Runs Scored at Record Pace
Several Teams Post 20+ Run Outings in July
Mets 26, Cardinals 5. Claussen throws 202 pitches.
Indians 22, White Sox 3. DeJean throws 113 pitches in two innings of relief.
Giants 19, Diamondbacks 3. Weaver throws 171 pitches in eigth innings.
Marlins 24, Mariners 6. Robertson throws 244 pitches in a complete game loss.
What do these games have in common? They reflect unrealistic player use driven by, in my opinion, the existing rules governing bullpen use. Full-time starters can throw unlimited innings, yet swing men and relievers cringe with every out during the latter part of the season.
This raises a question about the intent and effects of use restrictions. Until recent years, the League restricted pitchers by starts and relief appearances, ignoring innings thrown. While this, too, inhibited managerial flexibility late in the year--Tony LaRussa would not survive these restrictions--it otherwise did a reasonable job of preventing extreme overuse since relief ratings generally would push a pitcher's endurance to his real-life performance. Under the new rules, clearly it is advantageous to leave a starter out there for two starts worth of balls thrown rather than waste your pen early in a blowout.
One other effect of the new rules is the abilty to use a major league starter as a full time middle reliever. If you are fortunate enough to have a six-deep rotation, why not use your sixth starter as a relief pitcher knowing you have 150 innings or more at your disposal?
Under either system, the rules will affect how you manage. But which is worse? Leaving a starter out forever or leaning against one-batter matchups because you don't want to waste an appearance?
The surprising Red Sox have already used up and thrown overboard two relievers this season, leaning on the waiver pool like all those players are in Pawtucket. The Athletics have overused a reliever by a third of an inning and jettisoned him. Is it realistic to pull a reliever with the bases empty with two outs in the ninth because your hurler is out of outs?
I'm inclined to support going back to tracking appearances as the less detrimental of two flawed systems to prevent abusing players. What are your thoughts, or is there a third option?
posted by Shotgun Sam @ 7:31 PM
3 Comments
3 Comments:
Well Shotgun, like life, the MBL rules create incentives and people react to ther incentives created. If we had pitching limited by appearances we would have the phenomena of the one batter lefty throwing 100 innings,
I guess when you see the unrealistic usage year after year under current rules you get tired of innings limits, But believe me, if we went to appearance related limits, we would tire of the other unrealistic ways to use pitchers. In fact we tired of it once already!
As a lesser evil, I prefer the current system. For one thing you run your team like a real life team. In both the MBL and MLB, the Red Sox run through relievers. There simply aren't enough of good ones with a lot of innings. So you blow out a reliever with 30 usable innings, then you grab another if he is there. Remember a lot of these guysare at 30 innings because of injury or starting in the minors. I think fishing guys out of AAA ball is perfectly acceptable.
Using starters as relievers is pretty poor. Unless the guy bites, this shouldn't happen. It is a double whammy for competitiveness in the MBL: it is a way around the salary cap (150 innings of relief for the price of 75) and it curtails trading because a team with 6 good starters has no incentive to trade one). This part of the current rule should be ixnayed.
Enuff said. Its back to work and then home to my deep fried hard drive!
I've always felt the best way to do it is to simply restrict *all* pitchers according to batters faced. (Mainly because that's the metric tracked by DMB, but it's roughly similar to IP.)
I proposed such a rule a couple years ago, but I think it was voted down 18-2, because the gods of baseball would be displeased by a rule that treated starters and relievers the same.
But if you're going by batters faced or innings (as opposed to appearances), an inning is an inning is an inning, and no pitcher can pitch more than his real-life innings, so who cares what part of the game they come in?
(Obviously, only starter-rated pitchers could start, though.)
Such a system would also provide for the rationalization of salaries (if they're out of whack now in this regard, which I haven't really examined.) A league-average starter with 75 innings pitched and a league-average reliever with 75 IP should have about the same salary (maybe with a smallish premium for the starter, because he can do something the RP can't.)
The "curtails trading" argument, I don't buy, though. Adequate relievers are practically free talent in the MBL. A good starter being used exclusively as a reliever is being used inefficiently, and his team should be able to trade him for something of greater value. Resources will still flow to their highest valued use.
Or to sum up my long-winded ramble:
If you're going to track innings, track innings. If you have an approach that tracks innings for some pitchers, but appearances for others, you'll inherently have some distortions.
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