The Other, Other, Other Extreme Development
Baseball is in an era of extremes. While the game has always evolved, it’s rarely — if ever — evolved so quickly.
Home runs have increased dramatically due to a variety of factors, velocity continues to rise, bullpens keep on gaining a greater share of the overall workload. The MLBPA, meanwhile, has been taken aback by the changing complexion of the free-agent marketplace, defined this offseason by stagnation — in part due to the speed with which organizations have adapted to the terms of the latest CBA.
Another labor-ownership issue — pace — continues to be problematic. Not necessary the overall time of games, but the increasing duration of seconds between pitches in an age when attention spans are continually tested. To really engage a fan and customer, particularly the next generation, you probably don’t want them to be able/compelled to look at their smartphone between every pitch.
There’s a lot of extremes. And I’m writing to discuss yet another here today: the disabled list.
While thumbing through some MLB preview material the other day at my local Barnes & Nobles in Westlake, Ohio, I stumbled upon an interesting table from the latest edition of Ron Shandler’s Baseball Forecaster:
| Season | Players on DL | Days spent on DL |
|---|---|---|
| 2010 | 393 | 22,911 |
| 2011 | 422 | 25,610 |
| 2012 | 409 | 30,408 |
| 2013 | 442 | 29,551 |
| 2014 | 422 | 25,839 |
| 2015 | 454 | 28,982 |
| 2016 | 478 | 31,229 |
| 2017 | 533 | 30,913 |
With the change to a 10-day version last year, we expected trips to DL to increase and they did. Our old friend Eno Sarris noted that about everyone was on the disabled list last May. As we can see in the table above, DL trips were at a record level. This was not all that surprising.
Not only does the 10-day DL allow teams to more quickly make decisions on whether to disable a player with a short-term injury, but the DL is, of course, also a roster-manipulation tool.
Besides serving as a mechanism to house injured players, the DL is also employed by club to create roster flexibility. We expected front offices to manipulate it, but no one quite maximized it like the Dodgers who used the 10-day DL like something of a revolving, de facto 26th-man roster spot. The Dodgers, in part, built their 2017 club with the 10-day DL team in mind.
Even as the game has become more and more specialized, from bullpen usage to platooning, the size of the major-league active roster has remained static. So we’d expect to see teams employ the 10-man DL as an extra spot pretty regularly. Moreover, with rest and efficiency becoming key management focal points, we’d expect to see innings per pitcher reduced and the number of pitchers employed increase.
While we expected to see a record number of the DL trips, the Dodgers really stood alone in maximizing the 10-day DL.
Of course, the 2017 Dodgers also had the deepest rotation in the game. Not every team has such a wealth of pitchers. Still, I suspect we will see the number of trips increase in 2018 as teams become more familiar with how to navigate the 10-day DL. I don’t have a great sense of how many/which clubs are copy-catting this idea this offseason particularly since many pitchers remain unemployed.
One surprise, at least to this author, is that despite, while the minimum stay on the disabled list declined by 33%, there was only a 1.3% decline in total days spent on the DL in 2017. I would have expected DL days to decline more significantly. That seems to suggest MLB players weren’t very healthy in 2017, and it’s a reminder that, because of the extremes of today’s game — namely stress and fatigue upon pitchers — injury rates have generally been another extreme element within the sport.
The limits of the game are currently being tested in a number of ways. In this particular case, it is quite possible we will see disabled-list usage increase in frequency in 2018 and beyond. Option-able pitchers have been more important as they become part of the taxi squad that is the end of a major-league roster.
Perhaps among the many other things players ought to consider in their next round of CBA negotiations, one of them is a proposal to expand major-league rosters to 26 players. Until then, expect DL trips to become yet another extreme in a game becoming more and more about swift changes and record levels. And the teams that best adapt to the changing landscape, that are most nimble, figure to enjoy the advantages.
A Cleveland native, FanGraphs writer Travis Sawchik is the author of the New York Times bestselling book, Big Data Baseball. He also contributes to The Athletic Cleveland, and has written for the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, among other outlets. Follow him on Twitter @Travis_Sawchik.
