The CBS Sports crew went into prediction mode for the second half of this decade in baseball, and it’s an interesting exercise in perspective-taking on some of the stories we’re very likely to be following at a macro level in the years ahead.
One of the responses stood out to me on what they think the biggest change to MLB will be:
“R.J. Anderson: Saying that the strike-zone challenge system becomes the new norm would be cheating. I’ll go instead with a big philosophical shift: we’ll see a team attempt to make a clean break from the traditional pitching staff model. That means, rather than fielding five starting pitchers and seven or eight relievers, we’ll see teams mix and match — the way a few have taken to doing during the playoffs. Some of the smartest people I know within the industry have been predicting to me that this is the future. I’m not sure I like it, but I do suspect they’re correct and that it’s coming sooner than later.”
We have seen teams play around with openers and modified rotations before, but you generally see even those clubs tend back toward a five-starter rotation for most of the season (even if the starters change, you can still see the outline of that rotation).
As Anderson notes, teams have made true mixing and matching work in the postseason thanks to the extra off-days and the brevity of the whole enterprise, but it’s not hard to imagine a team with the right group of pitchers (and optionable depth) decide to just go series-to-series in the regular season, and figure out how to cover innings optimally. Everyone is just a “pitcher,” and everything is decided on the fly. Could you ACTUALLY do that over a full year and not totally discombobulate guys, who need routines to stay healthy and sharp throughout the long season, though? Great idea on paper, but I have a hard time imagining it actually working in the real world for more than a few weeks at a time.
What I keep wondering is when we see a non-Ohtani club go with a true six-man rotation, where you are essentially sacrificing one of your bullpen spots for an additional starting pitcher, and betting that the extra rest every single week for your starters will allow them to go a little deeper in each start. But would the third-time-through-the-order penalty negate whatever value you’re getting from the extra rest?
Or when we see a club do what the Rockies tried to do a decade ago: a four-man, four-piggyback rotation. You have a guy start the game and go twice through the order or 75 pitches, whichever comes first. Then you have his designated piggyback come in and do the same. In an ideal world, you’re getting 7 or 8 or even 9 innings out of those two guys every four games. It’s really hard to pull off with only 13 pitchers on your staff, as current roster rules dictate. But the upside potential is so obvious, because you shorten everyone’s outings and you can pair up two very different types of pitchers in each game, while possibly needing only one reliever to finish up the game.
The problem, of course, is that when guys start getting blown up or injured, or if you have extra-innings or weather-related impacts, it can wreck the whole approach. There is also the problem of getting the pitchers to sign on to this plan and fully buy in. It only works if everyone is kind of dogmatically committed to it.
While we are on this stuff, let me just plant my flag to say that I find openers deeply annoying … but I don’t understand why more teams don’t do it. I hate when I see other teams doing it, and thus maybe that means I think the Cubs should be doing it more often?
By choosing a reliever to start the game and give you just an inning or two, you (1) ensure that you get to use a particular reliever on a particular day in a close game, (2) maximize the match-up potential for a guy who maybe relies more on match-ups to succeed, (3) force the opposing manager to decide how to structure his lineup knowing the pitcher is going to change early, and (4) give your starter a chance to avoid facing the lineup three times before the fifth inning or whatever.
You can get all those benefits without messing up your five-man rotation or your bullpen at all. Why would you not do this more often? Because of the ego of your “starting” pitchers? That’s just about the only reason I can think. To which I would have to say, tough noogies. Sell them on the value of the idea for the team and for their own effectiveness, and get everyone on board.
Caveat to all of this: we know MLB wants to bring back the importance of the traditional starting pitcher, so it’s possible this kind of approach could somehow get legislated out of the game just as soon as you implemented it.
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