5, and #9. His first start in BWB will occur in BWB Game #4 - which for hitters and the cut-off for pitching stats is MLB Game #9 (See mapping MLB games to BWB games). Thus, at the time he makes his first start he now has 3 starts in his queue - and for our purposes, we use his performance from MLB Game #1.
• Now, the other advantage of the 3-start queue is that it may allow you some regularity in your rotation even if your guy misses a real start or two. Continuing our example, let's say your guy strains his shoulder in MLB Game #9, so he's going to miss a start (say in MLB Game 13 or 14). But as his turn comes around again in BWB (BWB Game #9), we still have 2 starts sitting in his queue, so he doesn't miss a start in your rotation.

In practice, this extra padding usually only exists for starters that you have in the rotation at the beginning of the season - or only after a significant time passes for guys you stick in there mid-season.

Spot Starters

Spot starters fill in only if the scheduled pitcher in the rotation cannot pitch (either due to no available queued starts or has not had 4 games of rest). We see if the 1st spot starter can fill in and if not, check the 2nd. If neither spot starter can go, we see if one of your other pitchers can move up. 4/14: This paragraph is a correction of the way I originally wrote it.

A spot starter only has a 1-start queue. As soon as he has another real-life start, it replaces the unused start sitting in the queue. But that start will remain until used or replaced. Teams in the past have had a spot starter at the beginning of the year stow away a starting performance and then doesn't start again (maybe he's hurt, or moved to the bullpen, or demoted). But that start stays there and at some point - maybe even in September - if that pitcher is needed, his major league start in April counts for your game in September.

Removing pitchers from the rotation or moving them - how does it affect the queue?

If you move someone to a different spot in the rotation, there's no effect on his queued-up starts - they move with him. But, if you take someone out of the rotation, his queue is cleared and he'd have to start over if you put him back in the rotation. Thus, there can be some risk for plugging guys in and out of the rotation. You might get away with dumping a horrendous outing, but it's just as likely you'll miss a good performance when trying to put him back in, plus you lose the possible cushion of 1-2 extra starts.

If you move pitchers between the spot roles and the main rotation or vice versa, you don't lose any queued starts, with the exception that a pitcher moving from the main rotation to a spot position can now only have one saved start instead of three, so only the most recent one is retained.

Too many starts for the queue - losing a start

Finally, there may be occasions where you lose a start from someone in your rotation because he has too many queued starts. Let's say your #1 pitcher already has 3 queued starts, and is next set to pitch in BWB Game #96. But now he gets another start in MLB Game #100, which corresponds to BWB Game #95. At this point, the earliest start in the queue is discarded. This situation occurs mainly around the All-Star Break, as some teams retool their rotation after the break or skip a couple pitchers. It also may show up if a team switches to a 4-man rotation (your guy gathers statistics every 4 MLB games but uses them only every 5 BWB games).