beckdawg
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I have for awhile thought about a concept used in the minors of "piggy backing" starters to limit innings on prospects. Essentially you have 2 starters go 4 or so innings each and they both get decent work but cut off probably 2 innings per start and over 20-25 starts that adds up. I've wondered to an extent why this isn't done in the majors given the health concerns on young pitchers and basically came to the conclusion most teams can't do that with only 12(or 13) pitchers.
Anyways that got me to thinking about why we are at 25. 25 is obviously a round number. But I think it's worth considering how the game is different from basically the start of the 90's onward. It was around then that the game became more specialized. You started to get 7th/8th/9th inning guys and more defined roles. Starters last year average roughly 6 innings a start. If we arbitrarily go back to 1985, they roughly averaged 6.1 IP. If we go back to 1975 they roughly averaged 6.2 IP. If we go back to 1965 they averaged close to 7 IP per game. So, it's pretty obvious that starters aren't giving you the same output they used to yet the roster configuration has largely stayed the same with 12-13 pitchers and 12-13 hitters situationally depending.
The obvious question is why change it? I think adding say 2 more active roster slots would free you up some with regard to the bullpen. Take the 2015 cubs for example. Because their bullpen was a mess they have been running a 13 man pitching staff and a 4 man bench most of the year. When you consider one of those tends to be an emergency catcher that really limits your options to pinch hit. In extremely long games you also end up in really weird situations which while fun can see you having positional players pitching and pitchers hitting.
As far as what it changes, I'm not sure that much really. If you keep the 40 man roster static all you're doing is taking some of the complications out of roster shuffle between the 40 man and 25 man roster. It might make "getting to the bullpen" less impactful having 1 or 2 more relievers but again, often times if you do wear a team out they will call a AAA guy up and option a bench player anyways so I'm not sure the impact would be that big. And ultimately, in sept. you can expand your roster to 40 anyways so it just makes the early season a bit more flexible.
On the other hand it would arguably allow some interesting ideas to spring such as piggy backing two fragile starters who have really good stuff. It would also allow you to play around with a 6 man staff. By that i mean essentially keep the same 5 day starter thing we have now but have two young guys pitching say every 7th day or whatever to limit their total innings and possibly give the 1-4 starters an extra day of rest here and there. There's also probably about 100 other ideas that someone smarter than me could figure out. To be honest, I'm surprised MLB teams haven't pushed for this because it in theory makes starting pitching far cheaper and easier to manufacture.
Overall, I'm not entirely sure how I feel about it. I think it's an interesting approach to the injury plague of pitchers but in some ways I'm a traditionalist.
Anyways that got me to thinking about why we are at 25. 25 is obviously a round number. But I think it's worth considering how the game is different from basically the start of the 90's onward. It was around then that the game became more specialized. You started to get 7th/8th/9th inning guys and more defined roles. Starters last year average roughly 6 innings a start. If we arbitrarily go back to 1985, they roughly averaged 6.1 IP. If we go back to 1975 they roughly averaged 6.2 IP. If we go back to 1965 they averaged close to 7 IP per game. So, it's pretty obvious that starters aren't giving you the same output they used to yet the roster configuration has largely stayed the same with 12-13 pitchers and 12-13 hitters situationally depending.
The obvious question is why change it? I think adding say 2 more active roster slots would free you up some with regard to the bullpen. Take the 2015 cubs for example. Because their bullpen was a mess they have been running a 13 man pitching staff and a 4 man bench most of the year. When you consider one of those tends to be an emergency catcher that really limits your options to pinch hit. In extremely long games you also end up in really weird situations which while fun can see you having positional players pitching and pitchers hitting.
As far as what it changes, I'm not sure that much really. If you keep the 40 man roster static all you're doing is taking some of the complications out of roster shuffle between the 40 man and 25 man roster. It might make "getting to the bullpen" less impactful having 1 or 2 more relievers but again, often times if you do wear a team out they will call a AAA guy up and option a bench player anyways so I'm not sure the impact would be that big. And ultimately, in sept. you can expand your roster to 40 anyways so it just makes the early season a bit more flexible.
On the other hand it would arguably allow some interesting ideas to spring such as piggy backing two fragile starters who have really good stuff. It would also allow you to play around with a 6 man staff. By that i mean essentially keep the same 5 day starter thing we have now but have two young guys pitching say every 7th day or whatever to limit their total innings and possibly give the 1-4 starters an extra day of rest here and there. There's also probably about 100 other ideas that someone smarter than me could figure out. To be honest, I'm surprised MLB teams haven't pushed for this because it in theory makes starting pitching far cheaper and easier to manufacture.
Overall, I'm not entirely sure how I feel about it. I think it's an interesting approach to the injury plague of pitchers but in some ways I'm a traditionalist.
