Catcher fatigue
The catcher fatigue system is designed to ensure that you limit
your starting catcher to about 85-90% of total playing time. It
does so by monitoring usage within a moving ten-day window as the
season goes along.
If you're in a stretch where your team has no days off, your
catcher will almost certainly get tired if you start him ten games
in a row. Giving a catcher an off day once every ten days is
sometimes enough to keep him rested, and giving him two days off
will definitely keep him at full strength unless he caught a couple
of long extra-inning games in that stretch.
A catcher's workload is determined on a batters-caught basis. In
a modern season, a team typically faces about 6250 batters over a
182-day schedule. That's about 344 batters per ten day period, and
because we try to limit catchers to 85-90% of total playing time,
you should try to keep your catchers from facing more than 300
batters in a ten day period. You can monitor catcher usage using
the Team Status report and the Status page of the player profile
window.
If a catcher is used more than this, he will be less productive
as a hitter and fielder, with the penalty being greater the further
the catcher is over the limit. The penalty is very severe if you
let someone catch every inning of every game, so it's not something
you'd want to try on a regular basis.
Using a catcher at another position
(including designated hitter) is equivalent to giving him the day
off, but you need to do this in advance. If you catch him too much
and he gets tired as a result, you can't play him at another
position the next game without penalizing him at the plate. But if
you play him somewhere else once in a while, that will help keep
him rested in the first place.
|