I have a 1999 prog team that had a healthy division lead about 110 games into the season.  So I decided to give my best SP's a break and start my worst one, Brian Bohanon.  I noticed that after the game he was still at 100%, so after his day off I figured I'd  keep starting him for as long as he stayed over 90%.  To my surprise, it took him 17 straight starts to get under 90% -- and 14 just to fall below 100%.  

Here's his game log:

12/11 pm	@Baltimore Barksdales	100	7.0	27	91	1	0	0	0	0	6	0	8	1	0	3.63	.270	1.44	view
12/11 pm2	@Baltimore Barksdales	100	7.0	26	90	1	0	0	0	0	3	0	6	2	1	3.41	.262	1.40	view
12/12 am	@yepites	100	5.2	26	91	1	0	0	4	4	6	0	2	4	0	3.55	.263	1.41	view
12/12 pm	@yepites	100	5.0	20	61	0	0	0	3	3	4	1	5	1	0	3.62	.261	1.40	view
12/12 pm2	@yepites	100	4.0	24	89	0	0	0	8	7	7	0	3	3	0	3.99	.264	1.43	view
12/13 am	Kansas City Monarchs	100	5.0	28	89	0	1	0	7	7	10	2	1	2	0	4.31	.270	1.47	view
12/13 pm	Kansas City Monarchs	100	6.1	24	80	1	0	0	3	3	4	2	7	3	0	4.31	.267	1.45	view
12/13 pm2	Kansas City Monarchs	100	6.2	29	91	1	0	0	3	3	6	1	7	2	0	4.30	.265	1.44	view
12/14 am	@Milwaukee CRYPTKEEPERS	100	6.0	26	82	0	1	0	6	6	8	1	5	0	0	4.48	.266	1.44	view
12/14 pm	@Milwaukee CRYPTKEEPERS	100	5.0	21	69	1	0	0	1	1	4	0	3	0	0	4.40	.264	1.42	view
12/14 pm2	@Milwaukee CRYPTKEEPERS	100	7.0	29	89	1	0	0	2	2	8	0	5	0	0	4.32	.264	1.40	view
12/15 am	Anaheim Angels	100	7.0	26	82	1	0	0	2	2	5	0	5	0	0	4.25	.262	1.38	view
12/15 pm	Anaheim Angels	100	5.0	23	80	1	0	0	6	6	6	2	5	2	0	4.43	.263	1.38	view
12/15 pm2	Anaheim Angels	99	5.0	29	89	0	1	0	11	11	12	1	2	2	1	4.85	.269	1.42	view
12/16 am	@Oakland Yankees	95	6.0	28	90	1	0	0	3	2	8	1	3	1	0	4.79	.270	1.42	view
12/16 pm	@Oakland Yankees	91	6.0	29	92	1	0	0	5	5	11	2	1	2	0	4.88	.275	1.45	view
12/16 pm2	@Oakland Yankees	88	6.0	24	90	1	0	0	1	1	4	0	3	3	0	4.78	.273	1.44	view

It seems to me that RP's, even if they're underused, will get appearance fatigue if they pitch in more than a couple of games in a row.  Why doesn't that apply with SP's, too?  If anything, appearance fatigue should be even harsher for SP's, based on the way they were used in real life.

As of now, Bohanon's at 84 (100) and showing "Tired from recent game activity."  He'll have a day off, then take the mound at 100% again in his 18th start in 19 games. 

One more thing.  In real life Bohanon threw 198 innings; in this league he's thrown 201 in 132 games.  Shouldn't he be tired from overuse, too?  I know that's based on pitches thrown and not innings, but he's already exceeded his RL innings with 30 games to go.

One possible way to use (or "abuse," for you purists) this info?  Perhaps if you're in a tight division race with 2 or 3 of your division rivals, you can rest your best SP for a while and "bank" his innings for the final 12 games of the season.  Then start him over and over again in those 12 games.

If I'm reading it right, his performance in those games is a whole lot better than his normalized numbers, and as such its not that surprising that he would be headed for more IP than projected. I imagine he is a fair way under his projected pitch counts...

I think (but probably am wrong) that you'd end up having to underuse your star SP to get him to be able to start those 12 games in a row (even including those games). Or at the least, it would take a lot of careful planning throughout the whole season (before which you probably don't know that you are going to have such a tight race).

When I've messed around with maximizing IP or starts from the 700 IP pitchers I've gotten 17 consecutive starts before (maybe more, I'll have to check the John Clarkson and Silver King threads as I posted it in one of them).

This is doable late in the season when pitchers have been under-utilized to this point based on their RL+10% numbers. So long as he isn't going to be within a certain% of that RL+10% of pitches number on his projections at that point he can pitch again, and again, and again until he appears in more than 70% of your teams games. Obviously this is easier to do late in the season due to the way projections on these things work, but you can still manage to get a good stretch of games in a row earlier in the season.

Example: pfatkatt has been running a platoon based league in which you have manually drafted AAA that you can't call up until after a certain point in the season (game 100, game 110, etc). In the first two seasons I drafted an SP into my AAA with ~60 IP/162 in RL. In both instances I called him up as soon as I could and pitched him consecutively until I either needed to send him back down (game 120) or he was tired. In the first instance, he was called up at game 110 and started 9 straight games (111-119) before being sent back down before the deadline. In the second instance, he was called up at game 102 and made 7 consecutive starts (103-109), before needing to be rested. In both instances I used up all of his allotted pitches to that point in the season and his sim IP was very close to what his RL IP would have projected to have been at that point in the season, as well.

It's one of those exploitable fatigue glitches I've been tinkering with and trying to get fixed for years.

Response from Admin:

We don't consider it a glitch, but we do consider it to be rather unrealistic.

Once our major update is out in 2013, we will be starting the task of revising the fatigue model in SLB to be more like what we have in place in Hardball Dynasty. It will yield a much more realistic system while still allowing pitchers to earn their allotted innings.

Thanks for this crazystengel, and just4me, we have learned a lot. But among other things I have some ideas I want to try before admin. makes any changes. hmmm. 

One final note about Brian Bohanon (the pitcher from the first post who started 17 straight).  He finished the season with 252 innings -- 54 more than his real life total.  And he'll begin the post-season at 100%.  I know pitcher fatigue is based on pitches thrown and not innings, and Bohanon has overperformed his RL stats -- ERA 6.28 vs. 5.14, WHIP 1.66 vs. 1.51, OAV .304 vs. .291 -- so he got through his innings needing fewer pitches.  But still, 27% extra with no fatigue penalty seems like too much.

Recently in a post someone complained that in OL's their team always folds and does poorly late in the season.  As this thread illustrates, there are many solutions to this. My favorite strategy I call it my "Ace in the hole". strategy where I will start a 300 plus inning Ace starter like an (08 Joss or Brown ect) in a  4 man rotation instead of the usual 3 with 2 very capable 200plus inning starters (Leonard, Maddux, White, Krause, Martinez ect) as my 2nd and 3rd starter and a "faux fourth starter" using either rookies, a cheap break even innings eater or my favorite, cheap but capable waiverwire aquisitions as your 4th starter. There are many owners here that have used similar concepts. If your Ace starts every fourth day for 2/3 of the season 27 starts in108gms, he can now virtually start every other day(27 starts) for the last 54 games! with a 1,2A,1,2B rotation down the stretch. Also you can waive your pitching staff down to 1200 innings as they are no longer nessesary (because your Ace now gives your staff a real value of over 1300 innings), giving you money to create a big bat as well. Recognize though that this is just displacement of assets for better late season management, not nessesarilly giving you a better team result.