The extremes do not act in isolation – super-teams and divisional play with the added emphasis on and extra round of the postseason played a role. The Dodgers did what they did in part because they had a huge lead in the division and could coast – it was not to maximize regular season wins.
Adding an extra roster spot or continued tolerance of frivolous DL use will help super teams stay fresher for the playoffs (most likely by a trivial degree), but is not likely to change things for teams who are trying to maximize wins.
I agree. If the Dodgers had been in more of a dogfight for the division, I suspect some of that pitching depth would have been expendable to upgrade other parts of the club.
This is definitely true, but part of the reason the Dodgers could do this was because they were ridiculously deep. With the exception of Kershaw, the pitchers are all really good! I think you’re right that you wouldn’t have seen R&R breaks for Kershaw and Seager and Bellinger if not for the division lead, but there’s no reason to avoid giving Kenta Maeda a rest in favor of Brandon McCarthy (or whatever it was they did).
I don’t know that it means that people were more unhealthy. Part of the rationale for the 10 day DL was to get more people who were marginally hurt some rest, because the cost was lower. I’ve heard it said that baseball players are basically always playing hurt to some degree.
If rosters were expanded to 26 players, then teams like the Dodgers would just use the 10 Day DL to become a de facto 27th-man on the roster. If this is a problem, you can’t fix it by changing the roster size, you can only change it by changing the DL rules.
I think it’s almost impossible to set up a rule for it, though.
Pretty much every starting pitcher probably has some sort of soreness, at least by a month or two into the season, that in theory could benefit from 10 days of rest. If the team and player are both fine with the player going on the 10-day disabled list, it would be a mess for MLB to intervene, review medical records, and say “no, this pitcher is healthy enough to pitch.” Even if MLB is accurate 99% of the time, it’s easy to imagine the huge blowback if MLB does that and the pitcher gets hurt in his next start.
The only realistic way that I can see an outside party getting involved and shutting down some of this use of the 10-day DL is if a player, for whatever reason, thinks that he’s healthy and shouldn’t go on the 10-day DL. So, if he’s adamant enough in that view, it could escalate to the point of the MLBPA getting involved and threatening a grievance.
Hilarious, pathetic and predictble that this accurately described leftist boras mouthpiece of a blogger pushes for more labor benefits without the slightest consideration for the owners’ interests. You should have at least a semblance of balanced perspective, but this appears to be an impossibiltiy for you. Perhaps deadspin or gawker are hiring (if they are still in business).
Go away, this is a baseball site not a political site
i’m looking to learn a second language. bob, what courses did you use to become fluent in Gibberish?
No, you’re right. Why would we need more labor benefits in this country? Those poor owners aren’t doing very well, are they?
The problem with the 26 man roster is that it’s likely to lead to even more pitching changes and slow pace of play further. What you might do is expand the roster to 26 or even 27, but with the extra players deactivated for 8 days or more.
the more DL days, the more service time accumulated by players as a whole
Here’s a musing, the ramifications of which I haven’t really had time to mull over. What if you carried, essentially, a nine- or ten-man rotation and put every started but today’s on the DL? Would this ever be a viable strategy and, if so, under what conditions?
You’d gain a ton of roster flexibility; you could carry a couple extra guys on the bench, maybe to establish really strong platoon advantages, and a couple extra arms in the bullpen. You’d gain significant amounts of rest for essentially everyone — if pitchers gain a tick or two when they move to the bullpen, the same might apply if they pitched every tenth day.
You could adopt the plan to keep an ace out there every fifth or sixth day, or keep your top two guys out there on their regular schedule.
Are there regulations that would discourage this? Thoughts?
In theory that’s a cool idea however from a practical stand point there is no way a FA pitcher would sign knowing a 10 man rotation is going to be utilized, I have a hard time seeing it go to a 6 man rotation.
Pitchers tend not to do well on 10 days rest. They get out of rhythm. I suppose you could send them for a “rehab start” in AAA in the middle of their DL stint.
