UTK Special 5/14/20
The Danger of Doubleheaders
Assuming owners will just do what they agreed to do back in March rather than try to squeeze more out of the players, we could have baseball very soon. How soon remains to be seen, but with NBA facilities open, there’s no reason to think that with the support of Florida and Arizona, we might not see _____ soon.
Speaking of, how should we fill in the blank? It’s not Spring Training as we’re used to it, but it’s still spring and it’s in the same place. I assume we’ll have some games, but I’m not sure how deep it will be. If we’re only seeing the 40-man rosters report in order to keep everyone relatively isolated, those games will be additional workload for the pitchers. ST2, maybe?
One of the things being discussed is a way to get in more games in a shortened season: doubleheaders. Once thought a relic of the past, the doubleheader — and I’m assuming they’ll be of the back to back variety rather than the day/night since tickets will be moot for at least the first part of the season — isn’t a bad thing per se for pitchers, but they could create rest issues depending on how they’re implemented.
The two proposals I’ve heard are that there will be one doubleheader a week, likely on Saturday, and the other is that the first games of every series would be a doubleheader. These are not equal and that’s part of the issue for the first one.
If there’s going to be any sort of balance to this season, Saturday doubleheaders will be kind of random. Let’s assume this means a team would play four games against one team and three against another in a week, with one off day. Fantasy players know what this means - two start weeks for more pitchers. Unless it forces more teams to essentially rotate their rotation, putting in a sixth man regularly to avoid anyone going on short rest or, worse, a designated double-header pitcher. That one would be interesting only in that once a week schedule could be good for Japanese pitchers and recent college pitchers.
The “first of every series” is easier to balance, creates more games, but would put a significant amount more stress on pitchers absent some kind of workload management system. Again, the easy way is to add a sixth starter, but that’s far from the best way. In a season where the ace of a staff is only going to make 16 starts in a normal five man, any sort of skip is going to take at least two, probably three starts away from the pitchers you want pitching most.
Trading three Justin Verlander starts for three Forrest Whitley starts isn’t that big a deal (though I could make an argument there). Where it gets you is with the bad teams that lack depth. Do the Angels even have a sixth starter who’s relatively healthy? Would the Brewers’ projects come through in a shortened season? Let’s not even talk about the Red Sox right now, because they’ll be smart enough to figure out that a sixth man is not the way to go.
Instead, simple workload management is the way to go here. Instead of finding a sixth starter, a four man modified rotation could work better, keep pitchers healthier, and match up well with the demands that doubleheaders could place on the staffs. The 40-man rosters and easy roster changes should make this kind of maneuver even easier than standard baseball rules.
Four man modified? Simple. Four designated starters, who go five to six innings each. Then you put four people behind them - two of the starters you would have used in a six-man, but now they only have to go a couple innings rather than five or six themselves; plus two long relievers, which would be a perfect place to break in a young starter like Whitley - and get to the seventh or eighth inning where the standard bullpen comes in. With the three batter rule in place, the LOOGY and the one-batter guys will be out, so we should need less of them (and if tired or ineffective, rotate!)
The downside risk here is for lack of imagination. A team that tries to push through a pitching staff in the manner they would a normal season is going to run into problems at the front or back in terms of workload. With all the rule changes and schedule craziness we’re going to see, a lack of imagination should be damning, but I guarantee we’ll see a number of teams fall victim to it. I can only hope we won’t see that push an increase in injuries as well.
Besides the Red Sox, I think Dusty Baker’s Astros could be doing this. With Brent Strom’s wizardry and Baker’s previous attempts at a four-man in Washington (albeit forced), I think it could work, especially with their young depth as tandems. I think Atlanta could leverage what Felix Hernandez and Cole Hamels have left in the tank by limiting their usage in this way. Last one is the White Sox, who could maximize Michael Kopech by using him a couple innings at a time with defined rest.
Want another way this could work? Take rested college arms like Garrett Crochet or Tanner Burns, or even a high school arm (forgive me, David Clyde) like Justin Lange, who’s hitting well over 100 in workouts, and put them in this role. They’re protected, they’re rested, and they’re in exactly the role Earl Weaver used to use with his potential starters.
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