Shohei Ohtani and the Angels’ Six-Man Rotation
The Los Angeles Angels struck gold this offseason. The addition of Zack Cozart and Ian Kinsler to a core that already included Justin Upton (re-signed to a five-year deal in November), Andrelton Simmons, and the incomparable Mike Trout has created a collection of position players few other clubs can rival. Nor does this even acknowledge the club’s greatest stroke of fortune this winter — namely, the signing of coveted two-way player Shohei Ohtani.
Understandably, the team wants to protect its new 23-year-old star. Ohtani joins a rotation composed mostly of damaged limbs. Because of the fragility present here, the Angels are going to try something novel — namely, to employ a six-man rotation. Unfortunately, it probably won’t work.
There are good reasons for a six-man rotation, and Angels’ starters meet several of the relevant criteria for experimenting with one. First of all, the club lacks a true ace. Despite having never faced a major-league batter, Ohtani is probably the club’s best pitcher. Given his unique position, however, it makes sense that the Angels wouldn’t expect him to carry the load of a No. 1 starter.
Beyond Ohtani, the Angels don’t possess a pitcher who needs to start every fifth day. Allocating five of Clayton Kershaw‘s or Corey Kluber‘s or Max Scherzer’s to another pitcher would be bad for a team trying to win baseball games. The Angels don’t have a pitcher of that class, though. That makes a six-man rotation more feasible from a competitive standpoint.
Another argument for the six-man rotation — one particularly relevant to Los Angeles — is its capacity to protect the health and innings of pitchers. Ohtani is only 23 and moving from a league where starters make just one appearance per week. He didn’t play a full season last year, and he seems like the most sure thing on the Angels staff.
Consider the following starters and their recent maladies:
- Tyler Skaggs pitched just 85 innings last season due to a strained oblique that kept him out from May through July. This came after missing all of 2015 and most of 2016 recovering from Tommy John surgery.
- Garrett Richards has 12 total starts the last two seasons due to a torn ligament in his elbow and a strained right biceps.
- Andrew Heaney started just six games over the last two seasons due to a strained left flexor, surgery on his left elbow, and a shoulder injury at the end of last season.
- Matt Shoemaker hit the disabled list last June with a strained right forearm and missed the rest of the season.
- JC Ramirez was shut down last August with a strained right forearm after attempting a transition to a starting role on the heels of five previous seasons as a reliever.
- Nick Tropeano missed all of last season and much of 2016 recovering from Tommy John surgery.
The only other legitimate candidate to start is Parker Bridwell, and he is projected to be a replacement-level pitcher both by Steamer and ZiPS. Attempting to lighten the load on Ohtani and the rest of the injury-riddled Angels staff is a reasonable goal — and replicating the schedule of Japanese starters for Ohtani could help ease his transition to the majors and prevent injury. Unfortunately, it might not be realistic. The Angels don’t have enough starting depth to make the six-man rotation work.
Under optimal conditions, the six-man rotation requires not six starters but seven. In this arrangement, the sixth starter begins the season in the minors, with a reliever taking his place on the 25-man roster. Once needed, that sixth starter comes up, makes his start, and then returns to the minors in exchange for another bullpen arm. The next time the sixth starter’s turn comes up, the actual seventh starter is summoned — because the original sixth starter is required to stay in the minors for 10 days by rule. In this system, the sixth and seventh starters alternate starts all season long, gaining a full season of service time. Such a configuration also gives a club a full bullpen all season.
This would be useful arrangement for the Angels, except they can’t employ it, as J.C. Ramirez (the presumptive sixth or seventh starter) is out of options and can’t be sent to the minors.
There are other options, of course. The Angels could either go down a man in the bullpen and let Ramirez serve as the club’s sixth starter, or put Ramirez back in the bullpen use the replacement-level Bridwell for a dozen starts. Heaney, Shoemaker, and Skaggs all have minor-league options, but they are likely better than Ramirez and shouldn’t lose out on starts. The Angels could choose to manipulate the disabled list like the Dodgers did last season, but their better pitchers might end up taking too many days off.
