The Rays Have Innovated Again
Necessity is said to be the primary motivator behind innovation. And no franchise is faced with a more difficult environment in which to compete, is confronted by a greater need for innovation, than the Tampa Bay Rays.
In possession of either the worst or second-worst stadium situation in the majors, with small-market revenues, the Rays also share a division with coastal elites like the Yankees (+76) and Red Sox (+75), who rank second and third in the majors in run differential, respectively, behind only the Astros (+98).
Because of this, the Rays have been more willing to experiment than just about every other club over the last 15 years. They brought defensive shifts to the American League, signed Evan Longoria to a club-friendly deal six days after he debuted in the majors, and have limited starting pitchers to two trips through the order more aggressively than any other club. This spring, they planned to employ a four-man rotation.
So it should not be a surprise that, of all clubs, it was the Rays who decided to start a reliever on Saturday and then again on Sunday. Sergio Romo is now a trailblazer. Romo became the first pitcher to start back-to-back games since Zack Greinke started three straight in 2012. (Greinke was ejected in the first inning of his start on July 7, 2012, then started the next game. The All-Star break followed, and he started the opening second-half game for the Brewers.)
Why did the Rays do this?
For starters, they were hunting platoon advantage, favorable matchups for Romo. The Angels lineup typically opens with right-handed hitters Ian Kinsler or Zack Cozart leading off followed by Mike Trout and Justin Upton in the second and third positions. Despite knowing of the Rays’ plan in advance, Angels manager Mike Scioscia elected to keep his lineup unchanged. The Angels are one of the more right-handed-heavy teams in baseball and Scioscia is one of the game’s most traditional managers.
Romo has some significant splits this season. He’s held righties to a .192/.288/.413 slash line but conceded a line of .346/.452/.520 to lefties. Due to his arm slot and slider, he’s been much more effective against righties (.186/.232/.323) than lefties (.241/.313/.375) over the course of his career. By starting him, the Rays could ensure he faces right-handed batters and the Angels’ best right-handed batters. Then the plan was for lefty Ryan Yarbrough to enter.
The Rays would limit Yarbough to two times through the order but the lefty could avoid some exposure to the Angels’ best right-handed bats, as Rays manager Kevin Cash explained to Marc Topkin of the Tampa Bay Times.
“It allows us in theory to let Sergio to come in there and play the matchup game in the first, which is somewhat unheard of – up until Saturday anyway,” Cash said. ”Then Yarbs can, in theory, have the availability to get deeper in the game. There’s no more secret about the third time through the order, everybody knows that. And that’s kind of what this is about.”
Romo would also start Sunday’s game.
Unheard of? Not quite, but close. In the 1990 NLCS, Pirates manager Jim Leyland started Ted Power to try and disrupt the platoon-heavy strategy of the Reds. We’ve seen the frequency of “bullpen games” pick up in recent years, but this was different. It further blurs pitching labels.
This author was particularly interested in the idea. It makes sense on paper, but in practice, managers and players have often resisted changes to conventional roles.
As a newspaperman covering the Pirates for the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review in 2014, I asked Pirates manager Clint Hurdle if he had considered starting reliever Mark Melancon in Game No. 162 (a Sunday) to save staff ace Gerrit Cole for their likely appearance in the NL Wild Card game that following Wednesday. I recounted that series and decision making last fall.
To recap, the Pirates entered play on Sunday, Sept. 28, one game behind the Cardinals in the NL Central. To beat the Cardinals, the Pirates had to defeat the Reds in game No. 162, and the Cardinals — starting Adam Wainwright — had to then lose later in the day. Then the Pirates would have to travel to St. Louis and beat the Cardinals in a tiebreaker game Monday. In short, the odds off winning the division were not favorable. This author thought it made more sense to save Cole for the Wild Card game against the Giants and Madison Bumgarner.
Hurdle was exasperated by the idea and question.
“This is not about theory. This is not about analytics. The only analytics that played into this decision was human analytics… You play this long and you get [the opportunity to win the division] and to go theoretical is not in a lot of your players DNA… That’s the other beauty of the sport. When your business is other people’s pleasure, other people get pleasure telling you how to do your business …
“At the end of the day, with every conversation I’ve had with a player, I’ve had with Neal [Huntington], that I’ve had with Bob [Nutting], that I’ve had with Frank [Coonelly] and that I’ve had with my coaching staff, there is no way we’re going to walk away from the opportunity to win the division… After 161 games of grit and fight and battle, we’re trying to make history here… There is no guaranteed way to cut this thing up and do what you want to do. So, we’re going to do what we believe in.”
