The Cardinals Should Utilize a Six-Man Rotation
(Photo: Charles Edward Miller)
Before the season began, I noted some possible concerns regarding the Cardinals rotation — namely, that the team might have better, more talented starting pitchers in Triple-A than those on their major-league roster. At the time, the issue was only a potential problem: the season had yet to start. The potential became a reality even sooner than I expected, however.
A brief timeline:
- On March 28, the Cardinals place Adam Wainwright on the 10-Day DL retroactive to March 26. Wainwright had injured his hamstring running sprints.
- On April 3, Jack Flaherty, taking Wainwright’s place in the rotation, pitches five innings, giving up one run while recording nine strikeouts and just one walk.
- On April 5, the Cardinals rush back Wainwright for the Cardinals’ home opener even though the latter hasn’t pitched in a competitive game since March 14, when he went five innings. Wainwright struggles in his debut, recording more walks than strikeouts, failing to finish the fourth inning, and losing more than 5 mph on his fastball during the game.
- On April 11, Jack Flaherty strikes out 11 batters with no walks in seven innings, giving up just one run.
Wainwright alleviated some fears in his second start, pitching seven innings and maintaining decent velocity throughout his appearance. That’s a positive development, but that doesn’t really address the entirety of the problem. Jack Flaherty is sitting down in Triple-A right now despite having a possessing a better projection than Miles Mikolas, Michael Wacha, or Wainwright himself. It seems wasteful to let Flaherty keep pitching in the minors; at the same time, none of the Cardinals’ five starters is an obvious candidate for demotion. It’s an issue in need of a creative solution — namely, a six-man rotation.
On The Bernie Miklasz Show last week, Miklasz and co-host Michelle Smallmon discussed this very topic. (Go to 34:45 of the 7 am hour to listen to their conversation.) Smallmon noted Flaherty’s success, as well as Mike Matheny’s penchant for demanding eight relievers despite never having much use for the eighth reliever. The pair discussed the Cardinals’ bullpen depth which would help with a six-man rotation and Miklasz stated that, “Every pitcher has some sort of vulnerability or reason to be careful with their innings.” He then went down the list of Cardinals starters providing reasons why a six-man rotation might be beneficial.
- Adam Wainwright: “Old… question of whether he can maintain his velocity over a full season.”
- Luke Weaver: “Good pitcher, but I know they don’t want him throwing 200 innings this year.”
- Michael Wacha: “Runs out of gas every year.”
- Miles Mikolas: “In Japan, shorter season.”
- Carlos Martinez: “He pitched 205 innings. He can do it, but again, do you really want to keep pushing him too hard?”
- Jack Flaherty: “Twenty-two years old. They aren’t going to want to ride him too hard. They definitely want to limit his innings.”
- Alex Reyes: “The plan is to have him be in the rotation, maybe not right away, but you know they are going to limit his innings.”
Smallmon pushed back on Carlos Martinez, making the argument that losing Carlos Martinez starts wouldn’t be a positive and Miklasz noted that, when the Cardinals had considered a six-man rotation three years earlier, the players strongly objected. Before getting to potential player objections, let’s first evaluate Miklasz’s — and presumably the Cardinals’ — logic for wanting to add an extra pitcher to the rotation.
We can start with Wainwright, who is — in baseball years, at least — relatively old. The 36-year-old pitched poorly and faded badly due to injuries last season. As noted, his velocity was poor in his first start of the season but better in the second. The difference between those two? The latter followed five days rest as opposed to the normal four. His start tonight will also be on extra rest.
While in Japan, Miles Mikolas started 62 games over three years. Last year, Mikolas made 27 starts during a 26-week season, getting roughly six days off between appearances. In 2016, Luke Weaver made 21 starts and pitched 119.1 innings between the majors and minors. In 2017, he made 25 starts and pitched 138 innings between between Triple-A Memphis and the big club. He’s going to blow past that right after the All-Star Break at his current pace. Jack Flaherty made 23 starts and pitched 134 innings in High-A during the 2016 season and upped that to 30 starts and 170 innings last year between Double-A, Triple-A, and the majors. The Cardinals might not want to push too much beyond that this season. Alex Reyes is coming back from Tommy John surgery, so limiting innings and providing more rest seems self-explanatory.
