Starting pitcher without a starter rating: fatigue threshold
Dec 2, 2018 17:11:48 GMT -6
Post by drhanson on Dec 2, 2018 17:11:48 GMT -6
Unlike some leagues, our league allows managers to use any pitcher as a starting pitcher, including relief pitchers with no starter rating. The DMB Help file says that the durability of a unrated starting pitcher will be lower than a Poor rating, but it doesn't provide any details of what that means in terms of the pitch threshold that triggers fatigue.
Jim from DMB recently posted a message on the DMB forum to announce how the 2018 season disk will rate Tampa Bay's "openers," who are relief pitchers who start the game and pitch one time through the batting order, or maybe even just 1 inning. DMB's decision is that they won't be given a starter durability rating, but that's not the part of the message that matters to us right now. The useful part was where he revealed how many pitches an unrated starter can pitch before he starts to experience fatigue. Here's a portion of the message, lightly edited, with the key passage shown in red and underlined:
"In 2018, Tampa Bay [used] several relief pitchers as "Openers". Long ago, DMB already planned for this contingency to occur by creating a starter durability rating worse than a "Poor". This rating occurs when a pitcher without a starting rating makes a start. In fact, pitchers with no starter durability rating can be expected to throw approximately 25 pitches before they tire. This amount also closely matches the number of pitches thrown per start by the Tampa Bay "Openers" and is significantly less than what a "poor" rated starter would be expected to throw before tiring."