(Pardon my rant.)
In a current champs league I am using the 900 IP John Clarkson. I drafted him solely because I've heard over and over for years that he is virtually unusable, and since I've had success with Silver King, Ed Morris, Tim Keefe, and the '85 Caruthers while getting them between 95-105 starts and 700-900 IP each, I figured I might be able to get some value out of Clarkson.
72 games into the season he has 43 starts and 42 CG for 378.33 IP. His other numbers are atrocious, especially for playing in a pitcher friendly park in the hope of minimizing his tendency to give up HRs. He has a .291 OAV, 1.55 WHIP, and has given up 41 HRs. He's roughly on pace for 850-860 IP and 96-100 CG.
Aside from the problems of running into fatigue issues such that it makes it impossible to get the IP you're paying for (by my count 902+10%, so when you factor in the pitches, somewhere between 950-1,050 depending on the league specific variables), it is impossible to waive Clarkson. His record is 10-33, and he's been a complete bust.
I would have liked to waive him several times, especially recently when there was both a '12 and '13 Walter Johnson on the WW. However, due to the IP minimums (Of note, because of appearance fatigue and early season fatigue and having to burn through pitchers other than Clarkson over the first dozen games, I actually brought more IP than I normally would with 1,357), it is impossible for me to release Clarkson in any form or fashion. Given the relative rarity of high inning pitchers on the WW it seems neigh impossible to release any pitchers with more than 400 IP. Granted you could get lucky here and there, but even as someone who has maybe only used the WW 3 or 4 times in all of my seasons combined, this will certainly make me think twice before drafting any pitchers with more than 400 IP. And I certainly won't be drafting any pitchers with more than 600 again as the chance of replacing a dud (or miscalculation) is virtually none.
Along with the appearance and early-season fatigue, which forces you to not start Clarkson for the first 9-12 games if you want to get more than 81 starts out of him, but seriously taxes the rest of your staff.
These anti-fatigue strategy measures in the form of IP minimums serve to only push the fatigue strategy. These minimums virtually force users to draft as few IP and as high quality as possible , while filling in a waive-able gap in $200k scrubs who will eat IP against select opponents (let's face it, there are too many ways around injuries and 0% anyway, so that doesn't stop them from being burned through up to the transaction deadline and then waived for a single usable RP or spot starter).
Admin can't fix the fatigue system soon enough, but in the meantime, these stop-gaps aren't helping curb gaming strategies such as the fatigue strategy, but are rather encouraging more such strategies. Makes it difficult to play with joy when in order to win you have to resort to various strategies to game the system instead of enjoying being able to use a variety of players in relatively realistic scenarios.
Now, I'll be the first to admit I don't always play to win anyway, but find as much pleasure in discovering flaws or exploitable strategies as I do in winning, but I enjoy finding them so they can be fixed to create a better game, not to take advantage of the game. And it's with that that I find these minimums particularly grievous.