As for Wacha, here’s how he has pitched the last three seasons through July compared to August and September:
| Months | K% | BB% | ERA | FIP |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| April-July | 21.1% | 7.2% | 3.79 | 3.54 |
| August-September | 18.8% | 9.5% | 5.19 | 4.70 |
Wacha did pitch well last September, but it was also after a poor August. To top it off, his velocity has been down so far this season, which raises concerns about his health.
With Carlos Martinez, I tend to side with Smallmon’s argument against giving him extra rest. As Miklasz noted, he pitched 205 innings last year. Since the beginning of the 2016 season, Carlos Martinez’s 426 innings is sixth in MLB behind only Chris Sale, Justin Verlander, Max Scherzer, Rick Porcello, and Corey Kluber. His 7.1 WAR during that interval is 17th in baseball and his 9.9 RA9-WAR (which uses run allowed and not FIP as the main input) is eighth. He’s just not a guy for whom the Cardinals should be limiting starts.
I went through the St. Louis schedule and kept the Cardinals’ five pitchers on a normal schedule to see how many starts they were scheduled to receive before the All-Star Break under the present schedule. I also noted the number of days off between starts the pitchers were set to receive.
| Starts | Days of Rest Between Starts | |
|---|---|---|
| Wacha | 16 | 5, 5, 5, 6, 4, 5, 4, 5, 4, 5, 4, 4, 5, 4, 6 |
| Weaver | 16 | 6, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 4, 5, 4, 5, 4, 4, 5, 4, 6 |
| Mikolas | 15 | 5, 6, 5, 5, 4, 5, 4, 5, 4, 5, 4, 5, 4, 5 |
| Martinez | 15 | 5, 6, 5, 5, 4, 5, 4, 5, 4, 5, 4, 5, 4, 5 |
| Wainwright | 16 | 6, 4, 6, 5, 5, 4, 5, 4, 5, 5, 4, 4, 5, 4, 6 |
When we hear about objections to a six-man rotation, it is often related to a pitcher’s routine and normal schedule. That was Cole Hamels‘ main point of contention this spring:
“I know that’s the new analytical side of trying to reinvent the wheel, but I was brought up in the minor leagues on the five-man [rotation], and that’s what I’m designed and conditioned for.”
What is striking about the table above is that there really is no typical routine. In two-thirds of the starts above, pitchers are pitching on five or six days rest, with only one third of the starts on the supposedly normal every fifth day. Due to the rainout on Monday, the next time Michael Wacha will pitch, he will be on seven days rest because the team preferred to have the emerging Luke Weaver pitch against the Cubs rather than the struggling Wacha.
To modify the schedule, I left Martinez’s starts as is and inserted Flaherty into the rotation just ahead of the first start currently scheduled to be on four days’ rest (in this case, Adam Wainwright’s on April 29). Here’s how many starts each pitcher would get as well as the number of rest days in between starts through the All-Star Break.
| Starts | Days of Rest Between Starts | |
|---|---|---|
| Wacha | 13 | 5, 7, 7, 6, 6, 5, 7, 6, 5, 6, 6, 7 |
| Weaver | 13 | 6, 6, 7, 7, 6, 5, 6, 7, 5, 5, 6, 8 |
| Mikolas | 13 | 5, 8, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 5, 7, 5, 7 |
| Martinez | 15 | 5, 6, 5, 5, 4, 5, 4, 5, 4, 5, 4, 5, 4, 5 |
| Wainwright | 13 | 6, 6, 6, 7, 6, 6, 6, 5, 7, 5, 6, 6 |
| Flaherty | 11 | 7, 7, 5, 7, 6, 5, 6, 6, 6, 5 |
Just as with the current, more traditional arrangement, two-thirds of the starts here would be made on five or six days of rest. The starts with four days rest before — just five or six per starter before the break — are now replaced by seven-day periods. The non-Martinez starters miss just two or three starts apiece and Jack Flaherty gets to prove he belongs in the majors. We don’t know that this approach would lead to better health or performance, but given the makeup of the Cardinals rotation and the desire to limit innings, this setup makes a lot of sense. If a starter gets injured before June, the typical five-man rotation will make more sense. Once the end of May arrives, the Cardinals will have another candidate for the rotation in Alex Reyes.
