discuss

I like the idea of trying something different. Innovation is good.

I don't see how doing that is going to teach pitchers to have more stamina, though. Also, the reason the starter starts and the relievers relieve at the MLB level is to maximize the leverage of the innings pitched by your best relievers. Or at least it should be. You let Paps pitch when the game is a nail-biter and you let Timlin or Lopez or whomever have their time to shine when the score is 15-3. You have no idea what your offense will do on that particular night in the first inning. But the objective of A Ball isn't to win ballgames per se, it is to develop prospects. So you may as well experiment with this sort of idea down there. I don't see how it can hurt.

Then again, if Sheets is endorsing it, it will probably hurt. I'm expecting Prior and Harden to be the next to hop on the bandwagon of this pitching revolution.

I like it a lot...it should help develop late-inning confidence in starters. The strter will be able to stand on the mound in the 8th inning knowing that the ball is in his hands, and that there isn't going to be some setup man or closer automatically coming in no matter what he does. Good move by the Brewers.

Yeah, but they're still still only throwing the same number of innings or the same number of pitches. These are grown men we're talking about. I don't think coming in in the third and leaving in the 9th will make them feel any more special than coming in in the 1st and leaving in the 7th. I'm all for trying new things, but I really don't see the point.

I like the idea, but I just don't see how in the long run it will prevent injuries and allow pitchers to pitch those high counts. At the end of the day, you're still grooming these guys to pitch 6-7 innings. Getting them into the mindset is nice, but I'm just not sure how the body reacts to that.

I've always liked the idea of trying out relievers as 1-2 inning "starters". I remember a few years ago, must have been around 2003 with the closer-by-committee approach by the Sox, that there were a couple starters that always seemed to have rough first/second innings. Derek Lowe comes to mind for some reason. I was trying to apply logic to the idea of having your best reliever (aka, your closer) actually start the game for those troubled starters. Have a closer-type throw flames for 2 innings and hand it over to your 'conventional' starter for the next 6-7 innings. Makes a little bit of sense, but it doesn't get to the root cause of why those early innings are so much trouble for some starters. Also, who's to say that changing the inning number for a starter is actually going to change anything. He might come in for the 3rd inning, but it might as well be the 1st if it's just an issue of not being able to find a groove early.

Well, back in '03 or so, I know Pedro would sometimes struggle in the first or second inning. There's a pretty good reason for that though: his arm was well on its way to being shredded and he had trouble warming up.

I guess what I don't like about the Brewers' experiment is that it seems to play into the idea that modern starters somehow lack the mental toughness to pitch in the late innings rather than it being an issue of fatigue, injury, and conditioning. These guys are pros. They're not a bunch of sissies who are scared to pitch late in the game. They just get hurt or exhausted if they throw 150 pitches. Whether it's an issue of something systematically wrong with modern conditioning or simply an inevitability that comes from not having the luxury to pitch to contact with modern hitters the way guys were able to back in the late '60s is up for debate. I think that the idea that it's a lack of mental toughness is an attitude that misses the real issue.

I'm not sure I understand how pitching 6-7 innings is going to make guys any more prepared to throw a complete game than pitching 6-7 innings does.

Even if the net effect is to train them to be 6-7 inning pitchers, maybe mentally it will better train them to close out those late innings. It's possible. And closing out an inning late in the game does sometimes buy you the chance to go out for another inning...so, to that extent, maybe this helps pitchers go deeper into games later on.

On the other hand, coming in in the 3rd inning means you're going to come in a lot of times when your team is already leading or trailing 4-0. Of course, at some point starters do pitch from ahead or behind, and you want guys to learn to do both. But this is artificial. It's a lot easier to convince yourself that it's a clean slate when some other guy gave up those 3 or 4 runs than when you did. The tone will already be set in these games – so the starters will lose a little in the art of setting the tone.

There might be something positive to be gained from being put in those situations, too. I'm not sure what, exactly, but there usually is something positive to be gained from unfamiliar situations. Whether those positives outweigh the seemingly more practical positives of coming out in the first inning and never letting hitters get comfortable, I don't know.

Seems to me that if you're trying to train guys to go deeper, you would just incrementally stretch them out a bit more.

