Power Starters, Middle Relief Aces, oh my - how the Twins could manage their pitching

[Hosken Bombo Disco]

1 minute ago, chpettit19 said:

You and I might be better than the options the Twins are using currently!

LOL thanks for reeling me back in  

yeah, I would be happy to give up home runs on a league minimum salary, and fans can blame me all they want!

[MMMordabito]

I liked the square pegs/round holes title better. ?

[KirbyDome89]

5 minutes ago, wsnydes said:

More or less, yes.  I think they built a staff pretty reliant on young arms stepping up.  That's a big reason why before the season started, I was saying that how far this team goes will be determined by the youth.  And there is obvious risk involved with that approach.  And I think I've been right about that so far.  And I think injuries have depleted the possibility of that approach working even further.

I've always kinda thought this year was intended to build towards next season.  They did a decent job of avoiding a bottoming out, but not enough to really be truly competitive.

Idk if injuries have derailed the approach so much as they weren't properly weighed when deciding it, at least based on that brief history and the starting staff assembled. 

[TwinsDr2021]

2 hours ago, Mike Sixel said:

There isn't a staff averaging more than 6 innings a start in all of baseball, is there? I'm not sure there are even 50 pitchers in all of baseball doing that right now.  

I would hope nobody thinks the STAFF should average 6 innings. Having a pitcher or two is not out of the question.

Shane Mcclanahan of Tampa averages almost 6 1/3. (and he just turned 25)

Corey Kluber has went at least 6 innings in 7 of his last 11 games. (He also plays for Tampa)

Drew Rasmussen has pitched 5 or more innings every start he hasn't been terrible. (another Tampa starter)

The Rays let good starting pitchers pitch (To a point they don't run up pitch counts over 100 very often, but Mcclanahan for example never really gives them less than 90 pitches) , The odds are they wouldn't treat Archer like the Twins do, they would probably use a starter for 1 or 2 innings and Bring in Archer for 3 - 7/8.

That is the thing, that is misleading about this article and the thoughts people have on Tampa, it isn't so much a team philosophy on how pitching SHOULD be done, it is their flexibility and adapting to what they have that makes them good. If you gave Tampa the starters the Dodgers do people really think they would pitch them different than the dodgers do, heck no.

The Twins on the other hand IMO don't seem all that flexible,

 

[chpettit19]

53 minutes ago, TwinsDr2021 said:

I would hope nobody thinks the STAFF should average 6 innings. Having a pitcher or two is not out of the question.

Shane Mcclanahan of Tampa averages almost 6 1/3. (and he just turned 25)

Corey Kluber has went at least 6 innings in 7 of his last 11 games. (He also plays for Tampa)

Drew Rasmussen has pitched 5 or more innings every start he hasn't been terrible. (another Tampa starter)

The Rays let good starting pitchers pitch (To a point they don't run up pitch counts over 100 very often, but Mcclanahan for example never really gives them less than 90 pitches) , The odds are they wouldn't treat Archer like the Twins do, they would probably use a starter for 1 or 2 innings and Bring in Archer for 3 - 7/8.

That is the thing, that is misleading about this article and the thoughts people have on Tampa, it isn't so much a team philosophy on how pitching SHOULD be done, it is their flexibility and adapting to what they have that makes them good. If you gave Tampa the starters the Dodgers do people really think they would pitch them different than the dodgers do, heck no.

The Twins on the other hand IMO don't seem all that flexible,

 

I think the Twins are not quite as flexible, but I think their staff is also far less efficient with their pitches. Ryan has thrown 100 pitches 3 times and has gotten through 6, 6, 5 innings out of him in those starts. He went 7 in one start while throwing only 90 pitches. Then 2 starts later made it through 4 on 90 pitches. The Twins will let their guys go, but they haven't built a very efficient staff.