Of course, none of these scenarios account for the Ohtani factor. Because Ohtani the Pitcher can also be Ohtani the Hitter, the Angels could still utilize six starters, field a full bullpen, and retain several bench options, as well. Having a pitcher who can also play the field — or at least be counted on as a pinch-hitter — expands the potential of the roster. Ohtani is not just the reason for the six-man rotation, he is the player who makes it work.
So there is some kind of road map for a six-man rotation in Anaheim. Probability still suggests, however, that the experiment is doomed to fail. The Angels have only seven decent starting pitching options in their organization, and all of them have injury concerns. The odds that the Angels even make it to Opening Day with six MLB-caliber starting pitchers isn’t great. Once the ravages of hurling an object at high speed over and over take their toll, the team will be forced to use replacement-level pitchers.
If that were the case, the potential value of the six-man rotation would then be mooted. Whatever slight increase health is gained by deploying a sixth starter would likely be offset by losses on the field. With more off-days built into the schedule this season, roughly two-thirds of Ohtani’s starts can be made with an extra day of rest even with only five starters in the rotation. If the Angels are serious about the six-man rotation, they need more starting pitchers. It’s a fun February experiment, but it is hard to see it lasting through April, let alone all season.
Craig Edwards can be found on twitter @craigjedwards.
Otheni is not their best pitcher…they still have Shoemaker and Richards…there is gonna be an adjustment period which will take most of this year. Look for him to be MLB “good” in 2-3 years, also around the time this old guy experiment with the Angels will fail and they will rebuild…all while never making the postseason. Sorry Trout, the ineptitude is not on your end.
You realize this goes against the entire history of starters coming over from Japan? Pretty much all of them have been good right away, and their 1st or 2nd season has been their best.
I mean, JUICEMANE1 is still wrong, but part of the reason why Japanese starters were best in their 1st or 2nd season was because they came over at their peak. For example, Hideo Nomo was (I think) 27 when he came over, Darvish and Tanaka came over when they were about 26, etc. Others, like Iwakuma, came just after their peak (age 31).
What this means is that Japanese pitchers that do well in NPB also do well in MLB, and that Ohtani still has room to get better simply because he’s young.
Partially true. But, pitchers don’t follow standard aging curves like batters. Lots of guys are as good as they’re going to get at 21 or 22. Others don’t get good until they hit 30.
This is the problem with broad statements. Not all have succeed immediately or even at all, but you dont hear about or remember the failures as vividly.
As a Garrett Richards owner I guess I should be happy he might start at least 10 games this year.
Given the injury woes of the Angels rotation, they might not need to manipulate the DL like the Dodgers did. They might just use it normally instead.
I agree with Craig that if they really want to the 6-man rotation for real, they probably will need to trade for a guy with options. Anyone know of a central source that lists players with options? Otherwise they could try to trade for a high-probability back end guy like Trevor Oaks.
Roster Resource is the only source of which I’m aware that lists players’ option years remaining – https://www.rosterresource.com/mlb-los-angeles-angels/
I think that the players are only listed by team, however, so finding all pitchers with options would be a cumbersome process that requires looking at each team’s depth chart.
Thanks.
Just scrolling around at the KC page, it looks like Nate Karns and Jake Junis still have options. These are the sort of guys I would want…they can be a 5th (in this case, they’d technically be a 6th) starter for you but might not cost too much to acquire (at least Karns, I bet Junis would cost more because he has a lot of team control left).
If more pitchers only go 5 inmings per start/150 per season wouldn’t it actually make sense to go back to a 4 men rotation to have another long man in the pen ( basically a tandem)?
I realize stress per pitch is not the same but in the 70s guys threw 280 innings in a 4 man rotation. So shouldn’t a modern pitcher who is only asked to go twice through the lineup be able to throw 140 innings in a 4 man rotation?
So you basically have 4 starters, a long man for every day and then you still have like 5 p spots left.
