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Roles that had fallen out of vogue in the early 1980s have come back, to some extent. With glaring exceptions at the absolute top of the market, teams have been willing to pay quickly and handsomely for free-agent relievers over the last two winters, while many starters have had to wait out the sluggish markets alongside the position players.
Yet, for the first time in modern history, starting pitchers had a better collective ERA than relievers did in 2019. There are many reasons for that, and even after accounting for them, it might not be correct to suggest that those starters really outperformed their bullpen counterparts, on an inning-for-inning basis. The fact remains, though, that working in short bursts is becoming less of an advantage than it used to be, and that even the teams who made it to October this season seemed forced to cobble together and restructure their bullpens on the fly.
Being a reliever allows pitcher to pare down their repertoire to their most effective two or three offerings. It often leads them to throw harder, and their stuff plays up thanks to that extra zip. They can also be shielded from platoon vulnerabilities, though less so in 2020 than in past seasons (thanks to the incoming three-batter minimum for relief appearances).
However, they also have to be ready at all times, bounce back quickly after unsuccessful or tiring appearances, and stay mentally locked in even if they’re asked to warm up, sit down, and warm up again to go into the game an inning later. Starters must deal with pacing themselves and strategizing more deeply against opposing hitters. Relievers must deal with unpredictability.
What if that unpredictability could be eliminated? What if, in fact, a Relief Ace rotation could work, the same way the starting rotation does?
Starters have not always enjoyed this degree of rhythm and routine. When he managed the Yankees, Casey Stengel famously signaled to a given pitcher that he would start that day by placing a baseball in one of his cleats before the players arrived in the clubhouse. That worked for Stengel’s crew, but over time, pitchers articulated a preference for a more consistent routine to optimize rest and preparation.
Experience taught teams to listen to their charges in that regard. Rotations are de rigueur now because they’ve proved to be the best way to manage the most important group of pitchers a team has. Perhaps it’s time to implement the same thing among a unit that has nearly achieved parity with those five hurlers on every team in the league: the top three arms in the bullpen.
In 2019, when working on zero days’ rest, Taylor Rogers struck out 27.3 percent of opponents, walked or plunked 14.3 percent of them, and allowed home runs to 6.5 percent of them. On one or more days of rest, he fanned 34.3 percent of all hitters, walked just 3.0 percent of them, and allowed just three home runs in 201 plate appearances. Here are batters’ stats against him, on zero days, on more, and overall.
Those numbers are jarring, but Rogers isn’t unique in that regard.
Unlike Rogers and Duffey, Sergio Romo will become a free agent after the end of the World Series. Like them, however, he’s a candidate for a Relief Ace rotation, should he return.
Throughout the majors, 2019 saw a higher percentage of all batters faced by pitchers pitching on zero days rest than either 2017 or 2018. More importantly, pitchers in those situations allowed a higher adjusted OPS, relative to the league average, than they had in any season since 1994, and they had the highest ERA (4.52) in that circumstance since 1950, when pitching on no rest was about 75 percent less common than it is now.
There’s an important innovation waiting to be made here. Some team is going to exploit a market inefficiency in 2020 by using their best relievers in a more regimented, less emergent way, thereby getting more and better work out of them. There’s no reason that that team ought not be the Twins.
But what would that look like? Is it possible practically? Is it wise? We’ll unpack those questions tomorrow in Part 2.
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