Via River Ave. Blues, there is talk of the Yankees going to a six-man rotation:
Pitching coach Larry Rothschild told The Post the Yankees are strongly considering a six-man rotation for September and that it could serve as a precursor for doing it on a longer and larger scale in 2015.
Rothschild cautioned that you have to be able to find enough starters to make a six-man rotation feasible and that upper management would have to buy in. And general manager Brian Cashman said that aside from “talking about it” a bit, the organization is not committed to the concept in the short- or long-term. At least not yet.
This concept has come up quite a bit in the last few years, with some teams trying it short term due to injuries and tough schedules. It may be inevitable, or we may see the somewhat more radical idea of a four-pair rotation, where a pair of pitchers goes a few innings in each game, say three and three. This prevents hitters from seeing someone three times through the lineup, and allows starters to pitch on just three days rest.
Yuck–as if we didn’t have enough of a shortage of starting pitchers already, and I’m sick of seeing the pitching staff take up more and more roster space to the point where benches are pathetic shells of what they used to be (really, they should just expand the regular roster size to 30 and be done with it). To expand on what Bill James said about the five man rotation many years ago, changing from a five man to a six man rotation means taking twenty percent of the starts from each of your five best starting pitchers and giving them to your sixth best starting pitcher. I’d be ashamed of the baseball establishment if they *didn’t* fight tooth and nail against such a change.
I really like the ‘more radical’ idea better. I mean, we *know* that pretty much every starter is worse in the 4th through 6th innings. Why not remove those entirely?
And you might need only *three* pairs, David. Think about it: if you starter throws three innings, it’s pretty much like long relief, and we expect a relief pitcher who does that to be ready to go after two days of rest. I think it’s definitely worth a try, especially for some team who hasn’t been able to get an ace on its staff (so it isn’t sacrificing much if you don’t let any starter go deep).
As to the roster problem, I completely agree that it’s made baseball worse having such a tiny bench of hitters. But the solution is very simple: expand the rosters. Try 26. Sure, it will cost teams some money, but surely not much. Maybe a 27 man roster is optimal. Why is 25 sacred?
James » At the very first MIT-Sloan Sports Analytics Conference, I brought up expanding rosters. Both Roy Neyer and Bill James believed that clubs would just use the expanded rosters to add more pitchers.
In that case, I’d also advocate for a cap on pitcher roster spots for the regular season pre-September roster (13, maybe 14). If that makes it more difficult for managers to keep multiple one out pitchers on the roster, that would be a feature rather than a bug as far as I’m concerned.
What Mr. Eiland says.
I prefer the radical idea too.
Isn’t five innings required for an “official” start?
If so, I would modify it to four pairs of pitchers, one pitcher pitching five innings and the second pitching four. The next start for the pair, they flip flop.
You still keep a two man bullpen to come in on days where both pitchers in the pair are injured, throwing too many pitches, or otherwise ineffective.
Ed » They could assign the win to the most effective pitcher. I’d hate to see this innovation fail because starting pitchers were too concerned with getting wins. It would be the save rule all over again.