Great read about pitcher usage which also explains the Dylan Coveys and Kyle Gibsons (and Taijuan Walkers, for that matter) of the world.
Unfortunately, only a handful of starters can be the best inning-by-inning option for 30 starts and 180 to 200 innings a year. Effective one-inning relievers are more plentiful. In the playoffs, it’s no longer about stretching the starter out; it’s about surviving until the relief aces can take over.
That’s how rotations are managed in the postseason. Even $100 million Cy Young-type starters can only air it out for 85 to 90 pitches. In the 12-team playoff era, only 14 times has a starting pitcher even completed a third trip through the lineup; the absolute high-water mark for batters faced in a postseason game in the past two seasons is 28. Time was, they’d let Nolan Ryan walk 28 batters in a playoff start, but kids these days…
Unfortunately, a pitcher usage pattern that works in the playoffs — one month, with five games a week at the absolute maximum — does not work for the six-month, six-games-a-week grind of the regular season. Anyone who tried would face a mutiny by the All-Star break; if his pitchers could still lift their arms, such a manager would probably be strangled.
So now we have not two classes of important pitchers, but at least five. There are full-time starters and one-inning relievers, but also innings-eaters who float the team through the regular season but barely see any action in the playoffs. Then we have the reliever version: High-usage but low-leverage bulk bullpen arms. And finally, there is the emerging hybrid role for which Hicks and López have seemingly been groomed. It’s now acceptable for a starting pitcher to turn over the lineup twice and bail, because that’s all he’ll be needed for in the playoffs anyway. And who cares if he can only do it 20 times in the regular season? If he can do it three or four times in the playoffs, that’s worth $10 million all on its own.
