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MLB Contenders: Bullpen Fatigue Index and Projected Postseason Rotation Construction

A daily read on the two staff questions that decide October: which contending bullpens are being spent faster than they can recover, and what each club's postseason rotation would actually look like if the bracket locked today. The fatigue side tracks per-club appearances on zero days rest, three-appearances-in-four-days counts, trailing seven- and fourteen-day pitch totals concentrated in the high-leverage arms rather than spread across the staff, and how many relievers a manager would honestly describe as unavailable tonight. The rotation side projects how many starters a club would carry into a Division Series, which slot the club's best arm lands in given the bye structure that hands the top two seeds in each league extra rest, and how many bullpen games the projected roster implies. These two variables move together and against each other, which is the point: a club that survives September by shortening its rotation arrives in October with a bullpen already past its recovery line. Method: appearance and pitch data are rebuilt from official play-by-play, cross-checked against announced availability from pregame manager sessions and beat reporting, then indexed against each club's own trailing thirty-day baseline rather than a league constant, and joined to a rotation projection driven by current standings, remaining schedule, and announced starter order.