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I want to begin a regular element in this weekly column. It will be called “If I were in charge” and, well, that is pretty self-explanatory.
Basically, if the powers that be foolishly let me decide what was in the best interests of baseball, well, I wouldn’t exactly run out of ideas quickly.
I think the correct place to start is a place where both MLB and the Players Association agree, which is like finding out that oil and water are going steady.
Before World Series Game 1, when queried what is most on his mind now, Players Association head Tony Clark talked about the abundance of pitching injuries afflicting the game — a problem that commissioner Rob Manfred also has expressed concern about.
In separate interviews, of course, both indicated a willingness to lower the number of pitchers allowed on a roster as a way to combat this.
Clark said the union proposed dropping to 12 pitchers while in negotiations for a new collective bargaining agreement that was reached prior to the 2021 season. He said MLB was not in agreement on that plan at that time and the sides instead agreed to limit rosters to 13 pitchers.
MLB disputed that was how the negotiations went. Again, these two sides would have difficulty agreeing what letter “difficulty” begins with.
But rather than fuel the constant fire between the sides, let’s accentuate the rare common ground. Both entities want to explore ways to lower pitching injuries. And both sides sure seemed open to lowering the maximum number of pitchers on a roster.
Manfred said he is now open to going to 12, but almost certainly not in 2024.
In part because it probably will take philosophical and training augmentations to get organizations and pitchers used to asking more out of starters, in particular. Also, nothing can be done without a negotiation and agreement between MLB and the union — Manfred cannot act unilaterally. And while I am willing to accentuate the kumbaya places, when these sides get together to negotiate, it tends to bring out old hostilities and mistrust.
But there does seem to be some momentum toward putting a further governor on the number of pitchers that could be used.
Why?
It would seem counterintuitive to ask pitchers to work more as a countermeasure to injuries. But the theory basically is that we are in what Clark cited as the “grip it and rip it” era. Pitchers are chasing velocity, velocity, velocity and movement/shape. The ethos of the modern game is to throw it as hard as you can without concern for providing length. The team will just bring in another pitcher who often throws harder, and the data shows the results of increased velocity on decreasing offense.
But the data also shows the body count. Use of the injured list for pitchers peaked in 2021 with 466, according to data supplied by MLB. That possibly was fallout from the first full season after the COVID 60-game schedule. The number was 409 in 2022 and 392 this past season. Perhaps it dropped this year as a consequence of the pitch clock — pitchers not able to go full force on every pitch with a timer preventing a greater recovery period between each pitch.
Keep in mind, though, that 392 was still the largest number of pitcher IL stints ever excluding 2021-22 — in 2014, it was 175.
Pitchers are chasing velocity from young ages through high school/college, the minors and, for those who make it, the majors. Two weeks ago, I asked Jacob deGrom whether a body can handle the kind of stressors someone like him puts on it. DeGrom essentially was the starter who threw the hardest fastball and the hardest slider, and he needed a second Tommy John surgery. He said probably not. But he said it would be hard to shun it if you can generate that type of velocity because it is so miserable to give up hits knowing you could have thrown harder and didn’t.
This is why MLB and the Players Association need to partner fully on this. They have to be the adults in the room. Because without an agreement on legislation, pitchers will not toggle down. As deGrom accentuated, it might be a battle against human nature even with legislation.
Still, I do not think the greatest pushback will come from the players. Every baseball operations department is pretty much going to hate a system that limits how many arms they can throw at their problem. There was whining this year at 13.
If staffs were capped at 12, the onus would shift to organizations that are obsessing over squeezing every mph out of arms and force greater focus on teaching, especially starters, to manage a lineup without maxing out on every pitch.
It would necessitate honoring length — going around a lineup for a third or even a fourth time again. The hope would be by forcing pitchers to use craft to a greater degree, “grip it and rip it” would lessen and so would the injuries.
I think there would be additional positive fallout, including:
- A return to the historic importance of starters. We more often would know who the probable starters are for a game and be able to tout those matchups rather than TBD vs. TBD or my opener vs. your opener.
- If there is less velocity, there likely will be more balls in play. With the major rules changes made this year, strikeout percentage still went up from 2022 (22.4) to 2023 (22.7 — the fourth-highest percentage ever). The games were played quicker, but the sport is still hungering for more ball-in-play action. It’s pretty simple: Very little will change without lowering velocity. More balls in play will foster a need for greater athleticism on the field and more action. A third trip through the lineup also should foster more offense.
- The removal of one pitcher to make it 12 on each roster with 14 position players also will promise more offensive potential. A team then could carry an additional bench asset — a speed guy or a lefty who hits righty pitching particularly well.
So, what would I do if I were in charge? I would get agreement as soon as possible, so it is feasible to go to 12 in 2025. This will not be an easy sell. Those baseball ops departments will hate it, as will relievers, a pretty big union bloc.