Archer was at 90 pitches through 4 yesterday. Smeltzer has gone 6+ in 5 of 9 starts this year, but only thrown 100 pitches once. He's being used pretty close to how the Rays would use him I think. I think the problem is more about the Twins being too strict with "the plan." There's games where they planned to get certain relievers certain amounts of work and they'll follow that instead of letting the starter go another inning. Do that too much and you run yourself into trouble when someone only goes 4 innings. Rocco gets the blame for it, but I think it's more the FO and probably Wes. Would be interesting to hear what those internal talks are really like. But overall I think the Twins are just bad at executing this plan and adjusting on the fly well.

[Unwinder]

3 hours ago, CRF said:

Interesting article. I'm an old school traditionalist, so I'll never like this approach, but I know it's probably what things might evolve into eventually.

I don't think it's a great direction for baseball overall, and I hope MLB eventually makes some sort of rule change to incentivize leaving starters in more, but the Twins' job is to win, not to preserve the aesthetetwQGARGwrhPPPBSOBPPPPPPPPPbbbb I'm sorry I just saw the latest Timberwolves news and lost my train of thought, need to regroup.

[Riverbrian]

42 minutes ago, TwinsDr2021 said:

I would hope nobody thinks the STAFF should average 6 innings. Having a pitcher or two is not out of the question.

Shane Mcclanahan of Tampa averages almost 6 1/3. (and he just turned 25)

Corey Kluber has went at least 6 innings in 7 of his last 11 games. (He also plays for Tampa)

Drew Rasmussen has pitched 5 or more innings every start he hasn't been terrible. (another Tampa starter)

The Rays let good starting pitchers pitch (To a point they don't run up pitch counts over 100 very often, but Mcclanahan for example never really gives them less than 90 pitches) , The odds are they wouldn't treat Archer like the Twins do, they would probably use a starter for 1 or 2 innings and Bring in Archer for 3 - 7/8.

That is the thing, that is misleading about this article and the thoughts people have on Tampa, it isn't so much a team philosophy on how pitching SHOULD be done, it is their flexibility and adapting to what they have that makes them good. If you gave Tampa the starters the Dodgers do people really think they would pitch them different than the dodgers do, heck no.

The Twins on the other hand IMO don't seem all that flexible,

 

Yes absolutely. The Rays adapt to the staff. Just because they were successful with the opener concept doesn't mean they would walk away from a starter that can throw more innings. 

Archer is being managed because of injury recovery and future injury concerns according to what I've heard.

The youngsters are coming off a covid year which is going to take some time to build back up their innings.  

The Twins are managing the staff they have as well.  

[chpettit19]

13 minutes ago, Unwinder said:

I don't think it's a great direction for baseball overall, and I hope MLB eventually makes some sort of rule change to incentivize leaving starters in more, but the Twins' job is to win, not to preserve the aesthetetwQGARGwrhPPPBSOBPPPPPPPPPbbbb I'm sorry I just saw the latest Timberwolves news and lost my train of thought, need to regroup.

Limiting rosters to 13 pitchers, making the IL 15 days for pitchers, making pitchers stay in the minors for 15 days if they're sent down, and limiting a team to 5 callups for a player are all meant to curb the crazy amount of 1 inning relief arms teams were using.

[TwinsDr2021]

6 minutes ago, Riverbrian said:

Yes absolutely. The Rays adapt to the staff. Just because they were successful with the opener concept doesn't mean they would walk away from a starter that can throw more innings. 

Archer is being managed because of injury recovery and future injury concerns according to what I've heard.

The youngsters are coming off a covid year which is going to take some time to build back up their innings.  

The Twins are managing the staff they have as well.  

I wasn't saying the Rays wouldn't be managing Archers innings like the Twins are, I was saying they would be doing it differently.

I am sick hearing about the Covid year, all the teams had to deal with it and pitchers that missed the year are pitching innings in the majors and minors;the problem with the Twins isn't so much about the Covid year, it is all their pitching prospects always getting hurt.

Sure the Twins are managing their staff, but are they doing it well is the question on just about every thread.