Last October, Yankees manager Joe Girardi was asked about bullpen-ing the Wild Card game, and he was similarly uncomfortable with the idea.
“I think that’s pretty risky,” Girardi said before Tuesday night’s [Wild Card] game, “because you’re in the one-game playoff and the season’s over if you don’t win that game, that’s the bottom line.
“To me, that’s awful risky.”
So would Romo and the Rays melt in going away from contention? Could they handle it?
Here’s what Romo did in the first inning Saturday:
Against this fellow Mike Trout…
And to close the inning with a perfect first…
A couple items of interest: Romo did not melt when placed in an unusual inning to work, an inning in which he had never pitched… and he had enthusiasm for the work. When he completed his task, he punched his right hand into his glove demonstratively while departing the mound. Romo enjoyed the role.
Yarbough followed Romo by allowing four hits and a run over six innings, and the Rays won. Said Cash to MLB.com of Romo’s start Saturday.
“It did go really, really well,” Cash said “He opened the game with a slider just like he was pitching the eighth or ninth inning. So, we’re going back to Sergio, because it worked so well.”
“Sergio is pumped. He’s treated himself as a starter. He’s left to get his rest and throw his one or two innings.”
On Sunday?
Romo pitched another scoreless first, and a bullpen-ing effort followed, one that allowed three earned runs, but Shohei Ohtani and the Angels were too much in a 5-2 loss. Still, the plan, again, largely worked.
“It’s a completely different animal,” Romo said. “Kudos to all the starters that can do that every fifth day. Plus, they get asked to throw 100 pitches. I barely got a quarter of that done today. It’s impressive what they do, and I can’t sit here and say I can do it as well as they can. But I got two zeros in the first inning, so I think I’m OK at this point.”
Not everyone was for it. Said Cozart:
Zack Cozart on the #Rays starting Romo on back-to-back days: “It was weird…it’s bad for baseball, in my opinion…It’s spring training. That’s the best way to explain it.” #Angels
— Fabian Ardaya (@FabianArdaya) May 20, 2018
New ideas usually meet resistance. But the plan worked. And when plans and ideas continue to work, they become accepted.
Perhaps the Rays have innovated yet again.
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.
I like Zack Cozart a lot less than I did 3 minutes ago
I would love to see him elaborate on how, exactly, it is bad for baseball.
Translation: “It’s bad for me.”
I thought Joe Posnanski had a thoughtful take on how it might be bad for baseball. Or how it might not be bad for baseball. He makes some good points.
http://joeposnanski.com/modern-romonce/
What were his good points? I couldn’t identify any in that piece, besides “It’ll be weird when you ask who’s starting and you’re not sure who’s considered the starter”. I mean, ok, so what? And I usually like his pieces.
Not really seeing any points in there. He basically poses a question, ‘If the first pitcher of the game stops being the main pitcher of the game, will that be good for fans watching & following games?’ And he doesn’t answer the question he poses.
Why should it be bad? Especially the way it was done for Saturday when Ryan Yarbrough was the main pitcher. What the article talks about, of fans being excited about ‘who’s the starter?’ ‘I’m going to the game tonight, I’ll get to see Scherzer/Kershaw/Kluber/whoever pitch’ still applies just as well if that main pitcher enters in the 2nd inning instead of the first. It’s not going to make the on field product less watchable, like the NBA example he uses. Fans turning up excited to see a particular big name still turn up excited to see a particular big name. If ‘Romoing’ becomes more widely used, literally all that would need to change would be a label, the game’s ‘primary pitcher’ instead of ‘starting pitcher’.
With the resistance from Hurdle & Girardi in big games, I’m not surprised that players & managers are somewhat risk-averse when it comes to something that makes sense but isn’t traditional. Because if it doesn’t result in a win, the criticism will be much louder. Because even if it increases the odds of winning the world series, the intermediate steps (e.g. winning division, winning WC game) are still seen as important targets themselves. Trying something out in a ‘meaningless’ game in May probably gets much less resistance.
He said that he was watching video for a different announced starter and that the Rays basically pulled a bait-and-switch by having Romo start instead of Matt Andriese on Sunday.
I don’t agree with Cozart, but this comment section is being way too smug about this. He made one solitary comment in a moment of frustration about something that could potentially throw a wrench in the competitive balance of the sport that he has been playing his entire life and from which he makes his livelihood.
