Six-inning minimum?
Sign me up.
Seriously.
This week’s trial balloon floated by Major League Baseball didn’t stir sour memories, like the first time I heard about the still-insane extra innings ghost runner.
It didn’t hit me as something that sounded bad in the moment but actually turned out to be pretty good, like the defensive shift limitations and pickoff parameters that sparked offense and brought back aggressive baserunning.
No, this tentative idea — one we never would have heard about if the game’s tinkerers were not at least giving it some real thought — sounds good off the bat.
Whether we wanted to get used to it or not, we have been conditioned to baseball updating and adapting its rules as often as other sports. As long as that trend is going to continue, making a rule that saves starting pitching should be next up on the to-do list.
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“We are interested in increasing the amount of action in the game, restoring the prominence of the starting pitcher and reducing the prevalence of pitching injuries,†an unnamed MLB official told ESPN in that floated some of the potential changes being debated behind closed doors.
One potential option, decreasing the size of pitching staffs, sounds underwhelming. We’ve watched in real time how teams can and will manipulate roster sizes by hustling arms back and forth between the majors and the minor leagues.
One potential option, the double-hook designated hitter, could help. If the DH was connected to the starting pitcher, meaning the ability to use one went away after the starter was lifted, more teams would be interested in pushing starters deeper — and more interested in having starters they could push deeper without losing games because of it. This notion is nothing new, though. Some fans have been calling for it for years.
Another potential option sounds like the best one, although it would also be the most radical mentioned. Keep starting pitchers on the mound for at least six innings. By rule.
That innings number, six, used to be viewed as the bare minimum of what should be expected from a decent starter. It’s fading, though. Fast. The average amount of innings pitched by a starter this season is 5.26, with an even lower average of 4.3 innings taking place in Class AAA, ESPN reports. These are alarming trends if you don’t want to see a future for baseball where every game is started by a to-be announced opener on the mound, before the bullpen baton starts being passed.
There would have to be exceptions, of course. In Jesse Rogers touched on a few. A pitcher could exit before the six-inning mark if he throws 100 pitches; for some reason this pulled-from-nowhere number continues to be viewed as a scary one for pitchers, when the stress level of how those pitches got there seems to matter much more. A pitcher could leave early if he allows four or more earned runs; that means the start would not qualify as a quality start. A pitcher could leave early if he gets injured, obviously, but that occurrence would require said starter to hit the injured list as to avoid manipulation of the rule.
Some will push this campaign as a health-focused initiative. There will be voices who claim starters will get hurt less often if they have to pitch deeper and therefore can’t max out their velocity as often. I’ve got mixed feelings on that. Pitchers get hurt, period. That’s never going to change. But one only needs to see the social media videos young players love to post of their attempts to max out mph readings to have some worries about trend lines. Lots of throwers out there. Fewer and fewer pitchers. If change is coming, it needs to come soon, and it’s going to have to trickle down from MLB to really resonate.
I learned a lesson from the rule changes that were put in place to tame shifts, inspire baserunning and trim dead time.
I didn’t like that the changes had to be made. In a perfect world, the game would adjust itself. But the world is not perfect, and the result of the changes has been mostly good. Games are crisper. Hits that feel like hits more often become them instead of becoming shift-robbed outs. And who doesn’t like more steals? Fans wanted that. Now they have it.
The big problem with the perfect-world way of thinking is that it ignores how modern front offices are built. They are built to prioritize winning, usually in the most efficient and affordable way possible. We are in an era of hedge-fund baseball. Regulation is required. Edges that are exploited have to be adjusted.
Reliable starting pitching is a good way to win. It’s also expensive. Costs a lot to secure. Costs a lot to keep. Costs a lot less to maneuver around it by spreading out innings between more arms, cheaper arms. Add in the advanced analytics case of prioritizing individual matchups and that dreaded third-time-through-the-order ERA bump, and the anti-starter movement grows by the day. And yet, I’ve never heard a fan celebrate a bullpen game. Have you?
Times like this are when a rule change is needed. Owners need to realize their front offices need to operate within updated parameters, for the sake of the game and its consumers. Players need to realize the fade of the starting pitcher is a money-saving move for owners and campaign for the position’s protection. Everybody needs to think about if it’s best for the game to have max-effort, short-burst pitching become the only kind of pitching that exists one day if nothing is done.
Baseball seems not just willing but determined to keep updating its rules. If that’s the case, sign me up for this six-inning minimum yesterday.