I thank Ken for quoting the manual and trying to address this confusing issue. However, based on my own experience I am not sure that the pitcher selected by the ROBOT is always 100% predictable.

In the 1999 season my pitching staff in K15 included Kevin Millwood (8.8/8.2), John Smoltz (7.7/7.8), Pedro Astacio (6/5.8), and others. For one of the away games I did not select a starting pitcher because I was in a time crunch and I assumed (based on the section of the manual that Ken quoted) that the ROBOT would select the higher grade pitcher. I was quite taken aback when the ROBOT chose Astacio over one of my better READY pitchers. I remember confronting Mike Bravard about this -- He was surprised and not entirely sure why this happened. This was 5 years ago but I think the *GUESS* at the time was that Astacio had been selected either because he threw more innings that year or because PureBaseball rated him as an Ace Starter (I did not have him as Ace in the manager options).

So I think where this leaves us is that we really don't know for certain what the ROBOT will do.