Fatigue & Resting Players

Baseball players generally suffer from two types of fatigue: day-to-day (short-term) fatigue, and the seasonal (long-term) fatigue.

• Day-to-day fatigue is a reflection of what happens when a playerplayers plays continually without a day off (either scheduled or by being rested). Generally,off. Position players recover relatively well when givenafter a day or two off.off; Pitchers, depending on use,pitchers may need more thanrest one or two days; it depends ondepending how extensiveextensively they are utilized in the gamesplayed prior to the day off. All players suffer some fatigue when they play, and all players rest with each day off.

• Season fatigue is athe reflection of theoverall wear-and-tear of the baseball seasonseason. – traveling and playing the game. Season fatigue takes into account the overallThe durability of a player (i.e. Endurance) in determiningdetermines how hard heplayers can push himselfthemselves before starting to suffer long-term adverse effects. A player with low endurance may find it harder to play at full strength if he's terribly overworked. A player with high enduranceEndurance may be able to play nearly every day without adverse effect.effect, while a player with low Endurance will be unable to play as many games at full-strength.

What does fatigue look like?

Each player has a Status which reflects how healthy and rested they are. There are three steps:

Rested > Good > OK > Tired > Fatigued > Exhausted

Tired and Fatigued players will suffer gradually increasing performance penalties, and Exhausted players cannot play.

How Day-to-Day Fatigue Works

Fatigue is a factor of a player's Endurance. Each player has a current and maximum enduranceEndurance - when a player is fully rested these values will be the same, ex. 60/60. All players lose acurrent Endurance points when playing,playing; but a playerplayers with higher overall Endurance will fatigue proportionally more slowly than players with lower overall Endurance.

Example:
Player A: EN = 80/80 = 100% (fully rested)
Player B: EN = 40/40 = 100% (fully rested)

Both play a game and tire similar amounts

Player A: 78/80 = 97.5% rested
Player B: 38/40 = 95% rested

Both players suffered the same endurance loss, but because Player A has a greater overall Endurance rating, the effective fatigue he suffers is less than the less-durable Player B.

How quickly do players fatigue?

All position players fatigue a little bit each game. Catchers fatigue faster than players at other positions, and designated hitters fatigue slower than position players.

Pitchers lose fatigue points based on pitch count, at a rate of about one point of Endurance for every two pitches. So, a pitcher with a 50 Endurance can throw 100 pitches before being Exhausted and unable to pitch until he rests.

How quickly do players recover?

Each day off, a player recovers some of those "spent" Endurance points, and he'll be more rested. Generally any player will return to fully rested after three days of rest. However, other factors could influence this, notably Season Fatigue (see below).

How can I rest my players?

There are a few ways keep your players rested, aside from manually adjusting lineups between games.

• Platoon your players. Change up your vsR and vsL lineups – use RH hitters vs LHP and LH hitters vs RHP. About one in five starters are left-handed, so this is an easy way to rest players and maximize your righty/lefty matchups.
• Set your team's manager settings to automatically substitute players when they are below a given fatigue threshold, set on the Manager page. Setting the slider more to the left will cause your manager to sit the player more quickly; moving it to the right will ensure they play as much as possible.
• Players can rest in AAA. The advantage of this is that the player is not on the Active roster, thereby guaranteed not to play – which also ensures days off.

How Season Fatigue works

Season fatigue is the wear and tear a long season can have on a player. Season fatigue impacts playing in two ways:

• Season fatigue lowers a player's maximum fatigue temporarily – resting a player can reduce or eliminate season fatigue to restore their maximum fatigue level.
• Season fatigue increases the amount of time it takes for a player to recover. Players with high season fatigue will take longer to recover than there norm.

You can not see season fatigue directly. However, if a player, when fully rested, never regains all his Endurance, you can bet that he's suffering from season fatigue in some degree

To offset season fatigue, rest a player more frequently. If a player never gets to the "Rested" status, you can be sure he's suffering from Season Fatigue. Sometimes, no matter how much you rest a player, they'll never be fully rested, especially if they're not as durable and have played a lot.

Note: Each game at DH causes less potential season fatigue than when playing a position. Toggle your use of designated hitters to extend low-endurance players.