Outrage! The Division Series Schedule Is Screwing (or Helping?) Your Favorite Team!

The National League’s adoption of the designated hitter this season eliminated the most noticeable difference between it and the American League. Now, the National League is what makes grown men in scarves weep on public transit, and the American League comes with a slice of melted cheese on top. (No, I have not updated my pop culture references since 2009, and I have no plans to do so.)

The only remaining difference is that the AL gets an extra off day during the Division Series. MLB announced in August that contrary to prior practice, the Division Series would no longer have a travel day between Games 4 and 5. But while the NL would play two games, get a day off, and then play three in a row, the American League gets an extra day off without travel between Games 1 and 2.

When the league announced this new scheme, an obvious question occurred to my colleague Dan Szymborski: How would this affect pitcher usage? Previously, a Division Series contestant could run four pitchers on full rest, and have both its Game 1 and Game 2 starter on full rest for the decisive match, if necessary. Or it could bring back its Game 1 starter on short rest for Game 4, and have everyone else start in order on regular rest. Moving or eliminating the off day throws that practice into chaos.

Dan modeled pitcher usage both with and without the off day for every team that had a realistic hope of making the playoffs at the time and found little identifiable impact on ZiPS-projected FIP with or without the second off day. But now we know which specific teams are in line to play on which days, and in many cases which starting pitchers they’re going to use.

So let’s take a look at each starting rotation and see which clubs — both AL and NL — would (or will) benefit most from an extra day off between Games 1 and 2. (Just the starting rotations, mind you: “Bullpens are a little trickier to simulate,” Dan wrote in August, and if he, with his moon-sized brain, thinks that’s tricky, I’d better keep things simple.)

The obvious plan for the four NL teams is to use four starting pitchers, and to bring the no. 1 starter back on full rest for Game 5, if necessary. For the AL teams, it gets more complicated. They can bring the Game 1 starter back on full rest for Game 4, but if Game 5 rolled around they’d have to either bring the Game 2 starter back on short rest, or trust an elimination game to their fourth-best starter or the bullpen.

Obviously, no team has released its full Division Series rotation yet, and even if they had, we all know the famous aphorism attributed variously to Mike Tyson and the Prussian Field Marshal Helmuth von Moltke the Elder: “Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth” and/or “No plan survives first contact with the enemy.” Things will change on the fly, in short. Still, I’ve listed each team’s projected starting rotation as best I can figure based on publicly available information. So here they are, in reverse order.

The Padres are starting on the back foot for two reasons. First, they have exactly three playoff-quality starting pitchers. Second, they were the only team to win a Wild Card Series that went the distance, which means all three of those pitchers got used: Darvish, Snell, and the wet ears guy. Under the old system, the Padres could have used Darvish in Game 2 and then brought him back on regular rest for a Game 5, but now if the series goes the distance, San Diego will have to use some combination of Clevinger and Sean Manaea — the weakest spot in the rotation — twice.

I don’t know why I bothered writing out a whole rotation here, because we all know the first time Dave Roberts encounters a high-leverage situation he’s going to do something bizarre with his starting pitchers. Urías will start Game 1, then close Game 3 on his throw day, then come in for two innings in middle relief in Game 5, but without his glasses so he’s pitching on instinct. Something like that.

Los Angeles has one of the more even rotations in terms of quality, so as long as Urías or Kershaw is lined up for Game 5, it doesn’t matter that much who starts in which order. Those two and Gonsolin also have extensive high-pressure bullpen experience (for better and for worse), so should Roberts choose to get weird, they know what to do. Mostly, the Dodgers should want as much dead space in the playoffs as possible so that their pitchers have time to recover, and they won’t have that here. Lucky for them, they’re facing a Padres team that’s already at a disadvantage.

As much as we love Cal Quantrill around these parts, the Guardians would surely love to be able to line up Bieber to make two full-rest starts against the Yankees instead of one. The extra off day, coming as it does before Bieber’s first start of the series, does give Terry Francona some wiggle room to go get Quantrill early in Game 1, maybe to use the likes of James Karinchak and Emmanuel Clase for multiple innings, but that’s merely a consolation prize.