[Riverbrian]

Just now, Mike Sixel said:

I really don't think fans give this any thought before complaining. 

Lots of our brothers and sisters on TD watch the Twins pretty much exclusively.

The Twins for decades tried to operate in the traditional sense. Goltz, Thormodsgard, Zahn and Redfern. Viola, Smithson, Butcher, Schrom with Ron Davis blowing saves after being set up by Lysander is what they know. Santana, Gibson, Pelfrey, Hughes and Milone with Fein and May for the 7th and 8th and Perkins to close is what they watch year after year. 

What the other teams are doing isn't in view. 

 

[ashbury]

I think the Twins are trying to exploit two independent market-inefficiencies at once, and they haven't quite got the kinks worked out and it's biting them.

1. Pitchers who can go 6+ innings with above average results are rare and expensive.
2. Pitchers with a history of injury can be obtained relatively cheaply.

Currently we have 16 position players, thus 24 pitchers on the 40-man.  The off-season pitching acquisitions reflect what I can only interpret as an intent to cover for injuries with massive numbers of other arms. 

Sonny Gray has hardly been an iron-man the past few seasons, and was acquired relatively "cheaply" for a first-round draft pick, since usually getting a #1 or #2 for your rotation will cost you a package of prospects, and he has indeed required some time off already.  Archer and Bundy had serious injury woes in their resumes, and the approach with both has been to severely limit their workloads (successfully with Archer in terms of Injured List time, not quite 100% for Bundy).  And of course Chris Paddack was traded for, at the last minute, with well-known elbow troubles in his recent past, and that move blew up in their faces immediately.

I support bullet item #1 above, which is the topic of this thread.  But combining it with item #2 has proved to be too much for their process to bear.  It's great to try to be on the leading-edge, but there is a risk in twisting too many knobs on the control panel at once.  For one thing, when you look at the results after the fact, cause-and-effect get intermingled too much to allow understanding.

"Oh, the injury bug" is an excuse, except... no, it was baked into this roster as it was constructed piece by piece.  Whatever separate plan they had to operate like the Rays got run over by the need to patch and patch.

[Richie the Rally Goat]

8 hours ago, Unwinder said:

I'm trying to remember why they changed Jax to a one-inning guy. I thought I remembered the conventional wisdom that he was good one time through the order was proving correct. Did they cut him down to one-inning appearances just to get an extra tick on his fastball?

I believe it was necessity to pitch him more frequently. He so quickly became the second best reliever on the team and the vets they relied on, so spectacularly failed, they needed Jax to pitch 3+ times per week. 

[Richie the Rally Goat]

1 hour ago, ashbury said:

I think the Twins are trying to exploit two independent market-inefficiencies at once, and they haven't quite got the kinks worked out and it's biting them.

1. Pitchers who can go 6+ innings with above average results are rare and expensive.
2. Pitchers with a history of injury can be obtained relatively cheaply.

Currently we have 16 position players, thus 24 pitchers on the 40-man.  The off-season pitching acquisitions reflect what I can only interpret as an intent to cover for injuries with massive numbers of other arms. 

Sonny Gray has hardly been an iron-man the past few seasons, and was acquired relatively "cheaply" for a first-round draft pick, since usually getting a #1 or #2 for your rotation will cost you a package of prospects, and he has indeed required some time off already.  Archer and Bundy had serious injury woes in their resumes, and the approach with both has been to severely limit their workloads (successfully with Archer in terms of Injured List time, not quite 100% for Bundy).  And of course Chris Paddack was traded for, at the last minute, with well-known elbow troubles in his recent past, and that move blew up in their faces immediately.

I support bullet item #1 above, which is the topic of this thread.  But combining it with item #2 has proved to be too much for their process to bear.  It's great to try to be on the leading-edge, but there is a risk in twisting too many knobs on the control panel at once.  For one thing, when you look at the results after the fact, cause-and-effect get intermingled too much to allow understanding.

