What it really comes down to is this.

PLAYING TIME-- is taken into account in this game by enforcing a cap on Innings and Plate Appearances (except INN players) -- most arcade games do not impose this kind of limitation.

FLEXIBILITY-- is required because of the fact that PLAYING TIME is limited. If both of my SS get hurt in the same game I have to stick someone there. If two of my SP go on the DL and I did not have the foresight to draft two reserve SP then SOMEONE has to start the games... hence I use a reliever.

These two items are necessary and ir-refutable.

The real issue is how much are the players degraded when they are used in a role that is not suited to them. More specifically the question is whether these wonderful games pitched by closers when they started are random freak occurences or a problem in the game.

And the only way I think we will ever tell whether it is random or a game bug is to try using some closers as SP for the entire season in a launch league and see how they perform. If they perform well for a whole season then there is a problem. If they have one or two good games but get lit up the rest of the time then maybe there really isn't a problem.

Perhaps some experimental work should be done to test how big of a problem we have. (Maybe I should draft 10 closers for my next Launch League Team and test it out) :-)