Is it time for a change in how pitchers are used? – Point-CounterPoint

The Nats have at least seven starting pitcher candidates to be on the Opening Day roster. Three righties and four lefties: Michael Soroka (R), Trevor Williams (R), Jake Irvin (R), MacKenzie Gore (L), DJ Herz (L), Mitchell Parker (L), and Shinnosuke Ogasawara (L). And three more possible candidates we expect to pitch later in the year: Cade Cavalli (R) who is returning from his UCL rehab; Jackson Rutledge if he is not converted to the BP, and Josiah Gray could return at the end of the 2025 season from his UCL rehab. There are others too like Brad Lord and Joan Adon who are additional depth.

The obvious options are five starting pitchers on the 26-man and two to Triple-A Rochester; or one/two could be part of a trade; or one/two to the bullpen.

Maybe it is time to think outside the box. MLB has a history of changing and redefining roles. The first closer was Bruce Sutter in 1979 and in 1988, Tony La Russa started using Dennis Eckersley in the ninth inning when the Athletics were in the lead. It was the same time period when the use of relief pitchers became more prominent. However, relief pitchers were used well before that. It was around 1904 when New York Giants manager John McGraw essentially invented relief pitching.

“Having too many good starting pitchers is a good thing. … There’s going to be competition, and the five best [starting pitchers] can go north with us, we’ll certainly do that. … We could always use some starting pitchers in the bullpen for periods of time in the Spring and still keep them stretched out to be starters.”

“To me, starting pitchers are a huge aspect of a winning team. We want to keep as many starter pitching potential as possible.”

— general Mike Rizzo said over the weekend

Don: I’ve long wondered when a team was going change the concept of a starter. Pair guys up and have them alternate starts. Pitcher A starts a game and goes twice thru the order (or 4/5 innings); then pitcher B comes in and does twice thru the order (or 4/5 innings). Their next turn Pitcher B starts and pitcher A comes in later. And there are any number of variants to this.

Steve: Or tandem starters?

Andrew: We are all old enough to remember when starters were in 4-man rotations, and paced themselves to pitch deep into games.

Don: Just looked that “tandem starters” up. That is similar to what I suggested. Did not realize it had a name. I think what I am proposing is slightly different as the pitchers alternate who starts. I think that is necessary because guys who are starters want to be starters. It has been tried before. With the new concern about pitcher injuries, maybe it is time to try it again.

Steve: Tampa used pitchers as Openers and other teams use starters strictly to be pulled based on facing batters only twice in a game or strict pitch counts. Analytics has taken over from the pitching coach and manager’s look-and-see approach.

We wrote about the new “analytics” that turned Trevor Williams to a great situation where he got more-with-less. They were pulling Williams second time through batting orders and it worked. His ERA was 2.03 with a 6 – 1 record, and a 1.04 WHIP. He pitched over 5.0 innings per start in 2024 versus less than 5.0 innings per start in 2023 when his ERA was 5.55.

Andrew: The days of the true aces in an old-school way like we enjoyed with Max Scherzer feels like a change in baseball to analytics-driven. If the game is about results and the reality of the game, we know that the pitching staff has to plan to cover 1,460 innings per year. Starters cover 860 innings and bullpens cover 600 innings.

Steve: Thanks for the math. So basically you’d like your starting staff to get you 5⅓ innings on average. Where the Nats bullpen has missed the mark is by not sharing the bullpen “burden” more equally. They have pressed more on the competent arms and stayed off of these Rule-5 relievers and the newbies. So I’m already nervous about Rule-5 guy Evan Reifert if he is used like the team did in 2023 with Rule-5 reliever Thaddeus Ward. There were times that manager Dave Martinez was pressing hard on five relievers with one of them redlining with being used three days in a row.

Andrew: I remember those stretches with signs of early season burn-out. I think that is getting less-with-more. I’m curious taking the innings how Don would split it up with his concept.

Don: I did some more math and looked at the numbers for how many innings each of those 7 guys pitched in their 2024 starts:

  1. Irvin: 6 or more innings in half of his starts; shortest was 4 innings.
  2. Gore: 5.1 or more innings in half of his starts; shortest was 2 ininngs; 4 total games with fewer than 4 innings in 32 games.
  3. Parker: 5.2 or more innings in half of his starts; shortest was .2 innings; 5 total games with fewer than 4 innings in 29 games.
  4. Herz: 5 or more innings in half of his starts; shortest was 2.2 innings; 4 total games with fewer than 4 innings in 19 games.
  5. Williams: 5 or more innings in half of his starts; shortest was 4.1; but he did have just 13 starts.
  6. Soroka: 5 or more innings in half of his starts; shortest was 4; but he did have just 9 starts.
  7. Ogasawara: could not find game logs; but he was a starter in Japan and in 24 games hie pitched 144.1 innings. Since that averages to 6 IP per game, it is reasonable to presume he can be counted on for at least 4/5 innings per game most of the time.

Without doing the probabilistic calculation (or doing a simulation) my gut tells me that a tandem of any of these guys could be counted on to go 8 or 9 innings a game. So most of the time will likely not need more than 1 relief pitchers, that.

Pairing a lefty and a righty also has an impact on the opposing manager stacking right handed bats when it is known that a righty will come in and could finish the game in the 5th or 6th inning. Two such pairs gives you 5 games with different starters and then you recycle through them again. And set the pairs up so they are second and fourth in the rotation and that minimizes bullpen usage for the third and fifth games.

The number of pitchers per game has been increasing over the last several years and was about 4.5 in 2024. Tandem pitching could mean fewer pitchers – perhaps just 2 or 3.

Steve: “Tandem pitching could mean fewer pitchers” is intriguing to me. At the very least, I am a proponent to have two long-men in the bullpen. But then you have 6-bullpen arms that includes the Rule-5 guy, Reifert, who might be more in that mop-up role. That leaves 5-bullpen arms to split a lot of work when you 2-bullpen long men are not tandem pitching. Say tandem goes day 1, regular starter day 2, tandem day 3, regular starter day 4 and 5. I think you would have to set it up like that. The issue arises if that day 4 starter fails to go past 5.0 innings. You would have to cover a lot of innings then have some of them working that second day in a row. It could work in theory.

Andrew: I think Rizzo’s quote above confirms it will only be a 5-man rotation with starters working out of the bullpen early in the season, and it sounds like he wants to get length out of them to “keep them stretched out to be starters.”

Don: Another idea is a 7 man rotation and if a starter gets in trouble, the next guy up comes in, and those behind him slide up one day. And do that until you’d have to start the next game on short rest. At which point you go the your bullpen guys to finish the game.

Steve: I think changing roles is often difficult because with a 7-man rotation you have a 6-man bullpen. That could kill you if your starter went less than 5.0 innings two days in a row.

Andrew: Going 5-man rotation and two long-men who are starters working in the bullpen makes a lot of sense.

Don: Two days is a row is manageable. Assuming you do slide the next guy up to long relief and use 2 different BP guys each day on the third day you still have a BP with 4 guys with at least one day off. Three days in a row would be an issue that would likely require calling a pitcher up from AAA. Multiple cases of two days in a row within a 5 or 6 game span would also be an issue. That why I like tandem starters better than this option.

Steve: Without Rizzo using those words in that quote, the tandem starters might be what he will do with keeping Trevor Williams and Shinnosuke Ogasawara working only two times through the batting order — hence keeping them fresh.

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