6 man rotation

[cardsfan]

What do you guys think of 6 man rotation? It could be a modified one where your #1 and #2 pitch on 4 day rest where you use 4 other starters. Perhaps one is used in long relief. 5 or 6 innings starts depending on pitch count.

 

You may have to carry 13 pitchers or rotate them with AAA team. A pitcher may have to pinch hit or run. This changes in September if you have pitchers as rosters expand.

 

Well, you could do what the Rays did last year and the Twins 1 game: have a reliever start the game and pitch an inning or two.

[mlhouse]

A rebuilding team like the Twins should really consider it to put more arms on the mound to face major league hitters.

 

Why send Gonsalves and/or Romero back to the minors were they have dominated just because the major league norm is 5 starters?

 

When you are a rebuilding team you should adjust those norms, which are designed for competitiveness, to the needs of your team.  The Twins have, for the past 8 years, done almsot the opposite.  Pretending to be "competitive" with low end veteran free agents that have never tipped the balance, and ignoring their prospect development.

 

Eventually, hopefully, you find the quality starters you need and can then restructure your staff to be maximize competitiveness.  

[tarheeltwinsfan]

"We've never done it that way before."

[ashbury]

Teams are already using 13-man pitching staffs. This idea puts pressure to go to 14. Maybe MLB is close to going to a 26-man roster (or other changes that amount to the same).

 

Using 6 starters doesn't have an obvious way that it gets more innings out of your starters - the conventional wisdom is to be ready to bring in the first reliever based on how many times through the opponent's lineup you've gone and what kind of success the starter's having that day, moreso than number of days' rest the starter has had.

 

Bullpen usages are unpredictable enough that you'll probably run into trouble if you name any of your 6 starters as the potential long man for that game - once you bring him in, you're likely committing to a disruption in the rotation for the coming week. I'd almost go the other direction, and identify one of the starters, who is somewhere in the middle of his rotation cycle, as a LOOGY/ROOGY, if indeed that's the manager's style at all in this era - guys throw bullpen sessions between starts, although probably not at max-effort., so maybe this would be a substitute activity that actually gets some value out of the effort.

 

All in all, a manager and his pitching coach will have their work cut out for them to make such a thing work. Again in the spirit of going the opposite direction, what about returning to a 4-man rotation? Accept that you'll get fewer innings per game out of your starters - 5 innings times 40 starts gives you 200 innings which few reach anymore - but you'll give fewer overall innings to the fifth best starter you would have used. 4 starters, 9 relievers - get innings out of your 4 horses and then muddle through.

[Thrylos]

I can see a 6-man rotation if you have 6 good pitchers.  If you don't, like the Twins, you want your best pitchers (Berrios & Gibson & maybe Pineda) to make as many starts as possible. 

Taking 2-3 starts away from them for the season to give them to people who failed miserably in the majors last season makes zero sense.

 

[Nine of twelve]

 

  On 3/3/2019 at 10:42 PM, Thrylos said:

I can see a 6-man rotation if you have 6 good pitchers.  If you don't, like the Twins, you want your best pitchers (Berrios & Gibson & maybe Pineda) to make as many starts as possible. 

Taking 2-3 starts away from them for the season to give them to people who failed miserably in the majors last season makes zero sense.

I agree. How many teams in history have had 6 starters who were all good? I'd guess the answer is in single digits. 

This makes sense only if all your starters are mediocre or if you have several pitchers on an inning limit due to recovery from injury, conversion from relieving or something like that. Otherwise get your best starters out there every fifth game.

If there are prospects you want to evaluate in the majors I see nothing wrong with rotating them up and down from AAA after a couple starts.

[Rosterman]

You often can skip the fifth starter in the early going, so you do have an extra bullpen arm for the first month of the season.

 

In some way,s if the Twins are rebuilding, you do want to showcase Gibson, Odorizzi and Pineda so you can flip them at the trade deadline, since you haven't signed any of them for the longer term.

 

More important is to have your next crop of starters getting regular innings at AAA with the hope for mid-season call.

[biggentleben]

Braves used a 6-man last August and September. Nearly cost Teheran his ability to be a trivia answer (six straight 30-start seasons, tied with 6 other pitchers, only three have more active currently - Lester has 11, Scherzer 10, and Leake 7). It worked well, frankly, but I don't know that a team is yet bold enough to go with such a setup all season.