ANOTHER BILLY-BALL SUNDAY
FROM THE BILL CHUCK FILES
STARTERS AND STOPPERS
This past week, I was watching the Dodgers visit Pittsburgh. Over a two-night span, I saw two of the finest pitchers in the game. First, Paul Skenes, and next, it was Shohei Ohtani’s turn.
Both pitchers threw Quality Starts, to no one’s surprise. Skenes left the game with the score 2-2 through six innings. Ohtani left the game with his team leading, 6-3, after 6.2 IP. Neither starter earned a win. Neither starter’s team won. This is the current state of baseball.
It really wasn’t that long ago when starting pitching ruled the game. Fans would often choose to go to a game or watch a game because the starting match-up would be that good. Today, in the words of Tripper Harrison, Bill Murray’s character in Meatballs, “it just doesn’t matter.”
Yesterday, throughout baseball, it certainly didn’t. In the 15 games played yesterday throughout the majors, the starters went 7-9, and the relievers were 8-6. The game is determined by the effectiveness of relievers.
Shohei Ohtani now has a minuscule 1.06 ERA. He is 6-2 on the season. But even with Shohei throwing 10 Quality Starts in his 11 total starts, a remarkable rate of 91%, the Dodgers as a team are 6-5 in his starts. That’s a .545 winning pct. Paul Skenes has a 2.84 ERA, good for 9th in the NL. He is 6-5 on his own, and the Pirates are 6-8 in his starts.
Relievers are often called “stoppers” because they stop the other team, but in reality, these days, they not only stop the opposition but also, too frequently, can stop their own team from winning.
People much smarter than me, like Jayson Stark and Theo Epstein, are trying to figure out what baseball can do to elevate the role of the starting pitcher back to its prior level of prominence. I certainly don’t know the answer. How does one combat the reliever who routinely comes in and throws pitches over 100 mph? So far this season, relievers have thrown 1189 of them. Starters have thrown 680. Actually, 18 starters have combined to throw 220, and Jacob Misiorowski by himself has thrown 460. On the other hand, 43 relievers have thrown at least one pitch of 100+ mph. That’s hard to compete with.
Teams go through pitchers in the same frequent fashion that Donald Trump goes through lies. There is always another one. The Cubs and the Blue Jays each have already had 28 different guys toe the rubber. No team has used fewer than 18 pitchers this season. We are not at the halfway point.
In 2001, the Rockies used 26 pitchers for the entire season, the most in the majors. The league average was 20 pitchers.
In 2011, the Jays used 30 pitchers for the entire season, the most in the majors. The league average was 22 pitchers.
In 2021, the Orioles and Mets each used 42 pitchers for the entire season, the most in the majors. The league average was 30 pitchers for each team.
And here we are, with the league average at 23 pitchers used per team, and we still have 90+ games to play.
Solving this problem is hugely important.
The game is doing great. Attendance is up. Viewership is up. Engagement is up. But the fear of a lockout is not subsiding and will only grow as the owners continue their PR campaign to vilify players. With the exception of the Manfred Man, recent rule changes have improved the game. Those improvements have come about because we returned the game to the way it was played, with games faster and base-running skills returning. Solving the starting-pitcher problem will do the same for the sport. We need to return to a time when fans looked for the starting pitcher match-ups they couldn’t wait to see.
I, for one, can’t wait to see that happen.