The scheduling for this rotation is a little difficult to pull off due to the desire to keep Martinez on somewhat normal rest, but it is certainly not impossible. St. Louis doesn’t actually need an eighth pitcher in the bullpen, and never actually use one when they have an extra guy. They might as well do everything they can to maximize the talent they have available to them in Memphis and St. Louis. That means getting Jack Flaherty back to the majors and getting creative with a rotation that can make the most of a sixth man.
Craig Edwards can be found on twitter @craigjedwards.
in with the first “just another Craig Edwards Cardinals puff piece”
beat me to it
can say same for travis and pirates
Or, you could just abuse the 10-DL like the Dodgers did. But based on what I’ve learned about Matheny from Cardinals fans, it might be too complicated for Matheny to work out.
FWIW, Derrick Goold, their local beat guy, has hinted that the Cards just aren’t willing to bend the rules like that due to league politics:
“That works until MLB comes down on those manipulating the 10-day DL like the Dodgers clearly did a year ago. The Cardinals were in a double-bind there, really. There were teams frustrated and skeptical of the Dodgers usage, and here were the Cardinals with executives on the board that negotiated that CBA and Mozeliak on the board that oversees rules in the game. If MLB starts imposing penalties for doing that or scolding teams for doing that, how does it look if one of the teams doing it has people involved in the writing and implementation of the rules?”
And also, you are correct — Matheny would get confused.
That sounds like something a Cardinals beat writer would think.
Almost everyone else would remember the Cards are the only team to be caught stealing data from another team and think… “Can I really make a ‘the Cardinals are too moral to use the DL that way’ argument? Nah, probably not.”
That sounds like something that someone who has a shallow understanding of the Cardinals organization would think.
Almost everyone else would remember that one person in the Cards organization was caught stealing data from another team and think… “Can I really ascribe the actions of one criminal moron to every other Cardinals executive on every other issue going forward? Nah, probably not.”
I know Craig is a Cardinals guy, but I didn’t think it was a puff piece. I thought it was solid stuff. Craig just happens to be familiar with the Cards.
It’s a Viva El Birdos joke for our former overlord
All he writes are cursorily-researched puff pieces
It was a good piece. I think it’ll just take a brave manager to do it. Matheny is not that guy. Mo and Girsch in the front office are sharp and will have to get rid of Matheny, hire Oquendo, and then implement the system.
Or, how about some sort of creative swing-men routine for a few of the SPs that eliminates the need for an 8th reliever while attempting to somewhat balance starter schedules with long relief appearances? Maybe they could focus on the 4 and 7-day rest periods as opportunities to exploit. The SPs might not approve of the change, but it might prove to be effective. And it would give Martinez and Flaherty quality playing time, eliminate 7-day breaks between appearances, and reduce pitchers’ IPs where needed. It also seems like a great way to condition the pitchers for unorthodox post-season play.
For simplicity, ERA only, but min 100 IP AUG-SEP and 200 IP MAR-JUL 2015-2017 combined, here are the leaders and trailers in relative ERA:
151 Justin Verlander
143 Clayton Richard
139 Jake Arrieta
139 Carlos Rodon
130 J.A. Happ
130 Wily Peralta
125 Bartolo Colon
123 Marcus Stroman
122 Yordano Ventura
122 Stephen Strasburg
122 Jhoulys Chacin
122 Hisashi Iwakuma
122 Collin McHugh
…
80 Chris Tillman
80 Jordan Zimmermann
80 Max Scherzer
79 Michael Wacha
79 Hector Santiago
78 Gerrit Cole
78 Zack Greinke
77 Jason Hammel
77 Jacob deGrom
75 Jimmy Nelson
66 Matt Andriese
—
With 80/160 min IPs a couple more extreme folks who were left off before [mostly because I want to work in another extreme Met :)]
150 Robert Gsellman
140 Joe Kelly
139 Joe Musgrove
…
74 Mike Pelfrey
It’s like all of baseball forgot that there used to be a thing called long relievers.
Put Flaherty in the pen and have him throw 3-5 innings whenever a starter need to leave early. It’s much more efficient to replace a starter after say 4 IP, with one guy who can throw 4, rather than four guys throwing one each.
This would allow Flaherty to contribute at the major league level, while staying stretched out enough to immediately re-enter the rotation when the inevitable injury occurs.
