Saying that "any randomly-thrown game can end up being the deciding factor" is completely false: you miss out on the playoffs because you don't win enough games compared to those who make the playoffs - all games count the same.  There is no way to say that "Games X and Y are the reason I didn't make the playoffs."  If you'd won those two 16-inning marathons, if your clean-up hitter had had just 2 more key HRs, if your 2000 Pedro hadn't unexpectedly gone on a three-game losing streak where he got rocked, etc. - every game you lose and every game your opponent wins are the reasons you don't make the playoffs.

The extrapolation of this logic is that you should always play your starters.  Say, for example, you draft the 1957 Ted Williams, an incredible season ($19,102/PA) but only 575 PA/162.  That's not enough for him to play every day, especially toward the top of the order.  Is it considered throwing games if you rest him and start a AAA player every so often?  You certainly don't have as good a chance of winning with Ted on the bench.

Bribar, I love your passion for the game and your ardor in arguing your point.  As I suggested above, look for leagues that have rules which conform to how you want to play - and I look forward to playing against you in them.

If your scenario in the second paragraph above happens, that IS prohibited under WIS rules; see 'Collusion". Very hard to prove, but anyone who does that (outside of Themes where it's part of the game, like Dodgeball) should be called out publically, and tarred and feathered.

Ah yes...we haven't had a good thread about this in 3 years:

http://www.whatifsports.com/forums/Posts.aspx?topicID=438692&page=1

My thinking on this hasn't changed.  I wish WIS would change the way fatigue works too, but as it stands I have zero problem with any owner using that strategy to the fullest extent that their league's rules allow. 

Posted by frazzman80 on 2/18/2014 12:50:00 PM (view original):

Throwing games equates to tanking in my mind, and tanking should never be tolerated in any league. I agree that owners need to manage fatigue (even if I completely agree with biglenr that fatigue to far too lenient in the current WIS sim) and have to rest players at times, but how often in real life do you see the manager of an MLB team play nothing but backups and AAA callups and rest their entire starting lineup? They would be mocked for days on SC for that kind of stuff. We'd see graphic after graphic of the sub .150 averages in their lineup.

Remember last season when Vin Mazzaro came in relief for the Royals and gave up 14 runs in relief. It was the lead story on SC for days. It lead to articles such as this one:http://www.royalsreview.com/2011/5/17/2174871/vin-mazzaro-has-one-of-the-worst-nights-ever-gets-demoted-to-aaa

Needless to say, this kind of stuff happens ALL THE TIME on WIS and it should be treated the same way as SC treated it when it happened in real life. It goes against the what I see as fair play standards in my mind to leave in a 200K pitcher for 250+ pitches and have him give up 30+ runs.

Is it OK to rest starters to prevent fatigue...sure. But is it OK to purposely field the worst lineup you can and tank games...I'd still say no.

Here is the boxscore of the game between the first place NY Yankees and the last place Tampa Bay Devil Rays for Sept. 16, 1998: 

http://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/TBA/TBA199809160.shtml

Notice which lineup looks more like a pennant winner if you didn't know better. No Knoblauch, Tino Martinez, Paul O'Neil, Daryl Strawberry. 

On the other hand there are Brosius, Bernie, Derek and Girardi as well as Pettitte starting. So the game was not thrown, although to be sure Joe Torre must have calculated that the odds of winning even with this lineup were better against Tampa Bay than against Cleveland, or Atlanta or Boston that year. 


On the other hand, here is one from Sept. 22 of the same year - against Cleveland. It was the second game of a double header. I saw every game but one that year (David Wells' perfect game was the day I defended my Ph.D. thesis and it was a day game !) and I did not even remember Mike Lowell being on the Yankees in 1998. 

http://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/NYA/NYA199809222.shtml

But the won. Now the point is, the evidence is somewhat ambiguous here.There are calculated risks taken to deal with fatigue essentially and sometime teams do sit down half their starting lineup. All of it? Maybe. But I figured if we were going to find a team resting its starters it would be on that had wrapped up the division title by July. 

And instead they won this second game. Of course we refer to tanking as though it were losing on purpose - THAT only happens in progressive leagues that have an incentive for losing, based on their drafting system. 

Teams that use the fatigue strategy in OLs seem to me to be making the best of a situation that many here who are more experienced and knowledgeable that I am have already made clear needs to be changed. But playing your AAA is not trying to lose - if you win you are very happy - believe me, play a bunch of bench players with a long reliever or spot starter and get a good start, a key HR and a win and it makes your day. 

You are taking the risk, willingly given the way the system works at WIS of losing because if you play your starters you ARE guaranteeing you will start losing, because they will be tired or, if you merely let the Auto-rest take care of it, so you rest one starter at a time, your team is purposely being set to almost never work on all cylinders. 

Starting 200K pitchers is most definitely not done "to crap on someone else's team." The way WIS calculates fatigue completely disproves that. If your batters get 1-2 more PA per game than they would have otherwise, the effect on their fatigue is negligible at best, especially early in the season when damping is in effect. Even for a 3-game series the effect is miniscule.

Anyone is free to dislike the fatigue strategy for philosophical reasons, but let's not confuse the issue by inventing falsehoods about its effect on opposing hitters' fatigue.