"Oh, the injury bug" is an excuse, except... no, it was baked into this roster as it was constructed piece by piece.  Whatever separate plan they had to operate like the Rays got run over by the need to patch and patch.

Part of this is a talent gap in the setup men that depleted the “bulk bridge” role. The setup men have been so bad, Jax needed to be more frequent than a bulk bridge.

they need Bundy or Sands (or both) to move into that “bulk bridge” role, to reduce exposure of the setup men.

[IndianaTwin]

5 hours ago, ICTwin25 said:

Trying to replicate the Rays strategy is all fine and dandy, but only when you have the arms to do so. I think this team is a solid group, but I am tired of the pitching strategy. Rocco needs to look at extending the amount our starters pitch and here are some stats on this:

Our starters have the 7th best ERA in baseball yet pitch the 5th fewest innings of any team.

The starters average 78 pitches per game and only 3 teams have a lower average. In fact, only 28 times have our starters thrown between 80-99 pitches, which is by far the lowest amount.

The MLB Average for Teams who bring in a relief pitcher with a lead is 114 (Doesnt equal games because of multiple pitchers) yet the Twins are at 152 which is easily the most in baseball.

Bottom line, stats show our starters are good, yet we continue to think the bullpen will hold the lead? Let's try going longer with the guys who start the game, Rocco.

I suspect that one of the reasons the starters’ ERA ranks so high is that they HAVEN’T been left in long enough to melt. 

[KScott]

Great article.

Thinking through the pitching staff that the twins had going in to the year these guys ( in the order they pop into my head) were all starters:

 

1. Ryan 

2. Gray

3. Archer 

4. Ober 

5. Duran

6. Winder

7. Paddack

8. Bundy

9. Jax (the only guy on this list not on the opening day roster)

That is a heck of a lot of people with legitimate experience starting and reason to think that they should be a part of a starting rotation.

 

If the expectation changed, so that each guy was expected to get 4 innings and then pitch once every 4 days. I could see the logic in that.

At the same time that would get you to the 8th inning, so you would hypothetically only need one more pitcher to go 1 inning. 

(5+innings every five days gives you the same number pitches over a 20 day period so the workload could hypothetically be the same) 

With the 9 we have, you would also have an extra starter/bulk bridge guy to supplement when someone melts down earlier or a guy needs a break.

So with 9 bulk bridge pitchers, you would have 3 more spots for guys that do one maybe two innings pick from: Alcala, Pagan, Smith, Duffey, Coulombe, Theilbar etc. Alcala was arguably the best returning bullpen arm, and the twins made a point to get Pagan and Smith. 

 

The skeleton is there for this setup. It is consistent with the message we were getting early in the season. Duran and Winder were supposed to be long relief. But situations kept demanding they do something that wasn't the plan. I don't know if that was the case but it seems plausible.

If they ever get healthy I would actually enjoy seeing that experiment tried. The logic makes sense it's just a matter of can that work in reality.

RE Edit: reading this 10 hours later. I realized I forgot Smeltzer in that last of starters. Which doesn't change the statement that the Twins have the tools to try this model.

Edited July 2, 2022 by KScott
Forgot Smeltzer

[Doctor Gast]

Thank you so much Riverbrian for this article, I loved it! For the last few years since our BP blew up in 2019, I've advocated for a stronger long relief corp to help relieve the burden of short relief. I think management has tried to adapt to this kind of phylosophy by picking up RPs wannabe SPs, reclamation projects and rookies and try to have them pitch fewer innings but that puts more burden on the BP. And if you don't have a solid long relief to offset these extra innings that'll result means a blow out 1st in short relief and latter in the rotation through injuries and ineffective arms. This has been our scenario since as long as I can remember, that results in even if we limp across the finish line we fail to win a post season game.