The comment section looks more like reddit than I hoped I’d ever see here. All discussion of the article and/or baseball is buried beneath some worthless chirp.
I wonder how articles like this circulate. They probably some get into a toxic social media feed, or maybe it is bots – I don’t know. That guy has an opinion, what a scum bag!!!
The article itself is fine! I’m fascinated by the Rays’ experiment and was eagerly waiting to see what Fangraphs wrote about it.
I’m just disappointed that the comments are overflowing with keyboard warriors acting like they’ve never reacted poorly to a big change at work that might make life a little harder. The top *three* comments are basically identical low-effort “burns”.
Eventually Fangraphs will probably realize they get more clicks and votes that way, and curate future article topics accordingly. Can’t wait… “The physics Ohtani’s fastball! And here’s what Harper had to say…”
I was just saying that someone probably drops a link to this in a toxic social media feed and it goes crazy like this. To think of the volume of comments here as opposed to most articles is weird. Is what he said really making people that angry? There is no way that it is… Maybe the comments section is worth more clicks that the article – in which case, bots…
Equally interesting to see the tide roll back in, which seems bot-ish. The huge waves of up/downvotes generally follow that pattern. What are the chances that such an opinionated and passionate group just rolls by? Perhaps that is the nature of the enraged Internet activist? I imagine something like Butter’s company of trolls on the Facebook episode of South Park lol
I love it, and the fact that Cozart was so put off by it, to me, means it’s something worth continuing to expand the advantage of the pitcher.
rofl Zack Cozart Fun Police Junior Constable. Brian McCann would be proud.
I’m not sure if there is anything to be done by the team it’s employed against. What are you going to do, push the top of the order back and give Trout fewer plate appearances?
Stick a lefty or two in the first 3 batters, and they won’t want to throw a ROOGY against you.
Wouldn’t the next evolution in this argument be that for the first inning or two that two pitchers start with one as a pitcher and the other as an outfielder (ideally a lefty and a righty)? They would take turns pitching based on matchups and that the pitcher without a DH be removed by a position playing pitch hitter when it was their turn to bat.
I covered this months ago.
Revolutionary pitching idea
https://baseballanalyzed.com/2018/04/07/the-future-of-pitching/
And other people covered it years before you: https://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/the-evidence-for-starting-a-reliever/
Not in the AL (Ohtani aside). If any player playing a position in a game goes in to pitch they lose the DH.
Never mind.
Presumably you could do this against teams that don’t lean so heavily to one side by just throwing a good non-L/ROOGY reliever to start the game. It should still be better to have a reliever, being better for one inning than a back end starter, facing the other team’s best hitters.
But then what are you gaining? You’re deploying your 2nd or 3rd best reliever in a lower leverage spot than he normally pitches.
The advantage of using RPs late in the game, is that you know when they’re needed. You’re never wasting a top arm in an 8-1 game.
If you start using your 2nd or 3rd best reliever in the first, he’s going to end up pitching in a lot of 8-1 games.
Even your 4th or 5th best reliever might be better for one inning than your 4th or 5th best starter. I’m sure there’s a point at which it stops making sense, I’m just saying the idea should work even if its not a L/ROOGY scenario.
I think the real juice is to turn a mediocre reliever into a great one by giving him a favorable match up. Using you 4th or 5th best reliever seems to offer no substantial benefit. He’s probably not much better than your starter.
No doubt, it definitely helps augment your advantage if you’ve got a platoon issue like this. Without running all the numbers on every team, though, several teams’ 4th or 5th best relievers should be better than their 4th or 5th best starter (offer not valid for Houston Astros). This is a wildly imperfect measure, because I get the limitations of the numbers I’m using and the SSS, but I just looked at all Rays with 10 IP and there are 6 relievers (Colome, Andriese, Roe, Alvarado, Romo and Kittredge) with better xFIPs than their 4th and 5th ranked starters (Yarbrough and Faria). If you go by FIP, they have 4 relievers ahead of every single starter, including Snell and Archer.
I ran the same numbers I just quoted for the rest of the AL East, because I didn’t want to spend the time to do the whole league and it holds up for the others:
Blue Jays: 6 relievers (Osuna, Loup, Axford, Oh, Tepera, Clippard) better by FIP than all but one of their starters (Happ)
Red Sox: 6 relievers (Walden, Kelly, Barnes, Hembree, Kimbrel, Smith) better by FIP than the 4th and 5th ranked starters (Price/Rodriguez and Pomeranz)
Yankees: 6 relievers (Chapman, Green, Holder, Robertson, Betances, German – most of his appearances are in relief so far) better by FIP than all but one starter (Severino)
Orioles: 5 relievers (Givens, Bleier, Brach, Castro and O’Day) all better by FIP than any starter
So I do think you will have a lot of teams with 4 or 5 relievers who are better for one inning than your back end starters. Now, the difference might be marginal enough not to mess with them, but in this era of trying to squeeze out every minor advantage, it might make sense for some teams to try.
