like most owners in lower salary cap leagues I try to get away with as few innings as possible. I never really paid too much attention to fatigue baecause for the most part it didn't affect my team. I'm just about to end an 80M league and some of my pitchers are very fatigued and I am not sure why. I thought pitching fatigue was based on total pitches thrown. I was recently told it is total pitches plus a 10% allowance similar to PA for hitters. With or without the 10% the numbers don't add.

So far we played 155 games. using baseball reference as a source for pitch count I looked up a few of my guys and the numbers don't make sense. I have a few pitchers under their rl total pitch count and they are in the 80% never making it back to 100% and a few way over their pitch count and are at or around 100%. Does wis use their own calculation for estimating rl pitch count or do they use the official pitch count in those seasons pitch count was tracked? I found an accepted formula used for eras when pitch count wasn’t calculated 3.3*PA+1.5*SO+2.2*BB. Is a formula like this used all the time or just when the data is not available?

Any help would be appreciated.
Thanks

Are they starters, relievers, or both?

Real life pitch counts aren't the basis of fatigue.  The SIM uses its own formula to generate each pitchers' seasonal pitch count for fatigue purposes.  Check out this thread for a fairly accurate version of that formula:

http://www.whatifsports.com/forums/Posts.aspx?topicID=154851&page=1

they were both. thanks skunk that thread was helpful. my problem was similar to what others wrote. Where my pitchers were tired yet someone else's pitchers who were way over there rl pitch count were still at 100%. i guess some players gain while others don't. unfortunately i took those players who don't make out on WIS formula.

Nobody really gains or loses anything. You draft innings, you get innings. Pitchers who are allotted fewer pitches per inning don't need as many. Pitchers who are alloted more need them. The end result - you get the innings you drafted. Don't overthink it.

thats not true. say you draft a pedro who rl pitched 200 innings and rl had 3000 pitch count. the WIS formula calculates him at 3500 pitch count. the extra 500 pitches might get you an extra 30 innings. the same can hold true in reverse which is happening to me. The player might have rl 80 innings with rl 1000 pitch count. After the formula goes into affect his pitch count is reduced to 900. This reduction might cost you 5 innings. for a closer those 5 inning might cost you 5 games and Pedro getting an extra 30 innings could be 4 more wins. that's a 9 game swing. i'm watching this happen right now. someone drafted a little over 1,000 innings and his 4 starters are well over their rl innings and well over their rl pitch count yet they continue to come back at 100%. he did have to tank a bunch of games but the end result is over 90 wins and he probably got an extra 100 innings from his starters. with the starters he has that's 10 extra wins he gained. you take them away he doesn't make the playoffs. smart people (unfortunately I'm not one of them) figured this out and used it to their advantage. seeing how well it seems to work i'm going to test it out myself. thanks to skunk and the formula I will be able to figure out what pitchers gain in pitch counts and will give me extra inning especially in lower cap leagues.

There is also a fatigue hit for simply appearing in games.

Take an extreme example:

Let's say you draft Silver King or another one of those 600+ IP dudes.

Put him in the bullpen, with a pitch count of 5, with no auto-rest set (meaning you're OK if he comes in every game).

For the sake of argument, let's say he doubles his pitch count every game, and throws exactly ten pitches per game.

That would mean he would throw 1,620 pitches for the season. Use some kind of estimate for how many innings that is--let's say it takes 16 pitches per inning. Those 1,620 pitches would then translate to about 101 innings.

Unfortunately, the pitcher woul be  fatigued all year, based solely on the "appearance fatigue" WIS imposes, despite only throwing a small fraction of the innings he threw in RL.

I suspect your guys are tired in part because of the appearance thing.

If you have only played 2 games, and Alexander pitched one of them, the sim figures he is going to pitch in 1/2 of your games(81) which would put him WAY over his RL innings.

Posted by grayfoxx on 1/30/2011 7:24:00 PM (view original):
If you have only played 2 games, and Alexander pitched one of them, the sim figures he is going to pitch in 1/2 of your games(81) which would put him WAY over his RL innings.

Ahh I see....I think.  Doesn't make sense though.  Why would fatigue be based on projected innings as opposed to just innings?  We get fatigued from doing, not from thinking about doing. LOL...So in other words if you plan on going with a short rotation you may have to wait a few weeks into the season to shorten it?

Why would fatigue be based on projected innings as opposed to just innings?

Because otherwise it would be possible to start someone like 1919 Alexander for 40 games in a row, and when he's "used up" just dump him to the waiver wire for a replacement.  I think the way WIS does it now is the only way to keep usage somewhat realistic.

I think it works pretty well at the beginning of the season; basically the fatigue model forces you to use a rotation.

It breaks down, in my opinion, as the season goes on.  By the latter third of the season, you can start using ever shorter rotations, and in the extreme case, at the end of the season a guy can start 5+ games in a row assuming he has enough innings "banked."  (Or more precisely, enough "pitches" banked.)

At least they fixed the post-season fatigue model; when I first started playing any unused IP carried over to the post-season.  So you ended up with teams saving a guy like the 25 IP Milacki all season, not using him at all, and then running him out for 5-6 starts in the playoffs.  Now, even if a pitcher has lots of unused innings (pitches), they treat him in the post-season as though he had used 95% of his availability. 

I think the one small piece of information that is missing for Newbies is this:  Throughout the years players have found ways to manipulate the SIM and use loop holes to exploit it.  WIS has done their best with each update to close these holes.  For example, you used to be able to draft Milacki and stash him in AAA for the entire season and then run him out three games in a row in the PL using his 27IP (or whatever you could get).  SO some of these formulas seem unrealistic, they are there to patch holes that have been exploited in the past.  Remember that this is a game and not real life.  You need to study the formulas and rules and find ways to make your teams work based on how the computer unemotionally plays out your games.

For ultimate control (and exploitation) you should try Sim Leagues Live, there is not extra cost.

Thanks guys.  At least now I understand the why.  It isn't an ideal system but it makes sense.  Have been enjoying for first leagues here at the WIS immensely even though I'm just still learning.