I didn't review all of Plaw's analyses from last year, but.....

MLB teams carry a 25-man roster for most of the regular season, and all of the post season. The way it's set up now, it's the same for our league:

C, 1B, 2B, 3B, SS, LF, CF, RF, Util/DH,
SP, SP, SP, SP, SP, SP,
RP, RP, RP, RP, RP,
BN, BN, BN, BN, BN

(I'm fairly certain that BN positions are split up between hitters and pitchers, if I remember correctly)

Real teams have 11-12 pitchers on their active roster: 5 SP's and 6-7 RP's. Our six SP's could really be cut to 5, like a typical squad. I don't mind have a 6th as a reserve, but something else to think about.

Although obviously teams stick with the usual 2-4 RP's on any good outing (closer, set-up man, long/short relievers, lefty/righty specialists)... they could go through almost all of them in a long game.

There are only really a handful of great closers out there, so limiting RPs to 2 slots would in effect, I think, eliminate most of the use of middle relievers. And with only 2 RP slots, you could easily go days without any pitching points whatsoever. There are only 5 Bench slots for your entire team (if I remember correctly?), so I don't think 2 RP slots would cut it unless we increased the Bench limit; otherwise most of the RPs will be unused in the free agent pool.

Another thing to consider is that SP's get 30-something starts/season... RPs can pitch 60-80+ games/season, which is a lot of innings. Non-closing RP's also are more susceptible to getting awarded with W's and L's than closers are, so I think we need them.

To be most realistic, we'd have 5 SP's and 6 RP's. But obviously most of the fun in fantasy is with offense so I don't mind putting more concentration on that. But we can still only play 9 offensive players/day.

I think we should consider lowering SP's from 6 to 5, leaving RP's at 4-5 (altho 6 would be most realistic), and creating another Bench slot(s) for however a manager chooses to use it/them (hitters or pitchers).

Thoughts?