General MLB Discussion, Winter 2023-24

[bkox]

Rob Manfred says MLB might look to further limit the number of pitchers teams can carry

World Series 2023: Rob Manfred says MLB might look to further limit the number...

[zambonir]

Nothing wrong with that in theory but it would mean going back to a more constant churn of optionable relievers, and more innings for the guy in the Dylan Covey/David Hale spot. Plus another position player sitting on his butt even more.

If you're a team that runs more platoons (which the Phillies certainly could be) or a rotating DH (which they really can't) or has three catchers it would a good thing. Does this mean very few teams were ever carrying fewer than 13?

[julio]

If MLB wants average innings per start to go up, instead of down, maybe they should just re-define a "win" for a starting pitcher as requiring him to pitch 6, or even 7 innings, instead of 5. Stop rewarding starting pitchers for leaving a game after five innings with a "win."

[zambonir]

Do you really think it would matter at this point? We've seen wins play less of a role in Cy Young voting and the same is true (albeit more slowly) for arbitration and free agency. The "quality start" stat has also always been kind of a joke (since a pitcher who does that every time may go six innings but he's also a guy with a 4.50 ERA).

If you are a team that believes in the third-time penalty or openers as the best way to win a nine-inning game (versus what individual player gets a win), you're not going to care, nor do you want a pitcher on your team who would.

I could even see the limit leading to more bullpen games rather than longer starts. It's easier to find a couple of multi-inning relievers than a truly solid 5th starter.

Also, what we see in the playoffs is not what happens in the regular season. Not just because of the short series and wasted roster spots, but Thomson even talked about how in the regular season he will stick with a starter even while knowing it might cost them the game, because he's taking a longer view and not every game is must-win. If you start leaving Tajiuan Walker, who won 15 starts, in a game for 6 innings since he can't get a "W" in 5 what you're going to end up with is more "L"s.

[andyb]

If MLB wants average innings per start to go up, instead of down, maybe they should just re-define a "win" for a starting pitcher as requiring him to pitch 6, or even 7 innings, instead of 5. Stop rewarding starting pitchers for leaving a game after five innings with a "win."

That is just silly. I have always thought there should be the same rules for starters as relievers. Why can a starter go 4.2 and then a reliever gets one out (maybe even giving up a run) and get the win? Openers should be able to get wins if their team gets the lead and does not relinquish it.

I would love to see starters go longer. I just don't think they train for that any more and the analytics are all short term as opposed to long term. If MLB does this I am guessing there will be a big increase in pitcher injuries. Maybe they could have a huge automated strike zone but then do we really want to see 25+ Ks a game?

[bkox]

If MLB wants average innings per start to go up, instead of down, maybe they should just re-define a "win" for a starting pitcher as requiring him to pitch 6, or even 7 innings, instead of 5. Stop rewarding starting pitchers for leaving a game after five innings with a "win."

Most starting pitchers dont want to leave the game early. Punishing them for it seems silly. Teams arent training pitchers to go long in games anymore. Analytics say they shouldnt. Even the guy we consider our stud, Zack Wheeler, only went 7 innings 3 times this year in games he got the win. Your idea may create the first ever 20 game winner relief pitcher.

Velocity changed the sport. And now pitchers lose velocity as they go deeper in games. Of if they keep the velocity they lose command. And hitters can feast on that now. And I dont think there is a way to go backwards anymore.

[zambonir]

Come to think of it changing the rules so any pitcher can get a win, including an opener or a three-inning starter whose team never gives up the lead, does seem long overdue, even if it would not address this.

The end of pinch-hitting in the NL has also been a big factor here too. I thought about it a lot in the playoffs - there were moments when the starter - even one who was going pretty good - might have gotten hooked in a close game because the offense needed a PH, instead of it happening for purely pitching-related reasons.

Another thing you could do - which would also be rife with unintended consequences - just cap the number of relievers you can use in a game. As with position players pitching you could have an exemption for blowouts, where it would be irresponsible/cruel to leave the starter in.

Or if they really did do a 12-man limit why not allow two or three of your optionable relievers to be exempt from the recall window? Better yet, pay them the major league salary even when they are down.

[bkox]

Another thing you could do - which would also be rife with unintended consequences - just cap the number of relievers you can use in a game.

