The game is won and lost on the field. Play to win the first game, if you get caught wondering about future games, you will be watching
from the bleachers. I have seen plenty of teams get dumped by 'saving' a pitcher for later games. Softball is a team sport.......
This is how we did it for a few seasons and we always ended up finishing 3rd or getting beaten up on in the championship games. We were great, but couldn't get through to the end of the tournament.
We'd win the game in 'front of us' - and we normally would with our #1 because that was how to win 'this' game...but then we always ended up in situation where we had to bring our #2 in against the better teams later in the day and frankly we hadn't given her the opportunities to handle it on a regular basis. Once we started 'pitching the most appropriate pitcher' for the long term in both the current tournament and the longer season we saw a rapid improvement in our #2 and #3 pitchers. We went home a little early a few times early but once the #2 (and then the #3) started winning elimination games then we started winning tournaments regularly. We even won a tournament last season without our #1 when she had an injury and our other pitchers came through for the whole tournament.
It was a short term sacrifice for a longer term advantage.