I think there are good arguments for that idea, but I wonder if that’s the best way to leverage Flaherty’s innings. If he’s generally coming into games in which the starter goes 4 or fewer innings, isn’t he often coming into games when the team is down by a few runs? Of course there are plenty of exceptions to this (perhaps the starter was chased after 3 or 4 innings, but the team is winning 6-5 or 5-4, or perhaps the game is tied 2-2, but the starter’s pitch count was sky high after 4, and so on). But my best guess (i.e., this is the type of thing I could easily study if I had time, but unfortunately I don’t) is that coming into games in which the starter bowed out early is not the best use of Flaherty’s talents.
The Cardinals did exactly this with Joe Kelly a few years ago. Things change quickly.
The Cardinals have a guy by the name of Mike Mayers who is sort of a middling prospect but added a few MPH this offseason and impressed people enough in spring to make the big league bullpen. However, once Matheny designated him the “long reliever” he may as well have fallen off the face of the earth. He pitched something like 1 inning in the first 10 or so games of the season. I don’t know why the Cardinals would want to put one of their top prospects in that role.
And anyway the Cardinals have a good enough bullpen that I don’t think swapping out Flaherty for one of the other pitchers moves the needle much.
yeah, putting flaherty in the honorary “Shelby Miller On The Playoff Roster” extra pitcher who never pitches role is maybe even more of a waste of jack flaherty than having him pitch in AAA.
fire mike matheny, basically.
fire mike matheny, basically. = right answer
But Cards management/ownership doesn’t like firing people. They are a loyal and honorable bunch. You have to respect that, but in this case, it’s hurting them.
Speaking as a Cubs fan, I fully endorse the strategy of the Cardinals taking a dozen or so starts from their two best starters and handing them to their sixth-best starter.
I’m not sure i understand what you’re trying to say…. In Craig’s scenario, Wainwright would be getting LESS starts, not more.
I think Martinez’s starts would stay the same, and the argument for taking away starts from, say, Weaver and spreading them around, in part, to Wainwright and Wacha, is so that Weaver (whose career high in IP is 105) wouldn’t be burnt out by the end of the year. So the strategy isn’t as facile as “take away starts from the Cards’ best guys and give them to a worse guy.”
I’m confused. Who is the 6th best starter? Flaherty? As Craig points out he projects better than Wainwright, Mikolas and Wacha. And who are the best two starters? Surely one of them must be Martinez, who is clearly the Cardinals ace. But he’s not losing any starts in this scenario. I’m not convinced you read this article.
I’m not seeing Craig’s source for saying that Flaherty is projected better than the other three. Looking at Depth Charts projections on current Fangraphs pages for each of them, all four of them are projected as basically the same on a rate basis: FIP’s of between 4.03 and 4.16 (Flaherty is projected for 4.15) and ERA’s of between 4.11 and 4.30 (Flaherty is projected for 4.11, and Wacha and Mikolas are both projected for 4.15 or lower). It looks like that is also projecting each of them for between 5 1/2 and 6 innings per start.
That still leaves a decent argument for using a 6-man rotation to divide the workload between all of them with the idea that it will keep those four healthier and more effective, and also help limit Weaver’s workload, but it’s not so much based on Flaherty being better than other starters as several of them having similar projections.
You’re right, before the comment I didn’t. It’s just a general objection I have to the six-man rotation anytime anyone brings it up: you’re generally taking starts from your very best pitcher and giving it to your sixth best pitcher. Unless you have six eligible starters who are all roughly equal, which hardly anyone does, it makes no sense to do that. So I took a flyer on the comment first. Sometimes it works. This time it didn’t. It’s a risk.
I can see where the Cardinals have a unique situation with their starters that might warrant the six-man rotation, so in this specific case, I can see the argument for that. But as a general principle, a team would want to try to concentrate as many innings with the best starters they have, instead of spreading part of their workload out to lesser pitchers.
Just a thought, but maybe instead of taking that risk, you should hear out the author’s argument before disagreeing with it. Sort of a pointless risk.
I’m not sure why more people aren’t intuitively opposed to the six-man rotation. The downside (more innings necessarily allocated to less-talented pitchers) is immediately obvious, and there is no evidence that the upside (less burnout/fatigue and fewer injuries, on the whole) actually exists.
The reasoning for giving more days of rest to Martinez, Weaver, Mikolas, Flaherty, and Reyes (nebulous desire to “limit innings”) doesn’t hold water. The reasoning for giving more days of rest to Wainright and Wacha are actually reasons for moving them to the bullpen.