I see why you would like a 6 man rotation but then you need starters to throw 7 innings (180 per season in a 6 man). If your starters still only go 160 innings that will seriously stress your pen which loses a guy too. Some of that can be handled with faking dl stints and using options but that can also only compensate that to a degree.
People always act like bullpen guys can take over unlimited workload but that can wear out quickly and might be a bigger problem than finding two extra starters.
You can’t throw your starters less often AND less innings per game without getting extra bullpen spots.
This is the direction I think things are going to go – 4 man rotation and 5 inning starts. 40 starts means 200 IP so it’s the same number of innings for top starters. There are other pitching rotation strategies that could work as well. The issue is that they are so out of line with tradition that no GM/manager is going to risk their reputation on something unconventional. Tony Larussa tried it with the A’s in the 90’s and his pitchers basically revolted on him. Scrapped it after like a month. The Rockies tried it in 2012 but their problem was the pitchers they tried it with weren’t any good and put up bad results. So they stopped being bad in a 4 man rotation and went back to being bad in a 5 man rotation.
The day is coming when teams stop pretending that there isn’t a 3rd-time-through penalty and just keep running guys out there like it’s still 1920 (or 1950, or 1980, etc.).
Yeah, I’ve been trying Gedankenexperiment this idea also. An eight-man “tandem” rotation on a four-day schedule gives you roughly 40 starts and 40 “relief starts” (somewhat more for your better guys and fewer for the worse ones thanks to off-days). As you say, that still gives your top of the rotation 200 innings assuming they average about 5 IP per start; the scheduled relievers get 120 or less and the rest of your bullpen picks up the saves and whatever’s left. You still have 3 or 4 bullpen roster spots for your closer, a LOOGY, and the uniform that gets filled by whichever guy is passing through it to/from the DL or AAA.
Maybe with the 4 men tandem it could be more like 4-3. That would mean 160 for the starters and 120 for the long men. That would leave 5-6 realievers for about 300 ip (2*162).
I’ve wondered something similar, like if an enterprising GM just played two OK staters in a game (5/4 IP each) in lieu of using the bullpen (except in extras). You limit their innings and free up some roster spots.
A smaller bullpen (6 relievers) would seem to be the smarter way to go. And if one of the relievers is the “7th starter”, it also means they can act as a long reliever to pitch multiple innings when they’re not part of the rotation.
Yeah, something like this. Keep a normal 12/13 pitcher/hitter ratio. And then make sure to have enough bullpen depth, both MLB and AAA, to ride things out, rather than worry so much about a quality 7th and 8th starter. Ideally, you have both SP and RP depth, of course.
The Cubs at least and probably several other teams flirt with 13 pitchers all the time. I think many of those would consider going to a 6 man rotation in the traditional way, and just going with a “short” bench.
Which is basically the definition of JC Ramirez’s role on the team: superswingman.
The point of this article though is that they should go one bench-piece short because Ohtani would be that bench piece/the regular DH who sits when Ohtani is DH. He alone is why this could work, because he would enable the Angels to do this essentially with a 26 man roster, without having to use options.
I’m not particularly high on Bridwell, but both he and Jaime Barria are legitimate options for the number 7. I know we’re still in the final stretch of the lolwhatisaprospect attitude toward the Angels, but barring a smiting from the baseball gods, Barria will be receiving his call-up this season. He has performed at every level and has excelled due to his command rather than stuff. Much more potential to be successful than Bridwell imo. But PBrid was still an amazingly effective spot starter last year. Who knows?
This is a very cynical article. I realise baseball freaks out whenever anything new is being attempted, but really, from Fangraphs? You’re also assuming that this is the amount of starters that will be on the roster the entire season, as if moves can’t be made (remember, Parker Bridwell was picked up midseason from an organization who desperately needs SPs in the Orioles). And as it stands, there are actually 9 starters on the depth chart with Jaime Barria ready to be promoted if there are injuries, and Troy Scribner (who I admit is not ideal, but filled in decently last season as well). I’ll take the over on this lasting through April, thank you.
the problem is every single one of the top options have big ?
