Posted by tecwrg on 8/21/2012 1:23:00 PM (view original):
Let's look at player 1 above for example. Once he started dipping below 100% in game 7, every pitch he threw "cost" around 4% fatigue. We can see when his two day recovery fell below 100% in game 10 (and again in game 15) that his fatige recovery was around 63% or 64% (I believe there are fractions and rounding coming into play, hence the occasional slight difference in numbers).
So backtracking with his pitches thrown in the first six games, it took him around 37 pitches to dip under 100%, one can reverse calculate that his "fully rested" fatigue started at around 246%. That may be typical for a fully rested reliever.
Looking at player 2, who is your typical starter-type pitcher, the numbers are different. He didn't dip below 100% until game 4 after throwing 56 pitches. We can see that every pitch thrown afterwards "cost" him around 1% fatigue. So we can reverse calculate his starting point for "fully rested" was around 154%.
Player 2's fatigue recovery also appears to be around 29% per day of rest, so even when he's showing as 100%, it may actually take an additional two full days of rest at 100% to bring him back to his "fully rested" number of 154%.
Similar with player 1 . . . he may show at 100%, but may actually need an additional 2 or even 3 more days of rest to reach his fully rested number of 246%.
Not many of us have the luxury to completely rest our pitchers for 2 or 3 days when they are already showing at 100%, which is why fatigue often appears to be an issue after many consecutive days of games.