On the contrary, you can use every pitcher based on matchups. It’s an evolutionary technique. I predicted it months ago.
Revolutionary pitching idea
https://baseballanalyzed.com/2018/04/07/the-future-of-pitching/
But you are also decreasing the likelihood that you end up in a 10-1 game (at least on the wrong side of it) since you have increased your advantage in the 1st.
Not really. If the starter is going to blow, he’s still got 5+ innings to do it.
Absent the platoon advantage, I’m not really seeing what I’ve gained by using the reliever in the 1st, rather than the 6th or 7th.
The 1st inning is the highest score inning in baseball, at least according to Brian Kenney yesterday on MLB Network. That’s a pretty high leverage situation.
The leverage in a 0-0 game in the first is a bit below average. Leverage Index in the top of the first with no outs and nobody on is 0.9 (per David Schoenfield writing about this usage of Romo at ESPN). It is not a “pretty high leverage situation”.
In this instance, LAA can’t or won’t do it due to roster construction. Obviously, L/ROOGYs are even bigger issues in late innings, which is why teams try to alternate L/R hitters.
Sit back and enjoy the fact that the other team is going to burn their entire bullpen (if they can keep it close) and know you don’t have to face anyone beyond a back-end starter – that is the strategy I would employ. Not sure it is much of a threat to anyone.
Too bad Cozart ya big baby.
Baseball players are the worst, sometimes.
Am I wrong in saying that relievers pitch significantly slower than starters, and that pitching changes in and of themselves take an enormous amount of time that is more painful (advertisements) and boring than watching a pitcher or batter idle out an at bat by 14 seconds?
How come the people who tend to advocate the billion-reliever-a-game strategy are also the ones who tend to bitch that baseball is too slow?
If anything stuff like this should sorta cement some sort of rule implementation that requires certain criteria for a ‘starting pitcher’ (3 IP or 3 ER can qualify as a ‘start?’)
1. Relievers do have a slower pace than starters on average. However, it doesn’t matter what inning the reliever pitches in if he’s gonna pitch anyway.
2. Mid-inning pitching changes are the only ones that anyone cares about. Romo did not leave mid-inning. This strategy added 0 extra time to the game.
1. What? If you start a game with a reliever, you’re likely going to have many more pitchers in a game than one with a starter. Most of them are likely to be relievers, who take longer. The first game Romo “started” a pitcher threw 6 innings, but in the second game, the most an individual pitcher went was 3 innings.
2. Because there are now likely four more innings that had to be filled in with a reliever, there are now more opportunities for mid inning pitching changes to occur. Looking at this specific instance is deflective of my point. Also, note that the following day, Romo pitched 1.1 innings.
I think it’s that last sentence of #2 that is doing most of the work here. There’s not much reason to think, if the opposing lineup is optimized for it, the starter-reliever will stop at the end of an inning. But the circumstances of that game were unusual. The Rays got as many innings out of their bullpen as they could; the only “starter,” Anthony Banda, is a young lefty prospect who has really struggled so far at MLB level yet. They were probably just extending the strategy as far as they could to further limit his exposure to this lineup.
#1 and the rest of #2 don’t really hold except insofar as a starter could go 9 innings and a reliever can’t. But those games are so rare at this point that they are almost non-factors in the math. There’s no reason to think a starter in the 2nd will cover fewer innings than a starter in the 1st. In fact, because the third time through is going to start with worse hitters, there’s a chance that the long pitcher is allowed to go deeper than he would when starting the first inning.
There is more of an actual advantage to using relievers later on, if said relievers are to pitch a limited number of innings in a given window of games. This inning limit is what makes leverage a very real effect. That’s the first reason that this strategy doesn’t really make all that much sense, in the manner that you’ve presented it at least (which is markedly different than the strategy actually mentioned in the article) as has been pointed out on this article’s comment section. Merely flip-flopping starters and relievers is dumb. Using solely ‘relievers’ throughout the game is the only strategy here that makes sense in order to limit batter exposure effects that tend to make starters perform worse (outside of them pacing themselves).
