From the 1987 No Whining Prog, 145 games in.

Catcher #1: AAA who is 2001 Mike Difelice.  In real life Difelice had an "A+" arm and threw out 40% of runners.

Catcher #2: 1987 Bo Diaz.  "A" arm, threw out 36% of runners in real life. 

Catcher #1: In this league has started all 145 games.  He's been at 0% fatigue for 131 games, and was only fully rested for the first 4 games.

Catcher #2: In this league has started 115 games.  He's been at 100% for all his games.

Now, who would you expect to have the better CS%? 

Difelice has thrown out 37 of 132 runners -- 28%.

Diaz has thrown out 20 of 81 runners -- 24.7%

So they're both underperforming their RL numbers by roughly the same rate.  Even though one has been 100% all season and the other 0% for over 90% of his games.

Is this a fluke, or do all 0% catchers suffer no fatigue penalty?

Not a fluke, I don't think. In the Geography progressive last year, 1962 Joe Torre was at 0% as well.

He threw out 41 out of 130 runners. (32%)

Only 9 passed balls, but 36 errors.

So looks like defensive fatigue for catchers might only impact errors. Based on this small sample size at least....

In this league the always-tired Difelice has put up a .973 fielding %.  Real life?  .974.

So maybe those 50 at-bat catchers with A+ arms, who everyone thinks are ridiculously overpriced, are NOT overpriced after all.

At least if you can draft them for a league where injuries are off...

Well, how much offense are you willing to sacrifice?

Mike D is hitting .093/.112/.133 with 226 strikeouts and 5 walks.

I don't care if he throws out 100 out of 100 would-be basestealers... playing a guy down to 0% fatigue is just dumb.  (In this case, the owner has been MIA for almost the entire season, which explains the situation.)

I never like to let my hitters get below 97% or 96% before giving them a game off to get that number back up...unless I'm completely out of options. Do other owners play more fatigued players on a regular basis and if so, how does it work out? Obviously they can still throw runners out....     

Posted by contrarian23 on 12/29/2014 1:54:00 PM (view original):
Well, how much offense are you willing to sacrifice?

Mike D is hitting .093/.112/.133 with 226 strikeouts and 5 walks.

I don't care if he throws out 100 out of 100 would-be basestealers... playing a guy down to 0% fatigue is just dumb.  (In this case, the owner has been MIA for almost the entire season, which explains the situation.)

His real life batting line # is either .206/.257/.276 or .189/.238/.486 or .187/.237/.247 (I can't tell which partial season this AAA is).  So it's not that much of a hit.

Anyway, my point isn't that it's a good idea to have a bad and tired catcher start all your games for you in a prog.  But if you were in a low cap league (say 80M or lower -- especially lower) with injuries turned off, why not draft one of those 50 at-bat A+ armed catchers with horrible hitting stats, bat him 9th and let him start all 162 games for you?  He won't hit, but for under $1M you've got one of your eight positions covered, and with very good defense, to boot.