Just wondering how many guys still employ this strategy, where you draft a dominant starter and put him as your middle/long man, and then set all your starters to a 50 or 60 pitch limit so your dominant guy comes in relatively every game for the middle innings.

I've never used it, but am thinking of trying it in one league with '68 Mclain as the middle man.

Does anyone still use this strategy and is it effective?

i think appearance fatigue severely wounded this strategy

that loophole was closed several years ago. you can still use starters in long relief but there's no fatigue advantage to doing so. if he appears in over 70% of your games he will suffer from appearance fatigue.

Does this affect everyone? I think Mike Marshall had a year that he appeared in at least 70% of his team's games, would he be tagged by that too? Obviously he's the lone exception there.

Quote: Originally posted by trenchfoot on 1/10/2010Does this affect everyone? I think Mike Marshall had a year that he appeared in at least 70% of his team's games, would he be tagged by that too? Obviously he's the lone exception there.

I think he appeared in something very close to 70% -- which is why the max is set at that...

(1) - '68 McClain is a HR giving machine in the sim. I avoid like the plague. Much better pitchers for that $ unless you need to use McClain for some theme.

(2) - I am having good success with a modified version of this strategy... Instead of one 300 IP long A with great stats, I have 3 110-120 IP guys in that role. There's no fatigue advantage to doing so, it's just a different way to use your pitching staff. See my "Will Rogers never met these guys" team in my profile.

Not addressing the specific issue raised, but generally speaking, there's some advantage to having more pitchers per game in the SIM.

1) Most pinch hitters will hit better than the pitcher (same as real life.)

2) Avoiding in-game fatigue (same as real life, but exaggerated because WIS treats average innings pitched per game in a flawed manner.)

Yes, but then you get crunched by appearance fatigue, which is what's happening to me...