#1 and #2 do hold up just fine. The article and strategy don’t imply that a starter will be used at all whatsoever, and even makes reference to the famous Joe Girardi question (about using relievers through an entire game). I pointed out that the following game, no pitcher was used for more than 3 total innings. Starters on average, last longer than 3 total innings, and relievers don’t. I don’t think any true or established starter was used that game, so clearly you’ve misinterpreted what exactly the Rays are doing here. Even if a “starter” was used for a small number of innings, that would have about the same effect as simply using a reliever here.
The more games that do not feature starters, intended to pitch a starter’s load, the more extra commercial breaks and slow pitchers we will see.
Also, using rhetorical distractions, such as referring to a sentence ‘doing work’ does not make you clever or more correct.
Also, I will note that the following day there were multiple mid-inning pitching changes early on in the game (3 total, I believe), and had the Rays actually been winning, we may have seen more later on in the game.
So we’re 1 for 2 in terms of #2 “holding up.”
3. It is not incongruous to say that bullpenning can maximize pitcher effectiveness (a game winning strategy for the professionals playing the game), and also wish that games were shorter (an aesthetic desire for we fans)
Huh? While the two are not mutually exclusive opinions, it is indeed incongruous to bitch about the length of the game, and then to promote and get excited about a strategy that could engage in lengthening the game by way of an action that has lengthened it probably more than any other.
As opposed to just sort of hoping it gets banned as the optimal strategy.
There are a million stupid things that waste time in the middle of a baseball game. Eliminate commercials. Reduce mound visits. 30 lashes for batters who step out of the box to adjust their equipment between every single pitch … The last thing that I would want, personally, is to start banning strategic innovation
It doesn’t take an intelligent or clever person to platoon or use a billion pitchers. It’s not an exciting strategy to reap the benefits of. I suspect people did it less in the past out of pride more than that they didn’t think there was a true advantage.
Strategic “advancement” means what? Why is doing this “advancing”?
If someone found a way to make bunting work better than swinging every at bat would you call that “advancement” too? I would simply call it proof that a rule clarification is necessary as most of the point of baseball is to swing the bat and for the pitcher to fool someone that is swinging.
In my book, the less shitty pitchers and hitters we have to watch, the better. I think I could find a lot of people who agree, maybe not on FanGraphs though.
Some people are just against the status quo. I think baseball is a metaphor for a long-standing institution/power for some people and tearing it down or changing it represents progress from a particular perspective.
Perhaps there are people for whom baseball is a metaphor for a long-standing institution/power, and tearing it down or changing it represents the end of Western Civilization from a particular perspective.
Ando others it represents just a game, and so what if it changes? Throw everything at the wall and see what sticks!
My point is that some people (probably most commenters here) just want change – it doesn’t matter if it is well thought out or anything. I am not sure that this is about evolution of the game or anything like that. It was just a weekend for a struggling franchise, but we are making it into something else. I think it is symbolic of change because of the narrative, but nothing more.
A potential pitching clock is change. The designated hitter is change. Those are rules adjustments that fundamentally alter the sport.
Reliever usage? That’s not even actually change. That’s just strategy.
The title of the article is “The Rays Have Innovated Again”
In the very least, the narrative is saying ‘THINGS ARE CHANGING GUYS,’ even if that may not be what you believe.
Strategy or lack of a starting rotation? I don’t think there is much here other than a ton of comments and a headline.
Actually few saber people complain about long games and bullpenning, those are usually traditionalists who like complete games and hate relievers
Sawchik complains about long games all the time
While he may not be many or most saber people, he is certainly a loud voice. He’s also not the only loud voice. Not even the only one on this website.
It’s certainly an interest innovation.
The problem, if it is a problem, is the loss of leverage. Romo is being used in both games without having any knowledge if his services will be important. Either game could have ended 10-0 in either direction, in which case the team would be better off using the back of the bullpen.
That said, there is an argument that Romo is, in fact, the back of the bullpen, and for that matter is really only good at one thing so you might as well use him when the opportunity arises. I suppose there is also the possibility that the Rays were going to use Romo in both games anyway so no loss no matter what the result.
As for Cozart, I cannot say that I really agree with his position, but I can say that I find 13 man bullpens to be boring so I am with him in spirit.
Loss of leverage is an issue.
So is potential bullpen overuse if innings are not planned carefully.
And, of course, so are the human factors. It’s perfectly reasonable to say that a particular thing is a good strategy, and yet run afoul of players who don’t like their routines messed with. Just because we can’t well measure the effect of a player’s attitude on their performance, does not mean it doesn’t exist.