But the current style of the game is more inhumane to relievers than any other group in the sport. They are told to go full force on every pitch, and teams are frequently treating them as disposable commodities. One 98-mph firebreather blows out? No problem, we have another ready to go.
Again, peak use of pitchers (not including position players on the mound) came after the COVID season in 2021 with 846, and it was 804 in 2022 and 802 in 2023 — the three highest totals ever. It was 674 in 2014 (thanks to Lee Sinins of MLB Network research).
Do relievers really want this to be the way they are viewed? A commodity on a conveyor belt?
Also, this recommendation does not cost union jobs. The rosters stay at 26. In fact, I would implement a 27th man — kind of.
It would be similar to how the NFL has a third quarterback rule. Teams are allowed to dress an extra player on game days — a third quarterback who is allowed into the game if the main two quarterbacks have been injured or disqualified — who does not count toward the active roster.
MLB teams should be allowed, from the beginning of the season through Aug. 31 (after which rosters expand to 28), to carry an extra pitcher as the 27th player. That pitcher only could be used after the fifth inning of a game in which a team trails by five or more runs — essentially an emergency situation (also think the third goalie rule in the NHL). The new edict isn’t meant to be punitive or put pitchers in danger by having them be overexposed in lost causes.
I would think the 27th player generally would be a Quadruple-A type who is thrilled to get major league service time and pay, plus a potential opportunity. I would make this player not be bound by the standard option rules. A team could change who is in that role whenever it likes. So, for example, if a team wanted to rotate that job from series to series so that if the pitcher is not used, he could return to work in the minors without missing too much time, fine. If the team has that pitcher throw four innings in a blowout, he could be sent down and another 27th man brought up, and if there is another blowout the next day — rinse, repeat.
Again, the idea here is to protect pitchers, not put them at further risk.
The additional fringe benefit, I believe, is the 27th man would reduce the amount of times we see a position player pitching. Every once in a while, that was a nice distraction from a blowout. But it is not quite that any longer due to the frequency — position players pitched 115 times this year, down from the record 153 of 2022 (thanks again to Lee Sinins).
It would be best to use the minor leagues as a laboratory for such a seismic new rule, as it was with the pitch timer. But rosters are shaped so differently and priorities are so different in minor league games that it would be difficult to do it for this kind of rule. Unfortunately, this needs to be done in the majors to find out the unintended consequences that come with any new rule.
However, it was not long ago that 12 pitchers were the standard size of a pitching staff — and, of course, it was less than that historically. Because the trajectory of this year’s 84-win Diamondbacks reminded me of the 82-win 1973 Mets, I looked it up: In 12 total playoff games — 50 years ago — that Ya Gotta Believe squad used seven pitchers.
Yes, it was a different sport then. But it was a sport in which chasing velocity was not the only strategy.
It would help in so many ways if we can encourage ways to return to more craft and the speed we talk about is on the bases and in the field.
Roster stuff perhaps only I notice
I am continuing the series ranking teams 30-to-1 if you put every player back on the franchise with which he signed his first pro contract.
Remember, we are not ranking just the quality of the players because the A’s have Matt Chapman, Matt Muncy, Sean Murphy, Matt Olson and Sonny Gray, plus second baseman Zach Gelof had a nice breakout as a rookie this year.
But the A’s are going to be ranked 29th here because they do such a terrible job of amateur procurement when it comes to depth and quality depth, especially when it comes to pitching.
The A’s have been dubious at this for a while, but not long ago the baseball operations excelled at winning trades. For example, they once turned Jeff Samardzija into Chris Bassitt and Marcus Semien before they were Chris Bassitt and Marcus Semien.
But the team’s recent wave of trades of players such as Chapman, Murphy and Olson does not look so great. They dealt Bassitt to the Mets before the 2022 season for Adam Oller and J.T. Ginn, and that looks like a bad swap for Oakland.
And the A’s just do not get players to the majors. Just 28 of their original signs played in the majors this season, which was the fewest of any organization. No surprise. Oakland has had the lowest total in each of the past five years.
They had just 12 original pitchers — basically too few to even have a full staff in our exercise. There were 212 pitchers who made at least eight starts this year. Sonny Gray, with 32, was the only one originally signed by the A’s. The next-most was Shintaro Fujinami with seven — and he was traded during the season into Baltimore’s bullpen.
