UTK Special 3/15/20

The Opener: Theory and Practice

With no injuries to discuss - or at least updates, since even treatment and rehab has been changed by COVID-19 - let’s shift a bit and use some of the smart minds to help baseball while we’re all waiting for baseball to come back.

The team at University of Indianapolis used an “opener” this year to support our starting pitchers. We went 12-3 before the season was suspended, which isn’t the best sample size, but it’s something. The concept went that the opener went one inning and had the “starter” come in for a normal start in the second inning.

Our concept went beyond this. UIndy had three very good starters — two lefties and a righty — then a bit of a step down to our so-called mid-week starters. In an ideal world, the starters would go five or six, depending on throw count, then pitch two or three in the mid-week in place of a bullpen. It was designed to be a 1/5/3 then 1/3/3/2 system in terms of how pitchers were used. The concept is to maximize the usage of the best pitchers while not fatiguing them.

We never really got to test the mid-week part of it, so that theory remains in place. I modeled this out based on some of Ben Hansen’s work at Motus, so I believe it could work, but theory and practice are two different things.

So what worked? The opener concept does help get the better pitcher deeper into games. The starter is in the sixth or seventh rather than fifth when he’s tiring and seeing batters for the third time. By the data, our pitchers were never fatigued, normally below a 1.0 ACR (acute to chronic ratio) once the season began in earnest.

I think the “third time through” thing is very real. We only had two pitchers see the fourth time through. We could see it in one game where we got a bit greedy and tried to extend one of our pitchers for another inning. He pitched okay, but the ball was hit more and harder, though it was the defense that let him down.

What didn’t work? The concept is harder to get buy-in than I thought. It’s a very different world and the coach can’t just foot-down and make it happen. Players wanted to do what they were used to. One of our starters argued against even the concept of relievers. I like that he wanted the ball at all times, but his lack of buy-in made it difficult. (He also went out in a 7-inning game, and went complete with 15 strikeouts. It’s hard to argue with that.)

The mental part of opening was tough as well. Giving up a walk and a couple hits is going to happen. A run or two? No one panics in normal situation, but in the first game with an opener, we found ourself down two. Even the position players began to turn against the concept, even as we were winning. I think the mid-week use of the best pitchers is the strongest point for the system, but again, the mental part was going to be tougher than expected.

So here’s my challenge to you: how would you change this? As I said, the system appears to work in theory and at least partially in practice. Email me your ideas, comments, and questions and I’ll follow this up with more tomorrow.

Tell me if you like this sort of discussion while baseball is on hold. I’d also love to take more of your questions in the meantime. Stay safe and stay healthy.

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I think that combination works best. There’s some free content for everyone, enough to be worthwhile, and for a couple bucks, you can get it early and often. I’m not planning on doing a podcast at this time, but I am working on ways to get information to you in other formats. One of those is Superpeer, which has a very intriguing and personalized model. More on that and a few other ideas soon. But how do you want to get this information? I’m very open to ideas, since the success of this relies on you!

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