Question: i've read alot in the forums about fatigue and how to best use the full extent of your players to get the most bang for your buck. that being said it seems that 30 or 40% of the teams in the 60mil league have less than 1300 innings i dont understand how they can be competitive. wont there pitchers fatigue run down into the 80's and therefore hurt there teams abilities?, or are there players who perform better fatigued? and i should pay attention and learn. conversely 5 or 6 teams are starting under 5000 PA's and i feel are doing the same thing. are these guys going to "throw" for lack of a better word games with multiple AAA players in hopes that they can go 95-45 with their starters and then finish 102-60 and still make the playoffs.
My response (Sadly, the fatigue issue still awaits fixing): Well, I hate to say it, but it looks like several teams are going to use the "Fatigue Strategy" where they abuse certainly players to throw games to keep a core of players fresh enough to try to win 2/3 of their games. I HATE THIS STRATEGY!
I did a really good forum post about this that you can read here: http://www.whatifsports.com/forums/Posts.aspx?topicID=466091&page=1
Here's the way it works: You automatically get a free 10% fatigue cushion built in by WIS. So if you draft a guy with 500 PAs, he can get to 550 PAs and still be at 100%. Most people agree that the fatigue system really only hurts marginally up to 92%, so you get an extra 7% PAs until you start seeing diminishing stats. So your at 589 PAs now while only drafting 500.
The same thing works for pitchers, who fatigue on a number of pitches basis (not IP) and WIS uses a formula that is close to IP x 15.5 to calculate total pitches (or something like that). But you also get a free 10% bump in that number too, so if your pitchers throws 200 IP, you get 3100 pitches and really 3,410 with that factored in. The same 92% seems to be the cutoff for fatigue with pitchers too, so you add the 7% to get around 3,650/15.5 = 235 IP while only drafting 200.
I think this is crap, but many people game the system and do this.
Now, this league has AAA players, and even though they are "below average" they are very useful to prevent fatigue. From the AAA charts thread (http://www.whatifsports.com/forums/Posts.aspx?TopicID=388184), you find out that for position players, the lowest stamina you can get is F, which is still 150-300 PAs. I got a C at 1B which is 400-450 PAs! 6 x 150 = 900 PAs and I would guess that the average is around 1200 free PAs with the use of AAA guys. Pitchers are a bit more tricky because the salaries for Below average are only 200K - 949,999, so it's harder to get a lot of extra IP, but you get a minimum of 50 IP.
So, when you add in the fact that you can cheat the fatigue system and are getting nearly 1200 PAs (and remember, they get the bonuses too, so its really over 1,400) and a minimum of 50 IP, then a lot of guys draft really low PAs and IP and play the fatigue system thinking that they are drafting the highest quality stats and riding out the freebie PAs/IP.
There are supposedly some players who perform better fatigued (some owners have posted that OBP is not affected by fatigue and just4me has a great thread showing that low BB/9# pitchers are less affected by it) but some people just think that if you draft a guy who hits .300 and he plays at 80%, that's still better than drafting a guy who hits .250 and plays at 100%.
Frankly, I think it sucks and that's why I don't play in leagues with AAA typically. But I love low cap leagues and the challenge of making the best team you can with the players who are not all stars. It just appeals to me.
That said, I only drafted 4467 PAs and 1288 IP. But I knew I was getting 1200 PAs and likely 80 IP from AAA, so that's more like 5667 PAs and 1368 IP. It's likely going to be tough to keep my guys at 100%, but I should be able to do it with good managing.
I have the following breakdown of guys I drafted by position:
C - Starter 328 PAs (213 on bench + AAA)
1B Platoon: 383 + 158 (1B/OF) + (10 other guys who are rated + AAA)
2B Platoon: 432 + 86 + AAA (and Zobrist my 3B, can play here)
3B - Starter 599 PAs + AAA
SS - Starter 471 PAs + AAA
LF Platoon 645 PAs + AAA
CF Starter 648 PAs
RF Starter 504 Pas + 158 (1B/OF) + AAA
So even though I am light on PAs (and will have to start a lot of different lineups), I should be able to keep my guys at 100%, and my AAA guys are descent (all of them hit at least .220 and some hit over .250), so I may be able to play them and hit them 6, 7, 8 when I need to rest guys.
That's going to be my plan...it's not throwing games (which I hate), it's realistic baseball to me where you have to guess when to rest your hitters and such and still try to win.
Does that help? Like I said in the forum post, if this league wouldn't have had access to AAA (and essentially a 33 man roster), I would have drafted 100% differently.