Under The Knife 8/26/22

Six Man Strategies

The impending return of Clayton Kershaw puts the Dodgers in an interesting position and one increasingly rare in baseball: a surplus of starters. Even without Walker Buehler and that other guy, the Dodgers will soon have six valid starters and a month to figure out how to best use them. The easy thing to do would be go to a six-man rotation and it would be valid, if uncreative. The five-man rotation came about because the Mets had five good starters, period.

However, that might not be the best option. Pitchers are creatures of habit and extra rest might not be good for some of them. There’s an equal chance that it would reduce performance of the pitchers as there is that the extra rest would help them. Worse, there’s not enough turns in the rotation in the last weeks of the season to really figure it out, unless something goes really bad. The Dodgers would have data points, but if anyone’s figured out workload management from Hawkeye data, that would be news.

There are two alternative ways of putting in six pitchers and while the smart guys at the Dodgers and Zelus are likely running simulations in the metaverse or something equally advanced, my ideas are simpler. The first is a simple tandem. Each pitcher goes three or four innings - twice around the order - and the relievers take over from there. The pitchers are essentially kept on schedule, kept active, but their workload would be slightly down. That could be a concern if the team decides to go back to a standard workload for the playoffs, but that could easily be ramped in the last week or so of a season, especially if the Dodgers get a bye.

The other would be a bit more involved, basically a rotating rest day. It amounts to a five-man rotation using six men. Imagine it like this - you have six starters, A B C D E and F. In the first turn, F is skipped, in the second turn, E is skipped, and so on. Essentially, it would be one skip for each of the six starters over the rest of the season, nothing that would affect their chronic workload, but also not much of a rest if you’re trying to keep the innings down on Tony Gonsolin, who’s already more than doubled his career-high in innings, or Dustin May, just off TJ rehab.

A scout suggested to me that the Dodgers would hamstring themselves by using any system with six starters. His point was that they would be essentially down a reliever. I would think that would be easily rectified by having that day’s ‘throw day guy’ available, but that would necessitate doing his work after a game rather than before it, as is standard. The idea that he could do his throw day and then be the emergency guy would likely be as welcome as the ol’ turd in the punchbowl. (Tell me that scene in Caddyshack doesn’t still crack you up.)

There’s lots of ways of doing this, but no known right way. It’s easy to strategize from out here, but knowing player’s bodies, preferences, routines, and everything else that goes into it is why Mark Prior gets the big bucks, plus big assistance from top analytic and medical staffs. There might be no coach with both the experience and demeanor to handle this situation than him, on this team.

Let’s get to the injuries:

BRYCE HARPER, DH PHI (fractured thumb/sprained elbow)

Bryce Harper only needed two games to prove his fractured thumb has healed and he’s ready to be back with the Phillies. He didn’t play Thursday but is expected to be activated Friday, where he’ll slot back in to DH. With thumb injuries, the concern is that there’s some residual weakness. That can lead to less fine bat control, so swing and miss is the worry, but that didn’t appear to be an issue in his two rehab games. Neither was power.

There’s almost no worry about recurrence here, absent another hit on his hand. (Padded gloves, said with a Philly accent.) Remember as well, Harper’s sprained elbow remains an issue and he’s on a no-throw order, while facing possible off-season surgery. The ligament is not involved in the swing, so he should continue to have no issues there. I’m curious to see if the team thinks about moving him to first or even remaining at DH. A similar elbow injury happened to Albert Pujols, but earlier in his career, and it didn’t affect him much.