The six-man rotation is one of those stupid ideas “analytically”-inclined people can’t seem to quit.
“… the crux of the entire argument for the five-man rotation is that it keeps pitchers healthier. Which makes the crux of my argument this: the five-man rotation does NOT keep starters any healthier than the four-man rotation. And if it doesn’t provide any health benefits, what benefit is there?”
https://www.baseballprospectus.com/news/article/1596/doctoring-the-numbers-the-five-man-rotation/
https://www.baseballprospectus.com/news/article/1605/doctoring-the-numbers-the-five-man-rotation-part-2/
If pitcher health is a concern, especially with Reyes, then limiting pitch count should be the goal rather than maximizing days of rest. I like the idea of using Wainright/Wacha as flexible, multi-inning “piggyback” options when one of the Cardinals’ young starters is on the mound. Either pitcher could slide back into the rotation in the case of a DL stint, or could be deployed as a 1+ inning relief “stopper” if he responded well to the relief role.
This allows the Cardinals to figure out the most optimal way to allocate innings to their 3rd/4th-7th best starters without unnecessarily reducing innings for their best starters.
The links above are to articles more than 15 years old that reflect some outdated thinking (Rany himself has said on his old podcast that his thinking on this topic has evolved over the years, particularly the overreliance on pitch counts as a way to keep pitchers healthy). There’s been much more interesting scholarship in this area over the years, and it seems to make sense that if you’re going to limit a pitcher’s workload (say, Weaver’s or Flaherty’s) that you’d want to spread out their innings over the course of the season as opposed to shutting them down in September, particularly if your roster is conducive to it.
Yeah, the important point in all of this is that the Cardinals are a playoff contender. Let’s say they’re limiting Weaver and Flaherty (and Reyes) to a set number of innings this year, but want them available in the playoffs.
In that case it makes way more sense to do this than to like, randomly sit a guy down for a month at one point or, worse, have him hit his innings cap in September and be unavailable if they make a playoff run.
In that case, they’d move him to the bullpen as he’s somewhat approaching his innings limit and swap Reyes into the rotation. Then they’d just need to stretch him back out for a couple of games near the end of the season if they plan to include him in the playoff rotation. They have all this depth for a reason, after all.
Craig, your work here is always appreciated.
I hope your voice reaches the Cardinals.
I think the problem with a six man rotation is that (for whichever team) you’d have a rotation of, say, 3-3 young and old.
Wainwright (senior) might benefit from an extra day’s rest. Joe Blow from AAA, on the other hand, wouldn’t.
Ignoring the Astros concept of handing over to multi-inning releivers … this might be a tough one.
Alternatively, this could call out for a tandem starter situation. Put the young guys (Weaver and Flaherty) as the tandem initially, give them the choice of tandem starting in MLB or going down to AAA and see which they prefer.
I think that there is a reasonable way to use a sort of hybrid 6-man rotation where Flaherty is periodically called up from AAA to make starts and then usually (if not always) optioned back down for the 10 days required.
Looking at the Cardinals’ schedule through the All-Star Break, I see 6 stretches where the team is schedule to play games on more than 5 consecutive days:
April 24 – May 2 (8 games)
May 15 – 23 (9 games)
May 25 – June 3 (10 games)
June 5 – 13 (9 games)
June 15 – 27 (13 games)
June 29 – July 8 (10 games)
So I think one straightforward approach is for Flaherty to be called up to start a game during the middle of each of those stretches, which would mean 6 starts for him, and then sent back down after the game. It would essentially mean a spot that rotates between Flaherty and two relievers if the team sticks with a total of 13 pitchers. Maybe get him a 7th start by keeping him up for a second start during the 13 game stretch, though that’s also a stretch when the team would logically most like to have an 8th reliever (or perhaps Reyes is also in the mix by then).
It wouldn’t get Flaherty the 11 starts that Craig lays out by (I think) keeping Flaherty on the 25-man roster for the full time, and Flaherty might well be understandably upset at the service time implications for him. I think, though, that it would allow for no starter except Martinez ever pitching on 4 days’ rest, while largely allowing for Flaherty’s roster spot to be used by a reliever or bench player.
The problem with that idea is that those spots you want to use Flaherty may not line up with his pitching schedule while he’s otherwise starting every 5th game in AAA.