To add, anyone who has worked or managed people knows that a certain percentage of the population requires structure/routine to be effective. Baseball players are no different.
Leverage by inning* is seriously overrated. Give me my outs whenever they’re most likely to actually be outs. It doesn’t matter whether it’s at the beginning or the end of the game.
*obviously, using relievers to pitch out of a jam (e.g., with runners in scoring position) is obviously way more valuable than when the bases are loaded.
I literally wrote about this idea earlier this season due to statistics showing that a starter’s production declines with each successive time pitching through the batting order.
Revolutionary pitching idea
https://baseballanalyzed.com/2018/04/07/the-future-of-pitching/
At least you posted your spammy link to your blog 3 times for the “revolutionary” concept that pitchers are less effective each time through the order.
I wrote about the idea, while in season, as well as statistics, it shows productivity growth by age, the next time you start the command.
The idea of a revolution:
https://analyzethebaseball.com/2018/04/07/future-in-the-throw/
You realize you are now morally obliged to register the domain, right?
Yarbrough did face batters for a third time, but in facing 23 batters the Rays only let the 4 – 8 hitters face him three times, not the 1 – 5 hitters. So they offset the third time through the order penalty by making sure the guys he faced three times were worse hitters than if he had started the game, which was the point of the exercise.
Yes, this is something that was missed by much of the coverage of “The Opener” concept. It’s not just about getting the favorable matchup for Romo. Presumably, you could do that later in the game, too (although later in the game, there’s a greater chance that a manager makes an offensive sub to get the platoon advantage back). Doing it this way allowed Yarby to face 23 hitters, whereas if he had started, he almost certainly would have been pulled after going through the lineup twice, facing only 18 hitters, to avoid him facing those dangerous righties at the top of the Angels order a third time. Good on you, and good on Travis, for getting to the heart of this.
The opposing reaction if this catches on could be even more interesting than the original action: better hitters moving down and getting spaced more evenly through the order. How do you balance wanting to get the third-time penalty back without denying your best hitters enough plate appearances to overcome that? Does it depend on the pitcher, so you have an ace order and a normal pitcher order, in addition to left/right platoons?
Or do aces never get this treatment, because their edge over the first three hitters will dwarf the advantage of moving third-time from top of the lineup to middle/bottom? So much to be sorted out here.
This point exactly. An issue that I have with Travis’ article is that he wrote: “The Rays would limit Yarbough to two times through the order but the lefty could avoid some exposure to the Angels’ best right-handed bats.”
As MikeS points out, that’s not in fact what the Rays did with Yarbrough in this game. As a more general matter of logic, a pitcher who is going to face exactly 18 hitters (twice through the order) can’t “avoid some exposure” to any of the opposing team’s hitters: the pitcher is going to face each of them exactly twice.
“When your business is other people’s pleasure, other people get pleasure telling you how to do your business”
This Hurdle quote sounds funny but then it turns deep and true. It’s like Rumsfeld’s unknown unknowns.
Hurdle didn’t waste $2 trillion and leave the Pirates worse off than when he started, but other than that …
I think it is important to distinguish the current Rays front office from the one that signed Longoria and brought shifting to the AL. Under Friedman (through 2014), they used to be a model organization; now, they are just another small market team with little to no edge. Four straight seasons under .500, working on a fifth.
2014 was Houston’s 6th year of sub-.500 baseball
Friedman was good but the rays also benefited from an unprecedented 10 consecutive top10 picks including like 7 top5 picks and several first overall picks.
Even under Friedman the pipeline was drying out after 2010, that happens when you draft low for half a decade as a small market team.
I’m sure sam Miller and Ben Lindbergh did this in Sonoma a couple years ago. They’d be proud. Great for cash, great for baseball
In either game was the “SP” ready to come in to relieve Romo if he got into trouble? I suspect that’s the situation teams want to avoid. If they’re slow to employ relievers in spots they aren’t accustomed (rofl) then they surely aren’t going to be comfortable bringing in a starter with runners on.
I assume it would have made the most sense to have someone else warm up to get the Rays out of trouble, then Yarbrough would have started a clean inning.
I’d be willing to be that Yarbrough was told to go through his normal pre-game preparation like he normally would except timing his routine with the knowledge he’d be entering in the second inning instead of the first. In other words, still treat it like a “start” as much as possible, so I agree with Bryz that he wouldn’t have entered in the first if Romo got in trouble. Yarbough ended up throwing pretty much a typical starting pitcher workload in that game: 6.1 innings, 23 batters faced, 92 pitches.