I think if it got that egregious and regimented that MLB would probably step in. I see practical difficulties making it unlikely to get to that point, though.
I agree that the practical issues raised by abgb and Pepper Martin are both relevant.
There’s also a big practical issue of the cost and resource allocation of having ten legitimate MLB starters on one roster.
Free agents in that mix are going to cost an average of about $10 to $15 million per year (at least).
Some of the pitchers would presumably be arb year and minimum salary players, but just how many of those will a team realistically develop at one time?
And, if it goes fully 10 deep with quality starting pitchers, is an idea like this one the best use of the last 2 or 3 of them? (It’s obviously valuable to have more than 5 legitimate starting pitcher options due to the rate of injuries.) Are some of those pitchers better used as high leverage relievers rather than planning to have them all start ~15 games per year? Or what about using some of that surplus as trade chips to upgrade the roster? Cost-controlled league average-ish starting pitchers could bring back position player upgrades, or be part of a consolidation trade for a top of the rotation quality starting pitcher. In particular, the latter are more useful in the playoffs than having a huge glut of league average-ish quality starting pitchers.
And, even if the team did keep 9 or 10 legitimate starters, the rate of pitching injuries make it likely that at any given time a few of those pitchers will have actual injuries that mean they’re unavailable to pitch. So, in practice, a team ends up back in a situation like the 2017 Dodgers, using a combination of the 10-day DL and option years on young players to divide the pitching workload among 6 to 8 starting pitchers while still nominally using a 5-man rotation (but with some members of it rotating periodically).
To that last point, you could make the case that the 2017 Dodgers had the candidates for a 10 man rotation if everyone was healthy, even before acquiring Darvish during the season:
Kershaw
Hill
Wood
Maeda
McCarthy
Ryu
Urias
Kazmir
Stripling
Stewart
Kazmir, however, was hurt and didn’t pitch at all in 2017. Urias was out with a season-ending injury by June, and other pitchers were injured and unable to pitch at various times. Stripling was used primarily as a reliever (only 2 starts, one of them in a bullpen game on October 1). Stewart, in a limited number of major league starts, didn’t pitch as well as one would expect based on his minor league track record.
“One surprise, at least to this author, is that despite, while the minimum stay on the disabled list declined by 33%, there was only a 1.3% decline in total days spent on the DL in 2017. I would have expected DL days to decline more significantly. That seems to suggest MLB players weren’t very healthy in 2017, and it’s a reminder that, because of the extremes of today’s game — namely stress and fatigue upon pitchers — injury rates have generally been another extreme element within the sport.”
One surprise, at least to this insignificant internet commenter, is that such a naive overgeneralization is expressed by a Fangraphs author.
Not all DL trips are equal, and one could argue, using the same set of limited numbers, that players were, in general, healthier in 2017. The number of days per DL trip was fewer in 2017 than any previous year since 2010!
Any mechanic or medical professional knows that preventive care is the best care. I would expect, of all things, that the staff at Fangraphs would recognize that relaxed DL requirements are nothing but added benefit to the players. I would suspect that at some point in the near future, the league and players will negotiate an expanded roster, but adding one or two league-minimum salary to each team is not going to fix whatever injustice one may feel the players are currently experiencing.
Incentiving teams to utilize the disabled list more, however, could have additional benefits for the players:
1. Players are always hurt in some ways and could benefit from time off.
2. The DL acts as a de-facto “option” for older players
3. Giving teams more freedom to “stash” ineffective players in an inactive roster gives more opportunities for minor leaguers to earn a pro-rated major league contract, with all the additional benefits.
4. DL time counts towards major league service time, whereas an option back to the minors does not. Players on the DL also retain all of their major league benefits.
Would it be possible for MLB to adopt a rule similar to the one that should have made Aaron Rodgers a free-agent this year? Not sure of the logistics or fairness of creating a guideline governing the time frame for subsequent DL stints where injuries are not apparent in-game to prevent the blatant roster manipulation.