All-closers pitching staff.
Send one out per inning, every game. You carry 10 or 11 pitchers, so that'll leave a little space for a day off for one or two guys each game. Plus, you commit to the strategy from soup to nuts. You immediately dump all of the other pitchers throughout your organization, and, however you train Rollie Fingers or Dennis Eckersley to, basically, mow down three guys every time he goes out there, you train every one of your pitchers to do exactly that. And just forget about all of the other stuff.
OK, that should do it for my Thursday. I'm taking the rest of the day off.
That's right, Baseball. I just rocked your world, didn't I?
ReplyDeleteThat would suggest that Rollie Fingers and Dennis Eckersley were just average pitchers who happened to be slotted as closers.
ReplyDeleteGranted, it would be challenging to stock a full staff of top-flight closers. No question about that. However, of the 11 pitchers with at least 10 saves in Major League Baseball right now, nine of them have earned-run averages of less than 3.00. Of the next 21 guys, 11 have ERAs better than 4.00.
ReplyDeleteGiven the amount of good pitching that MLB is getting out of that slot when it allows so few guys to actually concentrate on giving one good inning a night, my guess is that committing up and down the organization to this strategy would eventually yield you 10 or 11 guys who could succeed.
Also, I do believe--at least until the rest of baseball inevitably converted to my strategy--you could piecemeal with a lot of converted veterans. Check out Eckersley's season-by-season statistics leading up to when the A's converted him to a closer. I'm willing to share credit with Toby Keith for this innovation.
I feel just like George with the cotton uniforms.
ReplyDeleteI think the biggest problem with your idea is that it kills the one thing that is so important in sports, going to the guy with the hot hand. The reason the Dodgers won the 1988 world series was that they had Orel Hershiser. In the post season he pitched 42 innings and gave up 5 earned runs. The rest of the Dodgers pitchers threw 67 innings and gave up 29 runs. That's a 3.90 ERA for the rest of the staff and a 1.07 ERA for Hershiser. In your system he would have only pitched for 12 innings.
ReplyDeleteThat's true. But think about how many teams don't succeed because they can't get enough games to their closers with leads.
ReplyDeleteI need to get a grant to pay for me to spend the whole summer testing this idea with an Extra Innings league.
ReplyDeleteYou live in a small town that like most is probably desperate for coaches. Just take over coaching a team and implement this pitching system and see how it goes.
ReplyDeleteYour a regular Mr. Actualized Self, aren't you?
ReplyDelete