Been playing for a while but have no idea what the ideal effectiveness rate to keep my starting hitters between - is there a benefit to keeping them at 100% - is there no downside in production from 95 to 100 ? etc???

Intelligent thoughts are appreciated

I've noticed little (if ANY) drop off in hitting clear down to 92 or 93%. Fielding is a different matter.

Fatigue doesn't seem to affect catchers' arms, for some reason.

what about if a pitcher pinch hits.....what happens to fatigue.

Posted by dino27 on 4/3/2017 11:00:00 PM (view original):
what about if a pitcher pinch hits.....what happens to fatigue.

Pitchers fatigue is only impacted by innings. They can bat as many times as you can get them to the plate.

From contrarian23's classic study "Understanding Fatigue" (available in its entirety on the home page to this Forum at the top under the listing "Frequently Asked Questions"):

"Hitters
Position players fatigue based on how many PA they are on track to accumulate compared to their actual PA/162. Games don’t matter, only PA.

As a simple example, take a player who in real life had 600 PA/162. Suppose after 81 games you have used him for 350 PA. That puts him on track for 700 PA for the full season. Since 700/600 = 1.166666, you have used him 16.6666% more than he was actually used. If you hold your cursor over his fatigue level in the manager center you will see a message saying “overused – on pace for 17% more PA than actual PA/162 total.”
Now, WIS lets each player accumulate 10% more than their real-life PA without penalty. So the player in this example will show as 93 fatigue (110 – 17) rather than 83 (100 – 17)....

Pitchers
Pitching fatigue is similar, but more complicated.

Pitchers fatigue in 3 ways, compared to just one for position players.

First, pitchers fatigue across the season based on their number of pitches thrown compared to actual. This works very similar to how position player fatigue works, except using total pitches instead of PA. WIS does not use the actual number of pitches thrown by the pitcher. This data is only available in recent years, and instead they calculate a pitcher’s total available pitch count. This thread explains how to figure out how many pitches your guys can throw:
http://www.whatifsports.com/forums/Posts.aspx?TopicID=154851
If you don’t want to do the work, you can get a rough estimate by multiplying the IP/162 by 15 (some owners prefer 15.5 or 16). This will work pretty well for most pitchers. Guys who struck out and/or walked a lot of hitters will be underestimated by this; guys with very low strikeout and walk totals will be overestimated.
Like with position players, WIS gives pitchers a 10% bonus. And also as with position players, you can hold your cursor over a fatigued pitcher to see how many pitches he is over his allotment.
This is why after the first game of the season your starting pitcher will typically show a fatigue number like 0 or 7 or something…if he threw 100 pitches in game 1, then he is on pace to throw 16200 pitches for the season. Once you get through the rotation a couple of times the effect is much less dramatic. But the point is you need to set your rotation and pitch counts to take into account how many pitches your guys can actually throw. Do NOT use WIS’s recommended settings and pitch counts for pitchers. They will not work.
The second way pitchers fatigue is within a game. Pitchers are limited in how many pitches they can throw in any single game. Pay attention to their real-life IP/G. You can use that to calculate the number of pitches they can throw in a single game (using either the link above, or the “15 per inning” estimate). Once they go beyond that, they will fatigue. Guys with low IP/G will fatigue quickly. Modern relievers who average 1.0 IP/G (or less, for lefty/righty specialists) are severely limited in how much they can pitch before fatigue sets in. Similarly, guys who started and relieved in real life (like 1927 Wilcy Moore or 1992 Curt Schilling) can not pitch as deep into games as you might think they should. Again, check the IP/G to be sure.
Going back to your pitch count settings, you need to factor in both season-level fatigue and in-game fatigue in determining your pitch counts. 92 Schilling will look like he can throw more pitches than he can if you just do the season-level estimate.
The third way pitchers can fatigue is through their total number of appearances. The limits here are less clear, but it appears to kick in at 2/3 of the team’s total games played. In other words, if your team has played 60 total games and you have a reliever who had pitched in 40 of them, he is going to be more fatigued than his total pitch count would suggest.
So a guy like 1974 Mike Marshall is really hard to use, because to get full usage out of his IP, he probably needs to pitch well over 100 games. Appearance fatigue won’t let him. This also affects some of the 1880s rubber arm guys like Silver King. For the most part, you don’t need to worry too much about this, but every once in a while it comes up."

- contrarian23, "Understanding Fatigue".

Thank you italy - i understand how to caclulate fatigue - im asking, from players with more experience to me, is there an ideal range to operate within so that you maximize plate appearances without too much a drop in hitting/fielding production

Posted by rangerscott on 4/4/2017 5:26:00 PM (view original):
Thank you italy - i understand how to caclulate fatigue - im asking, from players with more experience to me, is there an ideal range to operate within so that you maximize plate appearances without too much a drop in hitting/fielding production

I'd say around 90%.

Obviously 100% is preferable, but if you are cash constrained, anything above 90 will be fine.

NC and ooz - thank you very much - that was what i was looking for. Appreciate it very much

There is downside to each 1% drop in fatigue but it may be offset by the better value you can afford. 90's is reasonable in a theme where you struggle to meet the cap. In low cap leagues 80's may be efficient, and in higher caps 100% is probably best. Fatigue affects defense too so I generally keep my key defensive positions better rested than others. Hitter fatigue is less scarey than pitcher fatigue, when tired hitters underperform they may recover somewhat but when tired pitchers underperform they could fall into a death spiral.

Hi, i have an interesting conundrum I just traded fro Bernie Williams 1998 who had 578 real life Plate Appearances. I also already have Joe Dimaggio 1939 who had 563. I know for certain that Joe Dimaggio, so far, has had 316 Plate Appearances. From what i can tell from his usage on his prior team (adding up his at bats, walks, hbp, and then also estimating that he might've had a handful of sac flies) he had right around 318 Plate Appearance. Why is it that when I scroll over Dimaggio, he's full of 100 fatigue and it does not tell me he is being overused, yet, with Bernie, it says he's at 96 and overused for 14%?

There's not a tremendous benefit to playing guys in the 95-97 range, from what I can tell. Their offensive performance doesn't really suffer until they get into the low 90s, and their fielding suffers almost immediately once they drop below 100. So 95-97 is like the worst of both worlds. So, unless it fits your team design perfectly, you might as well play guys down to 92 or 93, or else try to keep them at 98+.