Man, what happened to the hitters telling you when you're tired?

Add consultation in pitching motion by Mike Marshall and I think numerous pitchers could pitch 230-320 innings per season again, though their agents might need more medical attention.

Arietta, for just one example, does a good job of pitching from legs through chest, through arm and wrist -- instead of the catwhippity elbow pitching that Marshall accurately predicted would quickly shatter the careers of Kerry Wood and Mark Prior. I bet if he kept his mechanics in order (unlike the playoffs against the Mets) he could up his IP another notch.

Modern pitchers throw more hard breaking stuff which is harder on their arms at least by the CW. Also modern hitters strike out and walk more than ever which means more pitches. Pitching in baseball is quite a bit different from just 15 years ago, much less 30 years ago.

"Add consultation in pitching motion by Mike Marshall and I think numerous pitchers could pitch 230-320 innings per season again, though their agents might need more medical attention."

Good one Arlen !


zubinsum, you make some good points. But James' call is for five innings OR 80 pitches, whichever comes first. And 15 or 16 pitches/inning is average even today if I am not mistaken, so his proposal takes into account these differences. Not having 20 game winners does kind of suck. This would bring them back. Even their medicated agents mike like that !

Interesting idea, and I'd love to see a MLB manager try it, but I doubt anyone ever will.  Well, maybe a manager with a bad team in a small market with three okay starters and not much else in the way of arms...no, not even then, ha ha.

I recall James discussing the use of closers years ago.  The gist was that the way managers use their best relief pitcher (i.e., almost always for 9th inning save situations) was inefficient -- a lot of games are decided much earlier, say with the bases loaded in the 6th inning of a tie game and the starting pitcher getting tired.  But who wants to "go against the book" and put his neck on the line?

On the other hand, watch what the best SIM owners do here during a live game.  In the same situation as described above, if they've got Eck or Rivera or Gagne in the pen they bring them in.  They don't use their second or third or fourth best reliever when the game is on the line.  Why don't MLB managers manage that way?  Fear of ridicule if going against the book flops -- and also the star closer wants his save stats.  

James is also implicitly arguing for the use of tandems, sort of, which many savvy WIS owners use as well....

John Maynard Keynes once referred to the conformism of policy makers by saying that even the ones that thought that they were independent thinkers and very modern were dependent on the ideas of some 19th century economist or other. 

A similar conformism exists in baseball, though strangely, in the post-Moneyball world, that still has not translated into a variety of strategies, more innovation, risk-taking, new thinking about ways to use players or even how many pitchers and position players to carry on a team. 

This could be interesting for a high cap theme league, say $120 Mil. I can't make the numbers work, with any kind of decent BP using OL $80 Mil. Using 3 starters with no more than 250 RL IP and all the parameters James lays out I think could be a good experiment. Great post italy. 

Napoleon, you think it needs that high a cap? Could $90-95 mil or $100 do it? 

I will play around with some possibilities over the next few weeks and see if we could get a theme going. A chance to use modern era pitchers but in a different way. 

great post Italy... lot to digest and think about.

Perhaps italy, I was quickly messing around at $80 Mil. Using up $25-30 Mil for your starters, for an effective BP you need about $50-$60 mil. The reason being with only about 700-750 starters RL IP, you'll need about 650-700 RL IP for your relievers, provided we hold the the number of pitchers to 11 as James suggests. That being said we'll need some really high IP relievers and they are not cheap.  So the money adds up quickly just for your pitching staff. I'd be interested in how your calculations work out.  Also Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to all.

I see. True, if pitching runs $50-60 mil., then if you only go $30-40 mil for batters you have another pitchers' league that squelches offense. So you reasonably calculate $120 mil. Good point. Let's see what it looks like and come back after the Holidays. In the meantime, indeed Merry Christmas to everyone here, and Happy Holidays. 

I've been a proponent of tandems for a while now. I think that's the way MLB will eventually go. We will see it start happening more I think initially in the 4th and 5th SP slots. Why not take two young hard throwers and let them pitch 4 innings apiece or about 1 1/2 times through the lineup and then let the bullpen have at it to close the game rather than some scrub SP who probably will only get through the 5th inning anyway. Another reason to do this I think will be cost. With these crazy salaries we see popping up now, young hungry pitchers wanting to get a chance at making the majors can be used in these tandem roles and are basically throw away players. Once they are eligible for arbitration or free agency, let them walk and replace them with another young tandem. You just need a few pitchers who can throw hard and have a decent secondary or third pitch, unlike typical starters who need at least 3 pitches if not 4. The Colorado Rockies should be doing this right now...with their entire rotation.