Quote: Originally Posted By contrarian23 on 11/28/2009
As an example, I regularly use the 1940 Bonham as a Long A or Set Up A.

Bonham pitched 12 games that year, all starts. His IP/162 is 105. I routinely pitch him in 40-50 games and can stretch him to 115-120IP, with no problems.

1988 Milacki pitched 3 games, all starts, with 26 IP/162. I can usually get 25-30 games out of him, with up to about 35 IP, with no problems.

1888 Elton Chamberlain pitched 14 games, all starts, with 135 IP/162. I am on pace to pitch him in 64-65 games in relief in a current league. He is not suffering any fatigue problems.

If there is "appearance fatigue" that affects starting pitchers used in relief, it seems to me to be (at worst) a very very small effect that is not noticeable even if the pitcher is used in 10x the number of real life games.

The problem with you analysis is that you are comparing sim IP to RL-IP for a RLSP. Almost all pitchers can exceed their RL-IP. I'd be more interested in comparing estimated-real-life-pitches to actual pitches for RLSPs and RLRPs.

Quote: Originally Posted By contrarian23 on 11/28/2009Can anyone shed light on this? As I posted above, I have not seen this effect noticeably - but I also haven't carefully looked for it
My understanding for 3+ years has been that there are 3 kinds of pitching fatigue:
1.) Total usage across the season - based on the pitcher's pitch count "bank".
2.) In-game fatigue; based on the pitcher's allowed per-game pitch count (which is roughly 16*IP/G)
3.) Appearance fatigue - which I believe exists, but which I thought was roughly equal to 100 G across the season for all pitchers, and not directly related to the individual pitcher's actual GP.

I think you can break appearance fatigue into two sub-types. One is related to real-life appearances. The other is absolute; it seems no pitcher can pitch more than 100 games or so without appearance fatigue, even if he has pitches in his "bank."

I don't care if he throws more or fewer pitches than he did in real life; I want to maximize the # of non-fatgued IP he pitches. If he does that in more or fewer pitches than the calculation says he should hae available, that's an irrelevant distinction.

If there is significant evidence that this "appearance fatigue" disproportionately affects SPs used in relief, I would like to see it. To be fair, I have not looked carefully for this effect, so I am not denying its existence, but based on what I'm seeing in this thread, it does not seem to come close to outweighing the (very significant) advantage SPs have in that they can pitch longer in any given game without suffering in-game fatigue.

I routinely get pitchers to 110-115 games without appearance fatigue being a problem. I've used 2000 Pedro, 1888 Chamberlain, 1980 J.R. Richard in a setup role several times with low PC so they get more games and appearances... each of them exceeded their RL IP and had 105+ appearances (Pedro had 117). In a starter role I've had 4 different starters start 105+ games for me without a fatigue problem The only player I've tried to get 100+ appearances out of, while also getting their RL IP or more, but have been unable to is Mike Marshall (and I've tried twice). I can get the appearances, but his in game fatigue makes it hard for me to get 200 IP out of him.

Quote: Originally Posted By contrarian23 on 11/28/2009

I don't care if he throws more or fewer pitches than he did in real life; I want to maximize the # of non-fatgued IP he pitches. If he does that in more or fewer pitches than the calculation says he should hae available, that's an irrelevant distinction.

As I wrote before, my studies indicated that RLSP performance drops ~10% when used in relief. It may not be fatigue, but it has similar effects.

I'd like to see that study. I've never seen anyone have that opinion before.

Quote: Originally Posted By Trentonjoe on 11/28/2009
I'd like to see that study. I've never seen anyone have that opinion before.

I simply compared perfromance history stats to # stats for a variety of pitchers. I'm going off memory here, but as I recall high ip starters seemed to exceed their oavg# by ~7% while for low ip starters (presumably used in relief) it was ~17%. [Real life] Relief pitchers were somewhere inbetween, but closer to high ip starters.

i have enormous respect for anything zubinsum states, because i am certain he has, indeed, researched anything he writes about, and speaks the truth. I believe i have an immediately recent experience, which i would like to toss into the discussion. In 86578, i was having serious fatigue problems with my entire pitching staff. I was in contention, having led my division most of the season, but with about 30 games to go, fell to 2 games back, and had no pitcher in the green. I was using 4 steroid era starters w/220 or so innings each, RL as my rotation, and had no reliever i would not be happy to see in the game in any situation. I set all my relievers to long A, allowed each to come into the game in the 6th inning, and their PC settings at appropriate levels to their RL PC limitations, and let Sparky work it out. The team came back, and while it helped that the team I was in contention with also had fatigue issues, I won the division, and am heading into the playoffs. Honestly, I am not sure that any worthwhile conclusion can be drawn from this example, but i thought it was worth tossing into the discussion here, as we may be able to learn from it. Within 6 games after I made the move, no starting pitcher was "blue," and i always had at least 2 relievers in the green for every game.

Thanks for the nice words.

Quote: Originally Posted By pfattkatt on 11/28/2009i have enormous respect for anything zubinsum states, because i am certain he has, indeed, researched anything he writes about, and speaks the truth. I believe i have an immediately recent experience, which i would like to toss into the discussion. In 86578, i was having serious fatigue problems with my entire pitching staff. I was in contention, having led my division most of the season, but with about 30 games to go, fell to 2 games back, and had no pitcher in the green. I was using 4 steroid era starters w/220 or so innings each, RL as my rotation, and had no reliever i would not be happy to see in the game in any situation. I set all my relievers to long A, allowed each to come into the game in the 6th inning, and their PC settings at appropriate levels to their RL PC limitations, and let Sparky work it out. The team came back, and while it helped that the team I was in contention with also had fatigue issues, I won the division, and am heading into the playoffs. Honestly, I am not sure that any worthwhile conclusion can be drawn from this example, but i thought it was worth tossing into the discussion here, as we may be able to learn from it. Within 6 games after I made the move, no starting pitcher was "blue," and i always had at least 2 relievers in the green for every game

i've been in a situation like this before. sometimes its better to sacrifice a pitcher one game and let him throw 200+ pitches and everybody else will catch back up. i'm not the guy that does too much research, takes the fun out of it for me (i'm lazy) but i do lean towards the 40+ ip starting pitcher in the closer role. but like most of you guys, i do have 3 or so quality set up men in the 20-40 ip range.