Some say we don't have the horses to do this, But I say we don't have the horses not to do this. I'd love to have 5 "studs" in the rotation able to pitch complete games on a regular bases. LAD have these studs yet they limit their usage. We traded our only pitcher (Berrios) who fits this bill. We are dependent on 2 rookie that we want to maximize yet the article is implicit that this not a good idea, rookies needs to be eased into a workload. Bundy who never had a good regular season (but had a good shorten season), Archer who hasn't pitched much in over 2 yrs,, Gray who from the beginning said his arm wasn't ready, To top this off we trade our only dependable RP for 2 problems, which further weaken a poor unproven short relief. Our long relief for the year is Winder pitching 3x in April for a few innings until the rotation started to experience injuries.

We had an excellent potential of long relief group. Having Gray, Ryan, Archer, Bundy and Ober (?) as possible starters leaving Winder, Smeltzer, Jax, Cotton (he's long relief, not a high level short relief) and even Paddack could have been salvaged if kept on very limited innings. Long relief could complete the game, or hand off to Duran to close it or to anyone else to mop up a game. This kind of strategy would have avoided the injuries & ineffective arms that plagued the Twins.

[Doctor Gast]

16 hours ago, IndianaTwin said:

I suspect that one of the reasons the starters’ ERA ranks so high is that they HAVEN’T been left in long enough to melt. 

Our ERA should be much higher and have much fewer injuries if the Twins did not try to extend them beyond their profiles, thinking they could bounce back.

[nicksaviking]

The Twins may be failing to replicate the Rays results, but the application of the process is pretty much identical.

The Rays didn’t go out and get a bunch of established relief arms, they have internal guys and cast offs that make the fans scream when signed in the off season. In fact half of the Rays pen were former Twins. Wisler, Riley and Garza. Luke Bard pitched too.

[DocBauer]

A very interesting article/OP! And despite a TON of data, even I can follow most of it, lol. The just of everything, broken down to the most simple terms that I see are as follows:

1] Like the Dogers, have enough pitching talent and depth that you have the luxury of pulling guys when you want, say an inning early, and simply not risk an extra time through the order, and make your back end starters that much more effective. You have a couple studs at the front of the rotation you can run with, but still have the luxury of pulling them on a not so great day. Obviously, that is optimal. Also not a formula that works for most teams as they don't have or can't afford as many quality, front of the rotation arms.

2] More like the Ray's, you still need good arms for the rotation. But you might only have 2 guys who are comparable, but not 3. Perhaps your 4 and 5 are solid, maybe close, maybe not quite as good. So your OVERALL rotation scores is a 6-7 vs a Doger's score of 8, more or less. So now you're needing a good 2, maybe 3, that can come in to pitch 2-3-4 innings and bridge the gap to what still needs to be a good 3-4 quality back end arms.

I see what the Twins are trying to do, more along the Ray's way of doing things. It's also clear it's not working that way due to talent available, as well as injury. Regardless of MLB messing with defensive rules, baseballs, and 3 batter rules, the 2 biggest changes in baseball are probably expansion and the lack of rotation depth across the board, and the change of offensive approach to power and launch angles and the such. The power approach has been building for the past 25+ years due to the evolution of analytics as well as changes to conditioning and weight training. 

Back to the OP:

The Twins have a pair of very good SP to lead their rotation. Arguably, comparable to most any contending team. One proven veteran and one quality rookie/1st year player. It gets a little murky after that. Personally, I think Ober is a really good looking starter who was pitching even better than 2021 before his groin injury. Winder was looking really good in the pen and the rotation before his injury. And he looked really good in his last start. How much more does Smeltzer have to show to prove he's a solid back end arm? Bundy was great, then not, then has looked good again. Archer has been what he's been, which is pretty good for 4 IP, but has been getting stronger and better and stretched out until his last game when control left him. 

I'm not sure the Twins aren't about to be ready to follow "the plan" as stated in the article/OP. A healthy Ober, and suddenly the Twins have 7 SP of various degrees. HOWEVER you line them up, you suddenly have 5 SP and 2 piggyback/middle/long RP. In Duran, Jax, and maybe Thielbar, (who's season has been pretty good and has good peripherals, and who's overall production has been skewed by 3 really bad games), you have a few arms at the back end of the pen you can generally count on. 

