Mike's Mets - Rule Changes Aren’t Always the Correct Fix

  

By Mike Steffanos

Friday night, Atlanta's manager Brian Snitker removed his starting pitcher Ian Anderson after only 5 innings. This isn't at all unusual these days, particularly in the playoffs, but Anderson had yet to allow a hit and had only thrown 76 pitches. Baseball tradition would seem to demand that Anderson be allowed more of a chance to make history, but the likelihood of the Braves' righty accomplishing the feat was fairly remote. He had only thrown 39 of those pitches for strikes and had already walked 3 batters.

Snitker chose to make the moves he thought gave him the best chance of winning the game over the minuscule chance that Anderson could pitch 4 more innings. I would support the decision if I was a Braves fan, as most of the pundits I've read have done. Nothing is more important than winning in the World Series. But, of course, it's also an opportunity for old-timers like myself to lament the way that baseball has devalued starting pitching over the decades.

It's gotten to the point where a starter going 5 innings and exiting with the lead is considered an excellent effort. In the game of my youth, that would be frowned upon as leaving the job only partly done. But that was before MLB pitching became mostly about max-effort hurlers emptying their tank relatively quickly and then giving way to other hard-throwing arms hoping to finish the job.

As pitching evolves, the tenet of not allowing a starting pitcher to face a lineup for the third time has taken quite a bit of heat. Although it's demonstrably true that pitchers really are less effective when a hitter has already seen them a couple of times, this thinking — and, indeed, the entire field of baseball analytics by extension — has become the scapegoat for anyone who longs to see starting pitching reverse the trends of recent years.

It's become inevitable that new baseball rules are touted as the "cure" when the game of baseball changes in ways we don't really like. Sure enough, Ken Rosenthal has a piece in The Athletic proposing rule changes to "fix" the problem of devalued starting pitching. First, Rosenthal lays out the problem:

The best starting pitchers — Max Scherzer, Gerrit Cole, Jacob deGrom, etc. — are stars who sell tickets and attract TV viewers, ranking among the top entertainers in the sport. The days they pitch are events. Even casual fans get caught up in their achievements. And yet, the way the game is evolving, the species is becoming virtually extinct, especially in the postseason, when the audiences are largest and the games matter most.

I would argue that top starters such as the 3 named by Rosenthal are given more rope to go deeper into a game than lesser starters. In Anderson's case, he's a fine pitcher, but he's also a 23-year-old who has only pitched 160.2 combined MLB innings over this season and last. Had he been a bit older with more major league experience, Anderson would probably have been left in the game longer.

I get that fans would have liked to have seen Anderson go deeper into the game to pursue the no-hitter, but the Astros have a potent offensive team. Anderson's struggle to throw strikes would make a manager worry about him making a mistake that could cost the Braves a pivotal game in the Series. There's a vast difference between being up 2-1 and being down 2-1 in a best of seven series.

There is also thinking that the swift hook for starters we've been witnessing is related to the pandemic that curtailed the 2020 season and so severely limited the number of innings pitchers piled up in that crazy 60-game season. Rosenthal acknowledges this but lacks faith that MLB will return to less drastic pitcher usage: 

...I don't trust teams to get there, not when their only mission is to win and the use of one faceless reliever after another, most throwing in the upper 90s with hellacious secondary stuff, has proven to be effective. No, teams must be forced to change the way they draft, develop and deploy pitching. And the good news — yes, there is good news — is that such change is within reach.

And, according to Ken, that change can be achieved by... you guessed it, rule changes:

The gradual implementation of two new rules, one limiting the size of a pitching staff, the other requiring a team to lose its DH once it removes its starting pitcher, would be the first step. Such rules would need to be negotiated into the new collective bargaining agreement, but the revival of starting pitching would benefit both players, leading to higher salaries for a larger number of pitchers, and owners, improving the product and generating greater interest. Repeat after me: Everyone would win. 

But Ken's thesis here would be dependent on how you define winning. In any scenario, implementing the "double hook" rule would not benefit players whose value is primarily as a Designated Hitter. I would have to believe that the union would be against devaluing the position, which essentially adds another regular job to a lineup. But honestly, I'm not convinced that changing the rule would enhance the game for me as a fan.

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