Starting Pitching + A Six Man Rotation = Crazy???

The more positive news we hear about Nate and Willis, the more likely I think it is that Galarraga ends up on the trading block.

Even if Robertson and Willis prove that they can be reliable starters again few teams will want their salary. Those that do won’t offer us much in return. Provided the team is absolutely sure that NR and DW can start again, capitalizing on Galarraga’s break out campaign might be 1. easy and 2. smart.

I like Armando as much as the next fan, but I’m sure we’re all acutely aware of his luck factor last year and I honestly don’t think we can expect the same from him next season or really any season going forward. That doesn’t make him value-less but it does mean that DD will be able to sell high on him.

I can think of maybe three teams that would accept NR’s or DW’s contract. I can think of close to 15 that might be willing to take AG’s contract and some faith that he’s at least a #4 starter.

A 6 man rotation only makes sense in the unlikely scenario where there is little difference between any the team in question’s 6 starters. Otherwise, over the first 5 months of the season (roughly 135 games), the 22 starts that you give to #6 come at the expense of 4 starts from your ace, 4 starts from your #2, 4 starts from your #3, 5 starts from your #4 and 5 starts from your #5. In the case of the Tigers, to be optimistic this season means hoping for healthy turnarounds from Verlander and Bonderman and improvement from Galarraga and Jackson. Therefore, it would seem as though the 17 games started by #6 (Miner or Willis) instead of #’s 1 through 4 might result in 5 or more losses through the first 5 months, which would more than offsetting having rested arms in September.

While the Tigers have 7 options for their starting rotation, so do the Red Sox (assuming health): Beckett, Dice-K, Penny, Lester, Wakefield, Bucholz, and Smoltz. It’ll be interesting to see how their situation shakes up in comparision to ours. A six man rotation is never a great idea—it disrupts rhythym, training, and performance. It eats away at stats. Personally, give me baseball from my parents’ time, with the four man rotation and make the pitchers actually PITCH smarter, than having them toss harder and longer.

Cleverer people than me have suggested using a “6-man” or more rotation in the NL. Essentially, the idea is that you let your top couple of starters really be starters, and the rest of your pitchers you pull when they would have to hit. The argument is that the difference between letting a pitcher hit and even a crappy position player is worth the slight loss of bullpen flexibility. This is less the case the better the pitcher is—you can afford to let Johan Santana go out there and take his hacks, for example. Obviously that’s not what I’m suggesting here, but a similar gain might be realized, even in the AL.

It’s not news to anyone that relievers tend to have better ERA’s than starters. In some part, this is structural, since a reliever can let a starter’s runners score without damaging his own ERA. But it’s also because a guy who’s going out there for three innings can throw absolute gas for those three innings. What if we used a “piggyback start” strategy like we did for a couple of Willis’ starts last year? We get just as much Verlander, Bonderman, and Galarraga, and the Robertson/Willis & Jackson/Miner combos can combine for the next two.

(Aside: if they do repeatedly piggyback Willis and Robertson, I am going to refer to these games as “boarding the Nate Train”.)

(Another Aside: I’m in agreement with MacRae that maybe seeing as much Galarraga as possible is not the best idea. The point here was “our best three starters”.)

Under a true 6-man, I’d be worried about what Leo Mazzone called a “loss of sharpness” that he observed as the difference even between 4 and 5 man rotations. He was a fanatic about getting his guys throwing between starts in game-like ways to combat this.

I think the real problem with this would be ego. Not that I think our rotation is a bunch of prima donnas, but I think a lot of these guys see themselves as “starters”, and probably won’t want to be a glorified reliever. Also, their stat lines would likely suffer, which would drive down future value. It’s probably easier to get one or two guys to accept being relievers than four. But I think it would work, if you could get people on board.

lets see trade your most reliable starting pitcher from last year and start you two worst starting pitchers from last year..brilliant..

.do you have anything to to with running the Lions?