The Death of the Pitching Staff

There has been a disturbing trend in Major League Baseball the last few years: The structure of teams pitching staffs.

We are long removed from the days of four man pitching rotations, and guys pitching up to 300 innings. This isn't necessarily a bad thing; however, the disturbing part is how many teams are shying away from an eleven pitching staff (the commonplace ever since teams introduced the five man rotation) and moving towards 12 or 13 man staffs.

I'm not trying to sound like baseball relic, listening to the old school pitchers complain about how "back in their day you had to pry the ball out of my hand if you wanted to get me off the mound," gets incredibly annoying, after all. (I'm looking at you Mr. Bert Blyleven.) With that said, there is at least a little merit in what they are advocating.

Pitches aren't becoming bigger pansys, they are just being brought up in a culture that breeds lower pitch counts, and plenty of bullpen help.

The problem is that there just aren't enough quality arms for every team to have seven or eight solid options out of the bullpen. Instead of having five starting pitchers, who are trained to pitch seven innings on a given night, there are five starting pitchers who are trained to pitch five to seven innings depending on how far they can get on a 100 pitch limit. That can leave up to four innings to get through with relief pitchers. Couple this with the fact that most relievers are trained to only go one inning, sometimes even less (see Reyes, Denys), and you have a yourself and overworked staff.

The problem with this system, is that it's a lot harder for a relief pitcher to warm up, throw 25 pitches, sit down, and try and do that again the next day. This is much more difficult that a starter warming himself up and chugging through seven innings.

This is where the change needs to take place. The pitching staff needs to be set up as follows:

Five starters: Trained not by pitch counts, but to make it through seven innings. This won't always work, but I'm not advocating demolishing the bullpen, just tweaking it.

Closer: Trained to pitch more innings. If you need this guy for a two inning, or even three inning, save he should be able to do that. Why leave the best reliever on the bench during the most important time in the game?

Setup: This could be a lefty or righty, but is essentially your "number two closer." He's the guy you are most confident in getting some outs in the seventh our eigth inning on days when you don't want to overwork your closer. Guys would still need some rest.

Middle relievers: One lefty, and one righty. These are the guys would come in on days when your starter struggles. Or, if they pitched a stressful five or six innings (a lot of baserunners, tough situations, etc.) you can go to one of these guys in the sixth or seventh. These guys would also be available for specific righty-righty, or lefty-lefty matchups.

Long reliever: The one "mop-up" guy. There will be days when your starting pitcher just doesn't have it. That happens. If your starter gets lit up like Chien Ming Wang, you need another option. Now, this doesn't mean you pull the plug after two innings if the starter gives up five runs, pitchers need to be a little more resilient than that.

That would equate to five starters and five relievers and, if a team chooses, you could add in an extra lefty just in case you want both a lefty and right setup guy. The key, of course, to all this working is rethinking how starting staffs operate.

It would not take that long to change the mentality of a starting pitcher. Once an arm is warmed up, there isn't a big difference between throwing 100 pitches and 125 pitches. Often times, that is the difference between going five or six innings, or going seven innings. If teams rethink how they train pitchers in the minor leagues, it would make the game as a whole much better.

The way it is now, teams complain about the lack of pitching. The fact is, however, that the problem isn't too little pitching, it is too much pitching. If you train your quality pitchers to pitch more innings, it will alleviate the concerns of an untrustworthy, and overworked, bullpen.

-Juice