Ive thought about this idea before too. Limit of 5 relievers per game. Get one additional if a pitcher leaves before 5IP with an injury, throws 40 pitches in an inning or gives up 5 or more runs before 5IP.

Get one additional reliever every inning of extra innings played.

[julio]

That is just silly. I have always thought there should be the same rules for starters as relievers. Why can a starter go 4.2 and then a reliever gets one out (maybe even giving up a run) and get the win? Openers should be able to get wins if their team gets the lead and does not relinquish it.

Well, this calls into question the whole idea of a pitcher being awarded a "win." (As perhaps it should.) Visiting team decides to go with an opener. They score 8 runs in the top of the first. The opener lasts two-thirds of an inning, gives up 6 runs. He's in line for the "win"?

The thing is, pitchers don't (by themselves, typically) "win" or "lose" baseball games. Teams do. The idea that the pitcher who happened to be the pitcher of record when his team took a lead they never relinquished somehow "won" the game - even if he royally sucked - is truly silly.

I can agree with the idea that the same "win" rules should apply to all pitchers - but that's mostly because, most of the time, it's equally absurd to credit one pitcher as opposed to another with "winning" the game. Obviously, there are exceptions - it's hard to argue with a perfect game. But it's equally hard to believe that a pitcher "won" a game in which Mike Schmidt hit four home runs!

[phillychuck]

I think the idea of awarding pitchers "wins" predates any cogent idea of relief pitching. Back in the day (way way back in the day) pitchers threw a minimum of 7 innings unless they were getting hammered or were injured. Even under those circumstances, a team scoring 10 runs when the pitcher gave up 7 still earned the pitcher a "win". It's always been a pretty silly idea.

I don't support changing the rule though, unless you were to eliminate pitcher "wins" altogether. I also don't think you want to incentivize managers to overextend pitchers...I'd rather we do what we can to keep them healthy. TJ surgery given modern pitching speeds is way too common, and limiting innings seems to help at least a little.

[LoneStarPhan]

MLB must face the fact that pitching has evolved and the current trend is for more pitchers per game. Frankly, I don't think they need to change from 13 pitchers max on the roster and I oppose any rules to limit any player on the roster from being in any game. I would like to see starters routinely going 6 or 7 innings every start, but don't expect that many will. I would like to see relievers, at least some, routinely coming in for 2 or 3 innings of work. Again, that does not fit with the Thomson/Phillies usage.

I always wondered about the rule for starters not being able to get a win if they didn't pitch 5 innings. It always seemed unfair to me. Why should a start leave the game with a lead after 4.2 innings pitched, a relief pitchers come on to pitch far fewer innings, but one, usually the first into the game, get the win? That never made sense to me. It is true that wins no longer carry the weight in evaluation of pitchers that was true at one time.

[julio]

I don't support changing the rule though, unless you were to eliminate pitcher "wins" altogether. I also don't think you want to incentivize managers to overextend pitchers...I'd rather we do what we can to keep them healthy. TJ surgery given modern pitching speeds is way too common, and limiting innings seems to help at least a little

I don't know. (Sorta snark to follow.) Maybe ligament replacement surgery (TJ) is, in a sense, part of the problem.

Back in the day (before Tommy John, before Frank Jobe), if a pitcher routinely over-threw, and tore his medial collateral ligament, he just had a "sore arm," and retired from the game. Part of the reason most starting pitchers lasted deeper into games may have been that the guys who ran out of gas earlier (or who somehow managed to cram 95 pitches into 5 innings) blew out their arms and went away, with the result that pitching staffs were largely populated by guys who conserved their energies and were able to go deeper into games... and the rest of the game (mound height, de facto strike zone, baseball elasticity, etc.) was tuned so that this kind of pitching and offense were more-or-less in balance.

Just a speculation. But modern reconstructive surgery has changed the risk/reward calculation for pitchers who throw extremely hard, by decreasing the cost of structural damage. That may be a contributor to changed pitcher usage patterns.

[phillychuck]

I agree. The former "balance" led to lots of pitchers who threw in the low 90s, but were innings eaters (Gaylord Perry, Carlton, Glavine, Marichal, etc.) The Bob Fellers, Nolan Ryans, Randy Johnsons, Bob Gibsons, etc. were the physical exceptions, somehow constructed differently to withstand upper 90s pitching.

Now a starter is considered a soft-tosser if he maxes out below 95. It used to be below 90.