Here is the Oakland team — note the horrible pitching:
Catcher: Murphy
First base: Olson
Second base: Gelof
Shortstop: Nick Allen
Third base: Chapman
Left field: Seth Brown
Center field: Lawrence Butler
Right field: Billy McKinney
DH: Muncy
Bench: Dairon Blanco, Jordan Diaz, Alfonso Rivas, Tyler Soderstrom
Rotation: Gray, Fujinami, Dylan Covey, Hogan Harris, Mason Miller
Closer: A.J. Puk
Bullpen: Kyle Finnegan, Zack Kelly, Seth Martinez, James Naile, Daniel Palencia, Gus Varland
My totally made-up trade
Shane Bieber from the Guardians to the Cardinals for Dylan Carlson
I don’t think this trade gets made. Cleveland — despite all that is working to lower Bieber’s value (more on that in a moment) — probably will need more than Carlson, who has yet to fully express the level of talent once projected for him.
It is just that I think these two teams line up. The Cardinals need starting pitching and are deep in bats. The Guardians need bats and have starting pitching depth. So it is a question of whether they can find a match that works for both.
Bieber just feels to me like a Cardinal. Aaron Nola, too. So do the Cardinals trade for Bieber and sign Nola as a free agent and feel they solved their biggest issue? They need to add at least two starters this offseason, and have insisted they are committed to doing so.
Bieber finished fourth for the AL Cy Young in 2019, won the award in 2020, was an All-Star in 2021 and finished seventh for the Cy in 2022. He missed nine weeks in the second half of 2023 due to elbow inflammation, returning late in the season to make two starts. A team that obtains Bieber will have to believe in his health. Bieber will be entering his walk year in 2024, so the small control period also diminishes his value.
And Bieber was far from dominant in 2023. He had a 3.80 ERA in 21 starts. And for the third straight season, his strikeout rate dove — from 41.1 percent in 2020 to 33.1 in 2021 to 25.0 in 2022 to 20.1 in 2023.
Put it all together and the Guardians cannot expect a return befitting Bieber’s name and reputation. The question is whether they are better off waiting until the trade deadline and seeing if he pitches well enough to build value. The problems: He could get hurt again. He could pitch poorly. The Guardians could be in the playoff race, making it harder to deal the righty.
In Triston McKenzie, Cal Quantrill and strong 2023 rookies Logan Allen, Tanner Bibee and Gavin Williams, Cleveland can form a fine rotation even without Bieber. But the Guardians hit 27 fewer homers than any other team this season and scored the fourth-fewest runs. They need bats.
An executive said something that interested me about the Cardinals: He thought they had been hurt by being unable to declutter their positional depth. The theory is that some players didn’t get full runways to show what they can do or felt the stress of having to produce or be replaced.
If I ran the Guardians, I would be trying to get Brendan Donovan or Lars Nootbaar. But it will be difficult for the Cardinals to move better quality without expanding this deal. For example, if the Guardians also included a good reliever with team control such as Trevor Stephan, would that open more possibilities?
Would the Guardians be interested in Willson Contreras, who has four years at $77 million left on his contract? They could use him more for his bat as a DH than as a catcher, if they preferred.
There are a lot of bat options the Cardinals can offer — include Tyler O’Neill, Tommy Edman and others in that group.
And the need for pitching should make Bieber attractive in the marketplace beyond the Cardinals. It is just that the Cardinals have bats and the history of extending contracts with players they obtain such as Bieber.
It feels as if these two teams — at the minimum — have to do a lot of talking with one another.
Last licks
Within five days of the end of the World Series, clubs and players have to make decisions on options — club, player and mutual.
There are a lot of interesting choices coming.
They include what the Reds do with Joey Votto. It seems fairly obvious the Reds will reject the $20 million team option and pay a $7 million buyout. That would conclude the Reds’ obligation on a 10-year, $225 million deal.
But I have to imagine the two sides have been talking leading up to this decision. Votto seems to value having a one-team career. Votto also is very popular with ownership and in the city. Cutting him loose if he wants to continue to play (which seems to be the case) would not be popular.
However, Votto turned 40 in September. He played in just 65 games in 2023 and hit .202. But he did produce 14 homers, homering in a career-best 5.9 percent of his plate appearances. Could he still have a role as a DH, first baseman and pinch-hitter?
Don’t answer yet. Because in the big picture, the Reds would not want to stunt the growth of a young crop that broke through this year. Players such as Spencer Steer and Christian Encarnacion-Strand figure prominently into their first base/DH plans and are probably better hitters at this point than Votto.
The problem with a legacy player such as Votto is that if he is on the roster, it is hard for a manager such as David Bell not to play him.
Would Votto take his $7 million buyout and, say, another $1 million-$2 million salary for 2024 and be fine with very limited at-bats if there are no injuries? Would Bell be able to limit those at-bats?
And is there a landing if not in Cincinnati?
I have zero insight, but I do wonder about Toronto to fill the first base/DH role that Brandon Belt held this year. By the way, the key word in that sentence was “Toronto,” which is where Votto is from. Belt and Kevin Kiermaier are both free agents and were two of the few lefty bats for the Blue Jays. They need to address that in the offseason. Do they think there is still life in Votto’s lefty bat?
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