A Relief Ace Rotation, Part 3: Other Concerns

Another easily imagined objection is that, pitching just 54 times all year, the relief aces might not deliver the value they could by being used more traditionally and pushed up to 60 or 65 appearances. Getting fewer innings out of one’s best relievers, in addition to putting them in less important situations on average, would indeed be a deal-breaker. With MLB considering a hard cap on the number of pitchers a team can carry for 2020, putting that kind of added volume pressure on the rest of the pitching staff would be a disaster. The reality, however, is that it’s a red herring.

In 2019, even counting Duffey’s innings in Rochester, the trio of Rogers, Duffey, and Romo pitched 190 times, and amassed a total of 201 innings pitched. Working with two or three guaranteed days of rest, they could all stretch their average outing to about an inning and a half.

On any given day, Rogers might come in with the bases loaded in the sixth, or Romo might serve as an opener. If they pitch well, they could give the team eight or nine outs. Then, on another occasion, the team might be trailing by three runs in the eighth, and they might be asked for just two quick, low-stakes outs. By the end of the season, however, a healthy pitcher working in such a role, and this role only increases their likelihood of staying healthy, should be able to throw 75 or 80 innings.

From the set, you could certainly project an extra 20 total innings, relative to what they can provide in the current system. That volume helps make up for the loss in average leverage, even without baking in the superior expected performance in those innings.

It also makes the prospect of signing an innings-eating mid-rotation starter, rather than an exorbitantly expensive longshot ace, more palatable because it starts to fill in any gaps where the team might otherwise not project to have average-plus pitchers to take the mound. The concept of this change, in addition to keeping the club’s best relievers healthier and pitching at the peak of their ability, is to be unmatched in consistent competence on the mound. This allows the offense to regress from its all-world 2019 showing and still score enough to win nearly every day.

The final major objection to this idea, however, is a tougher one to answer: the pitchers might just hate it. Eventually, they wouldn’t. In some far-future version of baseball, barring other fundamental changes, there will be relief ace rotations, and they’ll be more efficient than the way teams operate bullpens now, and no one will question them, because they will be as familiar and feel as natural as starting rotations do now.

For now, however, there’s a certain identity that goes with being a reliever. There’s a culture, out there beyond the outfield walls, in the ballpark’s nooks and crannies. There’s a hunger for the big moment, the adrenaline rush, and the respect that comes with answering the call when the team’s need is greatest, even, perhaps especially, when one is not at full strength. Relievers want to feel a little slighted and a little overworked. They want some fuel for the fire.

Brushing that mentality aside now would be unduly snide and inadvisable. There are real and valid psychological underpinnings to it. That said, some of the best relievers in baseball rely on excellent command, on cerebral game-planning, and on perfect repetition and execution, just like the best starters do. Over time, that population will grow, and the culture will gradually change.

If the Twins want to jump the market and gain an edge on the competition by changing their bullpen structure however, they will have to deal with the consequences of demanding an almost immediate change in culture. They might not have the stomach for that, and they might be right not to.

Still, the idea merits real consideration, because if done right, it could be the next in the lineage of great pitching staff manipulations that shakes the game to its core. Tony La Russa had Dennis Eckersley. Joe Torre had Mike Stanton, Jeff Nelson, and Mariano Rivera. Terry Francona had Andrew Miller and Cody Allen. Kevin Cash had Ryne Stanek. Rocco Baldelli has Rogers, Duffey, and a bunch of other interesting pieces that need to be fitted together perfectly next season in order for Minnesota to repeat their 2019 success.

Check out Part 1 and Part 2 of this series.