Also, you have to keep in mind that the 10-day option rule (outside of injury) also applies to whichever relief pitcher they’d have to send down and call back up alongside Flaherty, so they’d usually wind up needing to pick up a different relief pitcher from AAA despite usually preferring to want to bring back the guy they just sent down if they could.
Those are fair considerations, but let me take each in turn:
– The 10 day option rule should line up pretty well with Flaherty making a major league start, going to the minors, and then making one minor league start to stay sharp (where his innings/pitch count could be somewhat limited, if desired), and then coming back up. Basically, this could be planned in advance with something like 4-6 rest days between starts. Note that all of those stretches of more than 5 games line up pretty well for 10-12 day gaps between MLB starts, with the possible exception of between the first two on the list (which could probably include two starts in AAA on normal rest).
It’s true that this plan would almost certainly mean that the non-Martinez starters are being moved around to a greater number of rest days between starts both to line up Martinez for starts and to get Flaherty starts on planned days. Craig’s idea with Flaherty on the roster broadly does the same thing, however, to get Martinez his starts. The team could sit down with the schedule and plan this out.
An unexpected injury to a starting pitcher could create a problem if it struck at exactly the wrong time when Flaherty wasn’t available to be recalled, but even that would probably just mean something like John Gant making 1 start and/or other starting pitchers going on 4 days’ rest rather than extra rest. I similarly think that games rescheduled due to rainouts should be manageable because, again, the idea is that off-days plus some starts from Flaherty mean that the planned schedule is for non-Martinez starters to make most or all of their starts on extra rest. Something like a rainout with a make-up game during a planned off-day or as a doubleheader the next day should therefore just mean that one or more starters instead go on 4-days’ rest at some point. And if the make-up games are scheduled for much later in the season, then that gives the team plenty of time to adjust its roster plan, which could include keeping Flaherty on the MLB roster for more than 1 game.
– As for relievers, I understand that multiple relievers would need to rotate through one roster position due to option rules. The idea is that Mike Mayers, John Brebbia, and Ryan Sherriff (and possibly Jordan Hicks and Matt Bowman, if everyone is healthy) all have option years available and could do so. If several relievers are hurt, then it’s true that the Cardinals could be in a bind and not have enough healthy relievers with options available to make this plan work. As of now, however, both Brebbia and Mayers can rotate through this spot even with Cecil, Sherriff, and Tuivailala all on the disabled list.
In reality, the most unlikely part of this plan is probably the assumption that the top six starters all stay healthy through the All-Star Break. That’s an issue for either the idea of optioning Flaherty back and forth or a true 6-man rotation, however.
The Orioles did something like this with Kevin Gausman a few years back
I’d rather have them just dump Mikolas, or move him to the pen.
With all the hard contact he gives up, he’s going to be awful come warm weather
since the main commenting of the day has died down, for the editor (is there one?) you can always replace “utilize” with “use” and improve readability. In a headline it makes me think the writing will be pretty bad and I almost skipped the article. But the notion of an actual six-person rotation intrigued me.
7 man rotation
3 full time starters, 4 piggy back starters facing the lineup twice (about 4 innings each).
Sorry, but this argument is flawed from the very beginning due to two words: Carlos Martinez. There is no possible argument you can give that will justify the Cardinals taking away starts from that stud.
The 6-man rotation works in Anaheim (for now), because they don’t have a legitimate ace like Martinez, except for the guy that they designed their 6-man rotation to accommodate in the first place.
Now I see you tried to adjust it to where Martinez still starts every fifth game, while the others fit in around him, but that’s an absolutely ridiculous schedule to try and maintain on a long-term basis. You can’t expect your rotation to perform well when you keep adjusting their pitching schedules all over the place like that.
As for innings, yes that’s an issue for some of these guys this year, but that’s why they have such depth to begin with. If someone gets hurt or needs extra rest, then Flaherty can step in. Reyes will probably come back to pitch out of the bullpen initially, and then if someone like Weaver or Flaherty gets close to his innings limit, then Reyes will swap into the rotation at that point.
Seems like you could do a thing like let Carlos pitch every fifth day, have some alternate between 5th and 6th day and then give the hobbled ones longer breaks so they still exist in October.
Also, like you could probably mix and match with the bullpen easier, especially given how many golden startievers we have.