General Managers Address the Highs and Lows of Starter Innings

The Seattle Mariners had the most starter innings in the majors this year and fell short of the playoffs. Conversely, Detroit Tigers had the fewest starter innings and reached the postseason. For their part, the Kansas City Royals, who had the second-most starter innings, did play October baseball, while the San Francisco Giants, who had the second-lowest total, did not. And then there were the Milwaukee Brewers. Much like the Tigers, the Brewers made the postseason despite getting a low number of innings from their starters — they ranked fifth from the bottom — in part because several of their relievers had outstanding seasons.

What does that all mean? Moreover, what might it mean going forward?

In search of answers, I spoke with the general mangers and/or presidents of baseball operations of the five aforementioned teams at this week’s GM Meetings in San Antonio, Texas. For the execs whose clubs had a low number of starter innings, I was interested in how few innings they felt they could get next year and return (or advance) to the postseason. For those whose clubs topped the starter innings rankings, my inquiries were more about their philosophy and preferences in the seasons to come.

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Justin Hollander, Seattle Mariners

“I don’t think there is such a thing as too many [starter innings],” said Hollander, whose club had 942 2/3 starter innings this season. “We are very cognizant of pitcher health and of making sure we’re putting them in positions to succeed. I think we did about as well as you can with that. In a perfect world, you would never have a stressful inning as a pitcher; that’s not realistic. But surrounding our starters with an impact bullpen, which we’ve done over the years, gives the manager and the pitching coaches the freedom and confidence to let the starter go to the point where they feel like they’ve done everything they can to win the game.

“Our starters take a ton of pride in going deep into the game. We don’t want to artificially limit them, or script out what that’s going to look like. Watching and evaluating the game as it goes on — when is the right time? — is something that our staff has done a great job of.”

The days of a Mickey Lolich going 300-plus innings, like he did multiple times in the 1970s with the Tigers, are long gone and unlikely to be repeated. Even so, are today’s top-end innings standards — Logan Gilbert’s 208 2/3 was this year’s highest total — at all detrimental to a pitcher’s long-term health and effectiveness?

“In the 2024 baseball universe, our starters are pretty optimized,” opined Hollander. “And I think there is a distinction between optimized and maxed out. We’re not looking to max out and get every possible pitch out of our starters, we’re looking to optimize the performance of our team. We don’t ask them to do more than that, because then you might be risking maximizing to the detriment of the team.

Despite “an impact bullpen,” giving more innings to relievers hasn’t been a consideration for the Mariners.

“We’ve never talked about that,” Hollander told me. “Obviously, there is a rest component, and there may be a time when someone hasn’t pitched in a few days so it’s kind of a must-pitch day for them if there is a spot to get them in the game. I think we had a great balance this year between pitcher usage and pitcher rest. But I don’t think we ever factored in the idea of wanting to take a starter out to put someone in from the bullpen if it wasn’t time to take the starter out. Our starters are among the highest-impact starters in baseball. We want to do everything we can to put them in position to succeed for as many innings as they have to give us.”

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Scott Harris, Detroit Tigers

Citing both his team’s 753 starter innings, a number that owes something to a spate of injuries, as well as the volatility of reliever performances year to year, I asked Harris, “What is the fewest you can get next year and return to the postseason?”

“I think the line between starter and reliever is blurring,” Harris replied. “If you watched the Tigers in the second half, we didn’t have traditional starters that started our games; we had a pitcher come in and replicate a starter’s workload. The philosophy behind that is, we felt like we could get better matchups without putting an extra strain on our bullpen. And we didn’t actually put an extra strain on our bullpen. So, I don’t think it will be hard to replicate what we did last year if we choose to pursue that nontraditional pitching strategy of a reliever starting a game, then a starter-type pitching the bulk innings, and then relievers coming in at the end of a game.

“I don’t think we’re going to do that,” continued Harris. “We should always tailor our strategy to the personnel we have. But I think you can get to the playoffs doing that across a full season.”

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J.J. Picollo, Kansas City Royals

“Without question,” said Picollo when asked if he’d like to see this year’s 911 innings replicated. “The deeper your starting pitchers can go on a consistent basis, the less taxed your bullpen tends to be. If you manage contact better… of course, Seattle was very different in that they strike a lot of guys out. We’re more contact-oriented and play good defense. It fits how we’re built with our position players.

“I don’t know what the right number is. Years ago, the magic number was 1,000, and now it’s probably closer to 800. And you want a bullpen with versatility — you’re built well with middle relievers, back-end guys, left-handers, right-handers. If your starting pitching is good, you have a better chance to have success with your bullpen.”

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Buster Posey, San Francisco Giants

“That’s a tough question to answer, to give you a specific number,” said Posey. “I’m of the mindset that if you can get your starters deeper into the game, it makes you a better team, not only for that particular game, but for the length of the season as well. What’s the right number? I don’t know. As much as they can productively give us is maybe the right number.”

The Tigers got into the postseason with even fewer innings than the 778 2/3 that San Francisco’s starters threw.

“Correct,” the recently-named GM said to that fact. “You don’t need them, but again, I’m of the mindset that in order to compete for the long haul, it’s always beneficial to have starting pitching that can get deeper into games.”

The 80-win NL West team actually had a workhorse fronting their rotation. Logan Webb was one just four big league pitchers to reach the 200-inning mark. Why then, outside of Blake Snell missing time with injuries, did the Giants have so few starter innings?

“That’s a good question,” said Posey. “I wasn’t in the day-to-day last year to give you specifics why. I could probably revisit. Hopefully we’re having a different conversation next year and we can revisit it again.”

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Matt Arnold, Milwaukee Brewers

“It’s certainly a challenge to fill the number of innings you have to fill over the course of a season,” said Arnold, whose team got 794 from its starters. “We’re fortunate for next year. We obviously have Freddy Peralta, and the emergence of Tobias Myers. We also have Brandon Woodruff coming back [from October 2023 shoulder surgery]. I think that’s a big deal. Then there are guys like DL Hall, Aaron Ashby, etcetera, and some young pitchers coming as well. We have a lot of candidates to help our rotation next year, but we are always aware of the challenges that we’re all faced with filling the number of innings we have to fill over the course of a season. Also, protecting the bullpen. We had a good bullpen last year. Trying to balance both of those, we just need to have all hands on deck like we’ve had for a long time here.”

Milwaukee’s relievers were indeed outstanding in 2024, logging 51 wins and a 3.11 ERA, both NL bests. Making that especially notable were the names on the back of the uniforms. Much like in Detroit, many of the stellar performances came from pitchers with humble track records. With that in mind, just how difficult will it be for the Brewers bullpen to approximate what it did last year?

“Really tough,” Arnold admitted. “We have a lot of guys who are talented back there, and a pretty deep stable of arms, but the volatility of relievers is a real thing. We’ll just have to continue to explore how we can reinforce our group to effectively fill the innings our starters don’t give us.”