Managing Pitching Staffs

I’ve just started to think about this. Maybe it’s just recency bias, but managing a pitching staff seems both harder and easier than it has been just, say, 20 years ago. (It’s obviously so different than managing a pitching staff 40 years ago that the differences are uninteresting.)

As practiced by Walt Weiss and Alex Anthopolous, the model is: (a) it’s a long season, and the number of pitchers on the team at any time (mandated by the league at 13) is nearly irrelevant. 13 isn’t nearly enough, so your real pitching staff is your current 13 plus another three or four in AAA. And this realness isn’t some philosophical exercise… it’s how you manage the team. Whether or not the 13 on the team at any time are performing well is irrelevant — the other three need to be rotated in. (b) Everyone understands (a), so the league has created a set of rules to limit treating your squad as a 17 guys with four ineligible on any particular night — waiver rules, player options, IL rules, not allowing J. and R. Suarez to have their first initials on their jerseys, etc. So your job is to manage around these restrictions, artfully, like signing Carlos Carrasco three times before Memorial Day or getting special rules for Shohei Ohtani. Carlos Carrasco is valuable not because he’s a good pitcher, but because he’s bad enough not to be wanted by anyone else and just barely good enough to be slotted in every once in awhile. That, or he has The Pictures.

Note that all of this is the result of a ridiculous financial restriction. If you were allowed a pitching staff of 17, they’d all earn at least the minimum for the whole season, not just the time they were with the big club. And they’d eat a lot of food from the training table and require more trainers, etc. One of the many changes that will come if baseball implements a spending cap that might interest players is a relaxation of the team maximum. Allow each team to have as many players as they want, though you could still keep a cap of 26 eligible per game. See if the Players’ Union might be interested in more major leaguers earning the minimum (or more) in return for a cap on aggregate spending. Just one variable you might tweak.

Squeal Like A Pig

While waiting for sundown to work westward, I was watching Colorado at the Phillies and once more came upon former Brave Jimmy Herget. I made a remark about him in the comments earlier last weekend, but I use Recappers’ Privilege to repeat my observation, wordlessly this time:

In other news, the Phillies, post-Rob Thompson, are playing well and just scored 5 in the bottom of the 8th to tie up the game at the Bank. The Rockies have lost their second six-run lead in a week. Oof. Former Brave Victor Vodnik got by Kyle Schwarber, Bryce Harper and Adolís Garcia in the 9th for free baseball. He then pitched a 1-2-3 10th leaving Garcia planted on 2nd. Nice work, Victor. I have time for another half-inning before crossing the country. (A 9-7 win for the Rockies in 11. So they win half the games they give up 6 run leads in.)

The Return to Chavez Ravine

I have two friends who are diehard Dodgers fans. One of them grew up in LA and lives on the East Coast. We used to trash talk all the time back when the Braves were improbably placed in the Western Division, obviously because they were located on the far western edge of the Eastern Time Zone. Alabama was practically on Hawaii time.

The other friend’s experience was the opposite of mine. I was ten when the Braves moved to Atlanta, and he was around 10 (I’m not sure exactly how old he is) and living in Brooklyn when the Dodgers moved to LA. This was sufficiently traumatic that upon leaving graduate school he migrated to LA and put together a career on the West Coast. We still talk trash. But I discovered today (while attempting to initiate trash talk) that he’s had some serious health difficulties in the last three months; it was touch-and-go for a bit, apparently, but he is on the mend now. I hate to let the grubby actual world invade the pristine Empyrean realm between the lines, but life keeps happening. Continue to get better, Uncle Bull, although Mookie Betts‘ oblique can ache for the next ten years as far as I care.

The Game

This is the second time this week the Braves faced someone from my part of the world. George Kirby grew up about three blocks from where I’m typing this and Emmet Sheehan grew up six exits up I-95 in Darien, CT, passing by my house every day of high school on his way to and from Fordham Prep. There are now so many players from Georgia who were inspired by the Braves success that it’s good to see the tony Tristate Area suburbs represent.

The Braves started the scoring with an Austin Riley single, plating Michael Harris II who returned to patrolling center field, gimpy quad be damned. (It is not the best advertisement for the athletic prowess of MLB hitters that they seem to be able to hit fine with a gimpy quad, but all but one player has to play in the field as well.) Mauricio Dubón moved to left with callup Jim Jarvis taking his second game at shortstop while Jorge Mateo continues to nurse a finger boo-boo.

Dem Bums tied up the game on a Kyle Tucker double off Chris Sale in the bottom of the 2nd. (They are the only group of bums with a joint payroll of $411 million, which is about the annual wage bill of Vanuatu, a country of 330,000 people. There has never been a major league player from Vanuatu, though they do have a pretty good beach volleyball player.)

In the top of the 4th Riley almost knocked Harris in again, but Harris was thrown out by 15 feet, and his tricky slide did not pass muster in NY.

Jarvis made a great play in the bottom of the 4th and got his first knock in the top of the next inning, topping Moonlight Graham by one on the alltime list. With both a Jarvis and a Didier on the team, I feel transported back to the late ’60s-early ’70s. Then, just to remind me of Sonny Jackson, Jarvis committed his first error, sailing a throw into the stands in the bottom of the 5th. That error came around to score on a Shohei Ohtani single to give the Dodgers a 2-1 lead.

By then, the Braves had entered the Dodgers bullpen, which is good, but you need to wear them out to give yourself a better chance on Saturday and Sunday. Against Kyle Hurt (I think he made S&M videos in the 70’s) Harris and Dubón led off with singles, but Hurt returned to his Locker still up 2-1.

A Freddie Freeman homer made it 3-1.

Hurt was followed by Will Klein, Nuthin’ in the seventh. After Harris had his 4th leadoff single of the game in the 8th, Klein gave way to Brock Stewart. Nuthin’. Tanner Scott pitched the uneventful 9th. Plenty of runners, plenty of hits, but maldistributed. Get ’em tomorrow.

Statistical Anomaly

Michael Harris II led off four different innings with hits. That is only modestly rare. in a 125-way tie for second place, Maurice Archdeacon had five leadoff hits in eight at bats in this game,