It doesn't help the Twins' plan that a potentially important arm like Alcala has been out for the season thus far. It's very debatable how much the loss of Stashak might be, or the loss of the hard throwing Megill who was showing some life, or veteran journeyman Coulombe, looking at least solid. But if you take that initial 10 man group and make trades for a couple solid, capable veterans, you are suddenly looking at the Ray's version of the plan almost exactly. Add Moran, who's looked pretty good, who has potential, and needs to be kept and not yo-yo'd up and down, and you have a 13 man staff that SHOULD WORK, and could work well. And while not great, options like Minaya, Cotton, Sands and others are available to fill in as needed without having to be pushed in to high leverage situations.

An arm, probably two, should have been added, especially after the trade of Rogers, even though it was probably too late to add the 2nd arm. Maybe Pagan COULD have been a middle guy? But it's not too late if the FO can just add a couple solid guys, hopefully SOON. 

Now, Maeda back next year, Paddack back June or July, the continued development of Winder and Smeltzer, etc, things look potentially even better in 2023. Toss Alcala in the pen and a more experienced Moran, etc, and, again, 2023 is looking even better. But for NOW, everything presented can WORK with a pair of good arm additions. 

The FO can bring in a couple of solid rentals, with the ability to re-sign if wanted. They could dig a little deeper and trade for a couple arms with control, maybe eating some $. They could split the difference. But Winder back up, Ober back healthy, a pair of solid additions, the staff is set up to do exactly what is being presented here.

[Rosterman]

Short relief is primarily based on who is coming up to bat and the effectiveness of the bullpen arm against those specific batters. Plus a short relief pitcher COULD pitch multiple days in a row.

Middle relief and having the guy pitch multiple innings or face a batting order is purely to see if they can get the outs, pretty much no matter the pitch count. 

A team used to have one solid long relief guy, in case of a short start. And often the majority of the bullpen was capable of pitching 2-3 innings if needed (back when pitching staffs were ten pitchers and starters pitched every fourth day). 

But it still helps if you have a closer, and someone who can, if needed, pitch multiple games back-to-back.

And considering baseball NOW has all but eliminated the situational pitcher, that left who would pitch to just one or two batters - well, I can't keep up with the game.

Like the Rays, the Twins had a group of starters who (fingers crossed) would make 30 starts and reach comfortably 150 innings each. Hapily, due to a brief moment of six manish, injuries and lots of short starts, looks like ALL the guys are set to make it thru the season and set the stage for aiming at 200 innings for 2023.

The problem is, are there enough quality arms for the Twins to use in the bullpen role that can pitch 50-60 innings. There just might be.

No longer do teams have set set-up guys. The Twins are showing a lack of a closer (do they not want to spend the money?). 

I imagine the Twin are hoping Duran will be their once and future closer, and hold the role for 5-7 years. Moran and Cano could be dynamite 8th inning guys. All three gaining valuable experience THIS season as the Twins play shuffle board with all the other spots.

 

[glunn]

I am enjoying this thread a lot, and am impressed by the way that posters are working together to figure things out.

I have learned a lot from the article and what people have posted here.  I think that ash made a very good point about the impact of acquiring pitchers who were injury prone.  I remember that years ago the Twins had a pitcher with a "rubber" arm who could seemingly pitch whenever needed.  Where are those guys today?

I also wonder how this would all apply to the Royals in the year that the Royals won the World Series (2015).

 

 

 

[Riverbrian]

3 hours ago, glunn said:

I am enjoying this thread a lot, and am impressed by the way that posters are working together to figure things out.

I have learned a lot from the article and what people have posted here.  I think that ash made a very good point about the impact of acquiring pitchers who were injury prone.  I remember that years ago the Twins had a pitcher with a "rubber" arm who could seemingly pitch whenever needed.  Where are those guys today?

