Pitcher Fatigue

[cummings2]

Recently I had a Fultz in a league where he was tanking for me in Turner field with an ERA of over 5 about 90 games into the season. He was walking, giving up hits and homers all over the place.

Then there was a thread in the main forum re: pitcher's fatigue and how the number of walks, hits and homers increase with fatigue/overuse.

I had to shut down Fultz for a while (filler in a tour league and projected innings was over 200). I had him mopping, max 1-2 innings for about 12 games. Upon his return to the pen he was lights out finishing with a respectable stats line.

My question here is: Did shutting him down affect his ftigue? Is there a way of shutting down a pitcher to "fix" him? Or was it just pure coincidence that his numbers improved after the "benching"

-On a similar case I have Mariano Rivera in a Fenway team. Noticed he was going for 2 innings almost every save opportunity -good, right? Well, he had an era over 6 with around 40% blown saves. I maxed the closer trying to reduce the workload to 1 inning and since he's been mr. saves. now his era is in the 4.4s and only 1 BS in 14 chances.

Any thoughts on this?

[durantjerry]

Regarding Rivera, it is not coincidence, but has nothing to do with fatigue. I had D Graves lead leagues in save % last year when used for the ninth inning only. Rivera is a C6, which means he won't get fatigued pitching two innings in a save situation. Rivera can get fatigued in one inning in a nonsave situation however. Fultz just could be a case of you becoming more concious of his usage or many other arbitrary factors that may have occurred during his good stretch that limited his usage and caused less fatigue situations, or it could be as simple as the "rolls" evening out for you.

[RiggoDrill]

There's a certain amount of luck involved. Some seasons, Fultz will have an ERA of around 2.50, other times it will be around 4.50. I think if you push for too many innings, especially in a park that's favorable to hitters, fatigue can become an issue. Also, keep in mind that once things start going bad (i.e., he starts putting runners on base), fatigue will come into play and make things worse.

All that being said, I doubt if the "layoff" had a major effect on his performance (other than generating some good karma from the strat gods). Better die rolls is a more likely explanation. 8)