What about adding a free agent SP and go forward with 14 pitchers and 11 position players?
At minimum you typically need one backup infielder, one backup outfielder and one backup catcher. That makes 12 position players at the very least.
Just thinking outside the box.. I can see them using a 14-man pitching staff on some days… Valbuena as a utility, Ohtani as a backup outfielder.. It has been done before…
I thought this article was about conserving Shohei Ohtani. In any case, he hasn’t played the outfield in the past 3 years.
I question the notion that it’s not worth preventing injuries if you’re leaning on replacement-level players to do it. If I’m looking at this as a business owner and not a general manager, it’s certainly worth it to me to keep Ohtani intact. The bigger problem is that there’s not enough data to assume that a six-man rotation really does prevent injuries, so you might sacrifice the wins and get hit with injuries anyway.
Well the issue with assuming that the data doesn’t indicate it prevents injury is that there hasn’t been a team that has done it an entire season. Very little evidence to prove it either way. This is like saying Stem cells work to fix UCL injuries or they don’t. There hasn’t been enough evidence to prove anything.
This is quite perplexing. Craig writes of his seven-man rotation as if it’s the obvious best option, but as far as I know none of the teams that have gone with a 6-man rotation (eg 2011 White Sox) have done this.
On the other hand, We have seen lots of teams go with 13 pitchers in the form of an 8-man bullpen, so slightly modifying that to 6 SP/7 RP seems like the bleedingly obvious first solution (especially with Ohtani as occasional DH), but Craig only mentions it as sort of an afterthought.
With Albert Pujols as their nominal DH, they are going to need bench players (both for small injuries and for performance).
Would love to see the Angels adopt a college style rotation where each starter gets a ‘day.’ You have 10 starts or so each for your Monday/Thursday SP who takes turns as long man on weeks they don’t have a day. Ohtani Fridays! C’mon this is fun
Angels for the injury/performance issues Craig lists are a prime candidate. I thought the 2017 Mets would be a good candidate for this strategy too but a healthy Thor not throwing every 5th day is a net loss. Unfortunately 2017 Thor was not healthy and a day of the week rotation probably wouldn’t have prevented his injury.
Would make buying tickets a very easy decision for Angels fans
Before the 5+1 rotation was announced I might have looked at their schedule and counted off games to determine which game in Boston I was going to go to…might have…
The idea a 6 man rotation is to give each pitchers 5 days off between starts, not to always use 6 pitchers. With off days and the 10 day DL you would rarely need to do the minor league shuffle as you describe.
I love fangraphs, but have to agree this is a close-minded and somewhat disappointing article. The Angels SB Nation site Halos Heaven did a 3 part exploration of how to employ a 6-man rotation that was MILES better than this I’m sad to say…
The Angels seem to always have good pitching. I’m saying it will be twice that many dudes by season’s end.
Even if they are not named Scherzer, Kluber or Kershaw presumably your best starter, whoever it is, is still considerably better than whoever your 6th or 7th starter is. the gap may be smaller than an elite guy (may be) but you are still giving starts to an inferior pitcher rather than your best. Danny Duffy is no Kluber but he is miles better than whatever dumpster fire the Royals could muster as a 6th (or god forbid 7th) guy.
But the angels are in a bit of a unique situation so maybe it makes sense.
wow that staff sucks, give them 2-3 months and half those guys are on the dl. the Angels are still trash.
Not for everybody and maybe for nobody, but. There are 1,468 innings to a regular season (plus extras). A pitcher scheduled to throw three innings every three games (every three to four days) would throw 162 innings. Nine scheduled pitchers would throw 1,458 innings, with three to four relief pitchers still available to relieve or close. No idea how it plays out in the real world but there are a few positives built in like times through the order.
There is still time for them to sign a guy, but can you sign a free agent that has options?
Well Otani has 3 options left and was a FA, but that’s probably not what you were asking.