I also wonder how this would all apply to the Royals in the year that the Royals won the World Series (2015).

 

 

 

When I think of the 2014 and 2015 Royals bullpen. They showed the world that you could win without the starters carrying the load. You could win with a bullpen and I think that opened some lanes of thinking in front offices like the Rays have done.

However I do believe the Royals bullpen had a traditional set up to it, if memory serves.  

[old nurse]

There is a key factor missing. Wistler, Adams, Riley, Garza, Chargois, Bard all have something in common

 

There also seems to be a lot of their relievers on the 50 day do. 

[Riverbrian]

You just got to do the math and the need for an adjustment to the traditional model is obvious. 

I'm a broken record on this but it's simple math. You have to account for 1400 plus innings in a given season. Dave Goltz tossing 300 innings doesn't exist anymore. 

162 games x 9 innings = 1458

6 innings per start: 

162 x 6 = 972

1458-972=486 innings needed to be covered by your bullpen

5 innings per start:

162 X 5 = 810

1418-810=648 innings needed to be covered by your bullpen. 

I don't have the current numbers but I believe we are currently below 5 innings per start. 

At 648 innings we are now asking for the 8 bullpen slots to produce 81 innings a year when it used to be 60. 

The traditional bullpen model isn't going to work.

You can't hide a bullpen arm and wait for low leverage. You don't have the roster slots to do this. 

It's harder to hold your best arm for the traditional closer role for specific situations such as a lead less then 3 runs in the 9th. Your best arm may need to toss a couple of innings in the 6th and 7th. 

I've also been a broken record on this but I hate boxes. A starter must start the game. A closer must close the game. Pitchers pitch they don't need to be stuck into traditional boxes. The Rays are singing the words of John Lennon. "Whatever gets you through the night... It's alright... It's alright". 

What matters is how many innings can you pitch and how many zeroes can you hang. 

 

[Riverbrian]

4 hours ago, Riverbrian said:

You just got to do the math and the need for an adjustment to the traditional model is obvious. 

I'm a broken record on this but it's simple math. You have to account for 1400 plus innings in a given season. Dave Goltz tossing 300 innings doesn't exist anymore. 

162 games x 9 innings = 1458

6 innings per start: 

162 x 6 = 972

1458-972=486 innings needed to be covered by your bullpen

5 innings per start:

162 X 5 = 810

1418-810=648 innings needed to be covered by your bullpen. 

I don't have the current numbers but I believe we are currently below 5 innings per start. 

At 648 innings we are now asking for the 8 bullpen slots to produce 81 innings a year when it used to be 60. 

The traditional bullpen model isn't going to work.

You can't hide a bullpen arm and wait for low leverage. You don't have the roster slots to do this. 

It's harder to hold your best arm for the traditional closer role for specific situations such as a lead less then 3 runs in the 9th. Your best arm may need to toss a couple of innings in the 6th and 7th. 

I've also been a broken record on this but I hate boxes. A starter must start the game. A closer must close the game. Pitchers pitch they don't need to be stuck into traditional boxes. The Rays are singing the words of John Lennon. "Whatever gets you through the night... It's alright... It's alright". 

What matters is how many innings can you pitch and how many zeroes can you hang. 

 

Let's take this math one more step. 

Let's say you want to hang on to the traditional closer/set up/set up model for late game high leverage situations. 

Those guys typically throw around 60 innings a year. So let's deduct 20 innings from the 81 you have to average from those 3.  

20 x 3 = 60

You have 5 bullpen slots left (after you deduct the 3 high leverage guys) that have to absorb those 60 innings the late inning high leverage guys cough up. The 81 innings needed per 8 slots rises to 93 for the remaining 5 just to cover for your late inning high leverage guys. 

60/5 = 12 + 81 = 93 

When you start talking about 93 innings, you are talking about more than 1 inning thrown every two days. These guys have to throw multiple innings. 