I don't think changing the win criterion will change much now...we have to live with what we have wrought. Especially since there is no consensus on what or how to change.

[BostonRoss]

Anytime the commissioner proposes something, I try to understand how it means more money for the owners. I think about whether the proposal will improve or detract from the game, but improving the game is never the motivation unless there is also a financial gain.

I think the reason MLB baseball wants starting pitchers to go longer is because it believes that having more marketable star players brings in more cash. There might also be a small salary saving by having the last guy on the roster be more of a scrub.

They won't change the rules for getting a win. It has zero financial impact, but it would cause a lot of fans to complain. Either there would be no comparison to historical stats regarding wins, or they'd have to go back and reassign wins for 150 years of games. Imagine if someone all of a sudden became a 300 game winner (or stopped being one)!

[zambonir]

I feel like baseball stats and baseball history are already completely flexible, we just treat them as sacrosanct. 154-game schedules, different ballparks, different balls, mound height, etc. If they changed the wins the official record book would not be adjusted retroactively. We would just understand - as we already do now - that wins were different then.

That said, all the articles about what the new win criteria would mean for historical stats would be thoroughly entertaining! I think the five-inning rule would remain loosely in place, you should just add scorer discretion for starts of less than five, just as they have a lot of discretion for awarding wins after that point. Including awarding a win to an opener if the score truly suggested that (I assume now that is impossible since the opener is defined as a starter who didn't go five).

I think it's just a reaction to the playoffs and the bullpen-happy managing style in general. Yeah, starters are bigger stars but they also get paid more, not every one likes that. But having introduced the three-batter rule and the pitch clock, one less pitching change per game would speed things up even more.

Except, of course, they could have just left rosters at 25. Seems like they didn't anticipate that in the long run nearly every team would use that extra spot on a pitcher, especially once the NL lost the DH.

As for as the "follow the money" thought, this seems of a piece with the 100-win teams not making the World Series. The playoff format and the bullpen-happy, analytics-driven management style still favors small market teams in theory. Even if the Phillies were one of the so-called underdogs. They had an $18 million fourth starter who didn't pitch in the playoffs and five relievers with closing experience who'd all make $8-10 million or more as free agents (as the two who were did). Yeah the Phillies had Jeff Hoffman but a team like Tampa is always trying to have five Jeff Hoffmans.

Speaking of Tampa (and perhaps case in point): their most-used catcher this season was Christian Bethancourt?

[BostonRoss]

I dunno. It seems to me that scoring changes have been inconsistent. Weren't walks once counted as hits? I'm pretty sure the definition of a stolen base has changed. At the least, people discount a lot of pre-1900 stats and records because of rule changes, including scoring.

But in the past century, that doesn't seem to have happened much. There have been some scoring changes (I think the definition of the sacrifice fly, for one), but they are relatively minor. This would be a pretty big one.

I agree that the way pitcher wins are defined now doesn't really make sense. It never did, really, and it makes less sense the way pitchers are used now. I would have no problem with it being changed. But there would definitely be an outcry among a large number of fans. MLB only provokes an outcry when it makes them money, or at least makes them look good.

There are plenty of other scoring rules that really don't make sense and haven't been consistent over time. Probably the most significant is how errors are charged. Decades ago, the concept of a "team error" not charged to an individual player was introduced. It would be charged when a defensive play clearly should have been made, but it was not clearly the fault of a single player (say a popup that dropped in the middle of two or more fielders). Many times, these just go down as hits, which is pretty ridiculous. I believe that a main reason the team error concept never caught on was the inconsistency with past statistics (though that is also ridiculous given how much fielding equipment changed over the years, a much more significant change).

[bkox]

I'm pretty sure the definition of a stolen base has changed. At the least, people discount a lot of pre-1900 stats and records because of rule changes, including scoring.

I believe if a runner went from first to third on a single, it was considered a stolen base

[zambonir]

Sources: Padres recently took out $50 million loan to help cover payroll

[bkox]

SHoulder surgery at 35? He probably should just retire

Clayton Kershaw announces he has had surgery on his left shoulder and is hopeful to return to pitching sometime next summer. pic.twitter.com/vm6LtWL9q2

— MLB ( @MLB ) November 3, 2023

Speaking of retirement.. Nelson Cruz announced his retirement

[allentown]

I doubt he pitches in MLB next summer.