UTK Special 4/27/20

How To Start The Starters for the Re-Start

With May rapidly approaching and no clear answer as to when baseball will be back, pitchers are in the most precarious position. For better than a month, they’ll have been asked to “stay ready” without knowing when or even what they’re staying ready for. While there’s some evidence that teams are able to keep their starters ready - two teams I’ve spoken with feel comfortable with the current chronic workloads of their pitchers - that’s not going to be universally the case.

I spoke with two MLB team officials that are intimately involved in the pitching preparations for their teams and discussed what they were doing, though for obvious reasons this discussion had to be off the record. We also discussed one possibility for how this could work, simply and safely, once baseball comes back.

This scenario is one based on a ‘worst case’ scenario, where there is no data on the pitchers, either pre- or post-shutdown. (Also, “shutdown” isn’t the right term for the pitchers. They have by and large been working on their own and most have been able to do some modified routines.)

The idea is to limit innings and workload while building up that workload at the same time, while also maximizing the chance of winning games in what is likely to be a shortened season. This plan would do this in what the people I spoke with feel is the best compromise. I’ll use the Chicago Cubs rotation as the example here, but it would work for any team in some fashion.

The basis of the system is to limit innings to 3 for the first month of the season, then adjust to 4 in the second month. If the assumption is that we’re looking at July and August as those months, there could also be a jump in September to 5, though at that point, I’d shift back to a more normal rotation with a bias to pulling the pitcher as soon as there’s any sign of fatigue. This would put pressure on the bullpen, but it’s expected that MLB will have relaxed roster and minor call-up rules, so it could be mitigated.

The starters would be put in a simple tandem formation. For the Cubs, this would use six pitchers in a three-game rotation with an occasional “skip”, which could be handled either with a bullpen game or a “sacrificial lamb” starter, where a pitcher would be tossed to the wolves to do what he can for as long as he can.

The first two tandems are easy, with some variant of right-left with righthanders Yu Darvish and Kyle Hendricks and southpaws Jose Quintana and Jon Lester. I’d probably go Darvish-Lester, given their unlatching repertoires and looks. The third tandem would be two righties, picked from Alec Mills, Jharel Cotton, and Tyler Chatwood. The group agreed Cotton would likely be the odd man out given his history (he hasn’t pitched in the majors since ‘17 due to a run of injuries, including Tommy John surgery) and could be the ‘sacrificial lamb’ pitcher.

With the tandem likely to pitch a near-automatic three innings, the bullpen - which is likely to have one or two extra spots - will not be overtaxed. While it would be extended towards the end of the first month, the workload would be easy to monitor and bullpen work should be minimized by both a solid pattern and the three-batter rule. By the second month, the pen would likely be underworked with only an inning expected per game, though there would likely be opportunities for spot work, fill-in games, and even some long work.

This part is simple and clear. There’s two potential issues that sadly have no real answers and they’re interrelated. Tying them together to “depth” isn’t clear. First, some pitchers will inevitably get injured or be ineffective and need replacement. Second, we have no idea if there will be minor league games this season, so keeping those replacements ready under any system is going to be difficult. Even if those likely pitchers can be given some sort of “spring training”, it’s quite possible that they wouldn’t pitch from say June until September. Playing long toss that long isn’t going to keep someone in ‘game shape’, which likely means we’ll have to have either some sort of complex league where we could have limited games or intra-squads or that the major league clubs would need to have ‘taxi squads’. If we go to extended rosters, the possibilities for pitcher usage get very complicated and we see some pretty rapid drops in talent.

I’ve long been an advocate of tandem rotations for development. They’ve been used throughout the minor leagues with success for better than a decade. Their usage at the major league level would work and in these unusual circumstances, there’s no better solution for maximizing pitcher value while controlling workload. Ace pitchers would be given something along the lines of 30 appearances and 100 innings over the course of a 100 game season. The short rest is counteracted by the short efforts, with only double-headers throwing off the system.

The alternative, of course, is having data that shows the level of current and future workload that would be safe. Most teams in the league aren’t forward thinking enough to have that data ready. We’ll see if they’re able to do more, or if they’re going to put their best players in bad positions once we get back.