This is a main reason why I openly question the practice of having a dedicated closer, saving your closer (best arm) for specific 9th innings situations and limiting him to 60 innings especially when high leverage can occur anywhere in a baseball game. Why can't your best pitcher give you two innings in the 5th and 6th of a tie game. 

Your best arm should throw more innings than 60 because you are asking a lesser arm to throw more innings just to allow him to do that and that makes no sense. 

Your best arms should throw more innings than lesser arms. Your best hitters should have more plate appearances than your lesser hitters. Anything else is hard to justify. 

 

[Squirrel]

I don't really care how a bp is set up and who pitches when. I see value in being flexible and using certain pitchers in certain ways in certain situations. If it's to 'close', it's to close; if it's to piggy back in long relief, great; or using analytics to decide the best matchups between our pitchers and their batter. I really don't care. Traditional or new method, the bottom line for me, which is in the title of the article ... middle relief ACES. That's what you need. It's why the Royals were so good in '14, '15 ... because they had a shut 'em down, close it up bp, not because the bp had tradition roles. It matters the arms they had to rely on once the starter was done, whether that was 4, 5, 6, 7 innings or whatever. Reliable bp arms ... that's the secret, that will always be the secret, no matter the method you set up within your organization. Relief aces are not a dime a dozen and cannot be done by reclamation alone. And you will need to pay for it. Maybe not as much as a costly starting pitching ace, but ... relief aces will cost. My frustration with this year isn't using analytics and matchups, I'm good with that. It's not having reliable choices that has cost us, not when we use how.

[USAFChief]

2 hours ago, Riverbrian said:

 

You can't hide a bullpen arm and wait for low leverage. You don't have the roster slots to do this. 

 

 

Preach it. 

[USAFChief]

On 7/1/2022 at 3:09 PM, ashbury said:

I think the Twins are trying to exploit two independent market-inefficiencies at once, and they haven't quite got the kinks worked out and it's biting them.

1. Pitchers who can go 6+ innings with above average results are rare and expensive.
2. Pitchers with a history of injury can be obtained relatively cheaply.

Currently we have 16 position players, thus 24 pitchers on the 40-man.  The off-season pitching acquisitions reflect what I can only interpret as an intent to cover for injuries with massive numbers of other arms. 

Sonny Gray has hardly been an iron-man the past few seasons, and was acquired relatively "cheaply" for a first-round draft pick, since usually getting a #1 or #2 for your rotation will cost you a package of prospects, and he has indeed required some time off already.  Archer and Bundy had serious injury woes in their resumes, and the approach with both has been to severely limit their workloads (successfully with Archer in terms of Injured List time, not quite 100% for Bundy).  And of course Chris Paddack was traded for, at the last minute, with well-known elbow troubles in his recent past, and that move blew up in their faces immediately.

I support bullet item #1 above, which is the topic of this thread.  But combining it with item #2 has proved to be too much for their process to bear.  It's great to try to be on the leading-edge, but there is a risk in twisting too many knobs on the control panel at once.  For one thing, when you look at the results after the fact, cause-and-effect get intermingled too much to allow understanding.

"Oh, the injury bug" is an excuse, except... no, it was baked into this roster as it was constructed piece by piece.  Whatever separate plan they had to operate like the Rays got run over by the need to patch and patch.

Concur.

 

In addition, I think there's a conscious effort to get "big time starter run prevention" without "big time starters" by limiting exposure. 

"I can't pay for Max Scherzer to give me 8 good innings, but I can get his first 4 or 5 innings and then get the other 3 from relievers at a fraction of the cost."

 

Tricky part is getting those relievers.

 

[ashbury]

1 hour ago, USAFChief said:

I can't pay for Max Scherzer to give me 8 good innings

Guess the Mets need to give him a pay raise pronto, because he's only giving them 6, or sometimes 7 when the spirit moves him.  Money talks, Alderson, quit being so cheap.