Ben Sheets says: "I think some people leave some of their better innings on the bench. Some guys are in really good grooves through seven, and get taken out when they could probably get through two more fairly easily."

Ok. So now guys start the game in the 3rd inning. They get through 7, maybe they do have another inning left in them...but the game is over. At least if they start the game, you have the option of sending them back out there if the situation dictates it.

I don't know. It's an interesting idea. I could see pitchers benefiting from it. I can't really see the benefit being that they throw a whole lot more complete games, though.

When it comes to physical health, Sheets knows best. Maybe guys leave a little gas in the tank because they don't want to put any more stress on their arm/body, especially if the situation dictates it.

Isn't this going to hamper the Brewers relievers progression? I would think it would be better for them to work in late innings and get used to that kind of pressure instead of having them throw in the 1-2-3 innings.

The worst part of this idea - were it to be used in the majors - is that it takes away the ability of managers to deploy their most effective relievers at the highest leverage opportunities. Why would anyone in their right mind want to have a starting pitcher at 60% in an important late inning situation rather than a fresh, hard throwing reliever at 100%? Especially when the hitters might now be seeing that starter for the third time. It doesnt make any sense.

As a training excercise to stretch out young pitchers - fine. I question how effective it will be, but I somewhat agree with the notion and I appreciate innovation in baseball.

First of all, if you did try this at the MLB level, you absolutely would still use your best relievers in critical late game situations. You just wouldn't be using your crappy relievers as a bridge.

But really first of all, you wouldn't do this at the MLB level. You're not going to have your closer start the game. You're probably having a middle reliever – who's a middle reliever for a reason – start. Then you bring in your "starter." But by the time you bring in your starter, you're that much more likely to already be in a hole. Even if you're not already losing at that point, if it happens to be a day when your "starter" has nothing, you've already burned one bullpen arm – and probably the bullpen arm most likely to come in and burn some garbage innings in the middle of a ballgame. You stretch the bullpen thin, and you effectively get fewer innings out of your starters – at least the back of the rotation guys – because you aren't having them run through the lineup a 3rd time while Jonathan Papelbon is out there playing drums in the bullpen. (While Eric Gagne is out there, maybe...but then, he's not closing anymore anyway, is he?)

This is entirely a minor league thing, something to do when player development is more important than winning. And it is interesting. It does put guys in different situations mentally than they might otherwise face. But, again, it doesn't put them in the situation mentally of actually starting a game and setting the tone early. It might be something to play with every once in awhile to broaden guys' experience, but I wouldn't go through a whole season like this.

I think the idea is stupid.

What the hell good will this do any pitcher moving forward?

If you want SP to be able to go deep in games, stop babying them and let them throw, thus building arm strength.

The whole pitch count thing just plain old sucks to me.

I think some people are missing the point. This is more of a tool to allow starting pitchers to finish a game, so they know what that is like. With current pitch counts these guys are not available at the end of the game, so they are relying on someone else to finisht he job for them. All this does it allow them to learn how to dig deep and slam the door at the end of a game. It is a learning tool and nothing more. This isn't there to build up pitch counts or anything else for that matter.

Personally, I think it is a good idea for some of the more highly touted prospects. I wonder how it will affect batters at that level, seeing that they'll have to make their adjustments in reverse.

Now, my question is this, say you use two relievers, one for the first and one for the second, then your starter goes out and sh*ts the bed and has to be pulled early, what do you do now? If you used a lot of guys the day before and they aren't available, you could be screwed. This could bring up some potential problems, but if done correctly could be a good teaching method for pitching prospects.

What they should also do is not allow their A-level pitchers to eat unless they can defeat a bear in hand-to-hand combat for their food. This will teach them to dig deep and understand what it's like to really WANT that food.

the idea of them "knowing what it's like" to finish a game seems odd to me.

haven't they finished games before in high school & college?

here's another possibility:
home/road pitchers.

That's probably going to fail miserably. It's not like when McClung is on the road he turns into a better pitcher, it's probably just a small sample size. Hopefully it reverses and evens out and it blows up in Yost's face -- that's actually my guess as to what will happen if he tries it.

At least he knows what splits are though. That's always good.

Oh yeah, and Seth McClung sucks big huge donkey balls... at pitching. I don't know what he does in his personal life.