Sunday’s game with Romo as the nominal starter was rather different, because that one looks like a true bullpen game. Romo faced 6 hitters, getting 4 outs, so Romo was replaced in the middle of the 2nd inning. The next pitcher (Andriese) faced 9 hitters, got 6 outs, and threw 45 pitches. No pitcher in that game threw more than 57 pitches for the Rays.
I believe it was the Indians in the early 1990s that pioneered signing young players to long-term contracts.
Yep. This was the Cleveland Model, pioneered by John Hart. It was a huge, huge advantage. Still is, if you can do it.
I understand why batters would not like it. As a batter you want to prepare for a starter, may be take his first 1-2 pitches to get a feel and then either get on base or at least a good and long at bat so you are ready to hit him the second and third time.
If you then face a reliever in the first it gets less comfortable. You know he is only facing 3-4 guys and going all out so you need to be ready to swing, it is almost like a pinch hitting appearance which is known to affect batters negatively. And then the real starter you have to get comfortable again and since that guy might only pitch 1.5 times through the line-up (3-4 innings) you are not even guaranteed a second at bat.
The whole bullpenning is extra stress for the hitters especially now when you don’t face an 89 mph throwing long man like in the 90s but a really nasty guy and this one is extra stressful.
However of course baseball is about winning and more and more unwritten rules (although there wasn’t even one for this) are going to disappear unless they stop it with a rule change.
“Innovative”? First proposed by Earnshaw Cook in his 1964 book “Percentage Baseball”. 54 years new.
There is no quesiton people have been suggesting similar things for decades. What’s innovative is some team actually tried it in an actual major league game
Yes. To me, the innovation, so far as it exists, is figuring out how to do this on a more regular basis without making all of the externalities offset the advantage itself. If baseball were just played on a computer, of course this would have been done decades ago. I have no idea what the Rays are doing to make this work, or even if it will. I don’t suspect Cash is going to come right out and give his detailed plan to the media.
The Rays should lower the catwalks
Quite bummed to see the Greinke mention as now one of my favorite trivia questions has been made much more public. Great article as always Travis!
I think we can all agree that the most important implications of this are for pitcher win eligibility.
“They brought defensive shifts to the American League”. Defensive shifts were in the American League long before the Rays as a franchise were. Just ask Ted Williams.
This is going to make it more complicated to dig into how many innings starters are throwing per start…
There is ZERO “bad side” to this idea. Old people, and Zack Effing Cozart, need to STFU.
Is there any empirical evidence to support that there is no bad side?
Just
Travis touches on it in the article, but it will be interesting to see how a more progressive manager approaches structuring their lineup against this strategy. Obviously Scioscia is the ideal manager to try this tactic against, but will this strategy lose effectiveness when opposing managers counter by changing their batting order/lineup?
Some of it is on Scioscia, specifically Pujols hitting cleanup despite now being a well below league average hitter. A fair amount of it, however, is just roster construction with the Angels being such a heavily RH hitting team.
As both Travis and some commenters above point out, a big part of this idea making sense for the Rays seems to be that Romo is an overall pretty “meh” reliever but is particularly good at getting same-handed hitters out. Teams with a more balanced mix of RH and LH hitters usually try to break up long stretches of same-handed batters specifically to make it tougher for the opponent to get a platoon advantage. The thought process is focused on relievers coming in later in games, but the same logic would make it less attractive to use this Romo maneuver.
“We’ve seen the frequency of “bullpen games” pick up in recent years, but this was different. It further blurs pitching labels.”
Well, sort of, but who cares? I suppose it makes stats gathering more difficult, but there you go.
The only difference that matters is that “starting pitchers” are stretched out and expected to pitch five or more innings. Relief pitchers, not so much.
Since the only thing you can guarantee in the course of a game is that Pitcher X will be facing Batters 1, 2 and 3 … that looks like your traditional “high leverage” situation to me. Particularly since the team that scores first tends to win (65% or so, if my memory doesn’t fail me).
There are a few wrinkles with this strategy. What happens if your Romo-equivalent gets bombed? Me, I’d have a back-up in the pen for the rest of that inning. Just like later innings. What happens if he gets out of the first with no runs? Well, that’s up to the manager. When do you warm up the “starting pitcher?” One inning later, obviously. And he stands a better chance of getting through the side three times, considering that he’s not facing the top of the order to start with.
