target minutes gets a bad wrap. it is much harder than fatigue and offers little payoff, and most coaches will cause themselves significant harm when they start using it very possibly never gaining ANY advantage. so, it makes sense that it is not very popular.
however, i have often wondered if a targets minute master wouldn't be advantaged at least in some edge cases, and very possibly on even footing or better in general in low-fatigue situations. target minutes is better at spreading the minutes around in the expected case, and worse at spreading them around when **** hits the fan. the more likely you are to follow a predictable pattern - say, as a slowdown zone club playing a non-press team - than you are to encounter chaos - say, as a fb/press team - the more sense minutes makes. with press, minutes is 100% garbage, no scenario can justify it. and with zone teams or man teams with great depth, where there is little incentive for game-playing with the rotation, there's little potential upside. however, when you do want to play odd rotations - say, play 7-8 men deep, like sim AI does (hint hint), or survive with 3 bigs getting the majority of the minutes - the fatigue setting has a major flaw. there is no way to indicate you want a 3 man rotation, and even if you only list 3 men, the fatigue sub will wait to make that sub until the fatigue levels kick in. if you have a large fatigue gap between starter 1 and 2, you can sometimes make it work, but its pretty hard and in many cases (like with similar fatigue starters), you are SOL.
fatigue users could try getting tired, but on a starter, getting tired is implemented HORRIBLY. what you'd want it, your guy to be willing to stay in longer to stop someone ****** from coming in. however, you'd want as much of that starters time to be played fresh or fairly fresh, as possible. well, on getting tired, a starter waits till getting tired, leaving the subs 100% fresh on the bench (wasting stamina recharge), and then pulls the starter - returning them as soon ASAP when the starter ticks 1 tick into the fairly fresh range. so, the starter goes back in and is playing decently fatigued again really quickly. in an infinite sub scenario, which is an easy way to simplify the situation but still get a decent grip on whats happening (by infinite sub, i mean you can sub instantaneously at any time), the starter would sub out as soon as they hit getting tired, rest a couple seconds, sub in, play a couple seconds, sub out, etc... basically, playing at an average fatigue level of exactly the worst fairly fresh / best getting tired. this basically buys you a couple extra minutes for ALL those minutes to be played at a moderately more fatigued state - which is about the worst case scenario, to get those couple extra minutes. if you consider the infinite sub case where a guy stayed in till getting tired and came out, and only came back in at 100% fatigue, if they ended the game on getting tired, the guy would play the same amount of minutes - but their fatigue level would be evenly spread between 100% full fresh and the highest point for getting tired - meaning, on average, half the fatigue of the first scenario. and considering you pay an increasingly bigger hit the more fatigued you get, you actually end up with MORE than double the fatigue penalty from the first scenario - for no extra minutes!
of course, that analysis is all in the infinite-sub scenario, but the analysis of the real situation, while messier, is similar. so basically, if you want to play a guy for a few extra minutes, fatigue forces you into scenario 1 above, while minutes puts you basically in scenario 2. and note that scenario 2 is not a great strategy, its just a very, very simple one, that is easy to see why you get the same extra minutes as scenario 1, while also being a much, much better strategy. the target minutes approach IMO without foul trouble, probably uses a better strategy than scenario 2 above (play the guy till GT and sub out till 100% fresh).
so, if you have the need for rotational flexibility, and you have the low-fatigue low-foul risk scenarios, it is VERY possible that target minutes can be better. in fact, i'm over 95% confident that real scenarios occur in HD where target minutes is superior, on a non-negligible basis.
OP, sorry this has nothing to do with your case, but most people play fatigue and i think your case is a good example of where target minutes can be helpful. in a fatigue setup, i wouldn't start both bigs, which transfers what like 8mpg from a better big to smith. in target minutes, you don't have to do that. now maybe the disadvantage of a terrible strategy in the face of foul trouble outweighs that advantage - but at a minimum, that is a clear, tangible advantage on target minutes that is illustrative of the kinds of advantages target minutes can offer.