Please, God, let it be Falter in Game 4. I can’t do Kyle Gibson in a playoff start.

The Phillies are in a similar position to Cleveland in that losing the off day between Games 4 and 5 is a nightmare, but gaining one between Games 1 and 2 wouldn’t make up for it. Wheeler would ordinarily be a candidate to come back and pitch on short rest, but he still hasn’t hit 100 pitches after an IL stint for forearm tendinitis, and playoffs or no I doubt manager Rob Thomson would press his luck. Particularly because Suárez, despite getting bombed a couple times late in the season, is capable of throwing six or seven scoreless innings against pretty much anyone.

With that said, Thomson would probably trade a not-insubstantial list of his own body parts to get the old format back, which would allow him to throw Wheeler twice on full rest in a five-game series.

Dusty Baker has yet to name a Game 2 starter, as the epizootic seems to be going around the Astros clubhouse and he wants to see who’s feeling the least ill among his starters by the time Wednesday rolls around. To be honest, it doesn’t matter. Neither does the schedule. The Astros have so many good starting pitchers, and Verlander would be able to pitch Game 5 on full rest no matter which schedule they used.

The big question for the Braves is when Spencer Strider will become available, and for how many pitches. By the time Game 3 starts on Friday, it will have been roughly four weeks since Strider last pitched, and it’d be a lot to ask for a rookie to throw 100 pitches under those circumstances. But regardless of who gets the last two spots in Atlanta’s rotation, and in what order, the Braves are in a similar situation to Houston: Good enough depth overall that they wouldn’t want to screw around, and a clear no. 1 starter who’s lined up to pitch twice.

If I were Scott Servais, I’d probably start Gilbert in Game 1, too, but it’s worth at least hashing out the case for Castillo in Game 1 on three days’ rest. That would set him up to make a Game 5 start — the decisive game of the series, if it happens — on full rest. But throwing him on his normal schedule, with an extra day off, in fact, allows him to throw at full strength in the one start Servais knows he’ll make. Probably the smart move, but not the only defensible one.

Then there’s Kirby, who should be scheduled to start Game 4, but pitched out of the bullpen against Toronto. If Servais were so inclined, he could leave Kirby in the ‘pen and start Gilbert in Game 4 on four days’ rest, leaving Castillo to make the Game 5 start. It’d be an aggressive move, but he might have to be aggressive to have a shot against the heavily favored Astros.

To be honest, the biggest impact the schedule will have on this series will be fatigue, which Dan also touched on in August. With Games 4 and 5 coming on consecutive days in all series, whichever team bounces back from travel will have an advantage. Cleveland-to-New York and Philadelphia-to-Atlanta are both a little less than a two-hour flight, and you could drive from San Diego to Los Angeles, but Seattle to Houston is a hike. There might be as little as 16 hours between the end of Game 4 and the report time for Game 5, and more than a quarter of that time would have to be spent in the air.

Hahaha, what a gift. The Yankee rotation goes Cole, Cortes, Severino, and then the yawning void of regret left by trading Jordan Montgomery. Do you want Jameson Taillon to make that start? Domingo Germán? Under either the 2021 schedule or the NL schedule, Aaron Boone would either have to white-knuckle his way through one of those pitchers or serve Cole up to start on short rest.

Instead, he gets to start Cole twice on full rest, and it’s likely neither game will set him up against Bieber or McKenzie. It also frees Taillon up to work out of the ‘pen, perhaps even as a closer. Win both of those and the Yankees have basically got it made. Even if it goes to a bullpen game with the series on the line, the Guardians will either start Bieber on three days’ rest or Quantrill. For most of the teams in this year’s playoffs, an off day between Games 1 and 2 wouldn’t make a huge difference. But by allowing Cole to start twice in four games and preventing Bieber from making a second start on full rest, this new calendar gives the Yankees a huge advantage.