Nobody expects a starting pitcher to go more than seven innings these days, and even that is a rarity. I think this is a long overdue concept.
PS Steve Wright to knuckleball his way through the first inning of every second game for the Red Sox. That would be the logical next step in this direction.
Incidentally, I find it interesting that no National League team tried this first. I’d have thought that the absence of a DH makes the early switch even more appealing …
I’m not sure that this is more appealing in the NL. It can push the “real” starter later in the game increasing the chances that they will come to bat in a high leverage situation that could result in being PH for. Maybe you lose an inning he could have gone (since he didn’t pitch in the first) and you’ve already used 1 RP from the pen.
“I’d have thought that the absence of a DH makes the early switch even more appealing”
That’s awfully tough to do in practice, because a normal “reliever used as the nominal starter” won’t make it far enough into the game to be replaced by a pinch hitter. A team could in theory try it by putting the pitchers’ spot somewhere toward the top of the lineup, but that means having a pinch hitter initially get an important lineup spot at the expense of a better hitter, and later in the game it means that the pitcher’s spot is in the middle of good hitters. The replacement pitcher(s) are presumably going to have to bat at some point during the game. Yarbrough would have had to do so on Saturday if this had been an NL game. There are also possible unintended consequences where moving up the pitcher’s spot in the order means that the first pitcher of the game (Romo-like nominal starter) either has to be pulled earlier than planned or get a plate appearance.
Some guy named Dave Cameron must be rolling over in his grave:
https://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/play-in-game-strategy-skip-the-starter/
I think you mean, Ruined baseball again.
“New ideas usually meet resistance… when plans and ideas continue to work, they become accepted. ” – I’ll take the under on this generalization working out. Every bad idea is met with resistance as well, not just the good ones. Some ideas are really bad – all of the worst ones are new at some point. Its also kind of hard to argue that not even attempting to have a starting rotation is a “new idea” – high school teams do this all the time – how progressive! In any case, it was inevitable that the first time the bull-penning worked out this article would come out here as FG planted their flag in this during the preseason. Is this really innovation or is it a sideshow? I think it is just a creative take on fielding a non-competitive team – which is what they are actually doing.
In the mid 60’s the Giants used Bill Henry as a lefty specialist. Herman Franks regularly used him to start a game against a left handed lead off hitter and remove him after one or two batters. Sometimes Henry would pitch the first inning of a home game and be listed as the lead off hitter and be pinch hit for to start the bottom of the first.
Facts… pass
I love this strategy. First, it gives teams an option as to what sort of opponent they are going to face: most teams have a substantial difference (~0.30) in their wOBA vs right or left. With only 5 starters traditionally, opportunities to throw a lefty against a lefty dominated team would often be limited logistically. But by giving some starting IPs to relievers, clubs with balanced bullpens have more flexibility to maximize or strategically stagger arms from a single side, so as to face an opponent’s weaker lineup. Recent advances in 40-man roster management and DL management have further increased the ability to ‘choose your opponent’ by managing lefty-right SP decisions.
Second, the strategy allows a team to choose it’s opponent’s defense. Baltimore, for example, is more likely to field Pablo Alvarez a righty, so even if no righty starters are rested a club call roll out a top righty reliever to start the first to ensure, not only platoon advantages, but Alvarez in the field.
Of course smart managers could respond- but their options are somewhat limited due to 4/5 man benches. Traditionalist managers who refuse to adjust might regularly give up large advantages, particularly in the regular season, against this strategy.
To be fair most lineups aren’t as right handed as the angels and almost every team with a decent lefty hitter or two will try to split righties and lefties.
Against a team with just 3 lefties it will be like R-L-R-L-R-R-L-R-L and this won’t work as good.
Of course if you put andrew miller or hader there the platoon split doesn’t matter as much but then you burn a really good reliever.
I wonder, is there an actual rule requiring teams to announce their probable starters in advance of the game, or is that just a courtesy thing?
If a team announces their starter like the Rays did with Romo, the opposing manager could easily neutralize their opening strategy.
But if they didn’t announce anybody – then what? What lineup would a manager submit, not knowing the opposing starter? Will this new trend lead to some kind of Pat Venditte thing where one side has declare their pitcher, then the other side declares their lineup?
Your realise this is because they dont want to pay starting pitching salaries when arbitration comes along and their ownership wants to pocket as much cash as possible right? they arent “innovating” to be clever, they are doing it to keep money
You spelled “the rays are cheap and this has nothing to do with being clever” wrong