Parting with righty Dan Straily wasn’t particularly easy for the Reds, who surely valued the cheap innings he might have provided, but as GM Dick Williams explains and MLB.com’s Mark Sheldon reports, the team finally found an offer it couldn’t say no to from the Marlins. Per Williams, the team “identified some of [the acquired prospects] as guys we were absolutely targeting,” informing Miami “that we wouldn’t go forward if we couldn’t get access to those guys.” While the Fish initially declined, says Williams, they steadily upped their offer over a span of several months. While the team wasn’t keen to give up Straily, Williams says it “just couldn’t pass on” the chance to add “impact talent” in the form of right-handers Luis Castillo and Austin Brice along with outfielder Isaiah White.
Here are a few more notes out of the National League:
- The Marlins’ stockpiling of arms this winter — including, most recently, the acquisition of Straily — may result in atypical pitcher usage patterns, president of baseball operations Michael Hill says (via Tim Healey of the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, on Twitter). Miami may look to rely heavily on what it considers to be a deep pen, Hill suggested. “There may be situations where the starter is out in the fourth or the fifth, and a bridge guy takes you to the sixth, and you’ve got a setup man in the seventh and the eighth, and a closer in the ninth,” he explained, dubbing the expected approach “non-traditional.”
- Another team that has already added a few hurlers, the Padres, could still be in the market for more, according to AJ Cassavell of MLB.com (via Twitter). It’s not considered a major need, though, as the club intends to open up the team’s five rotation spots to as many as nine possible competitors this spring.
- It has long been debated whether the Nationals will (and should) pursue free-agent catcher Matt Wieters, whose market has seemingly languished. Chelsea Janes of the Washington Post updates the situation from the Nats’ perspective, noting that there may be some truth to the chatter that the front office hasn’t yet been given the green light to spend more heavily. But while there may be some posturing at play, it also seems that the team just isn’t all that interested in Wieters. Janes writes that “the Nationals have never been particularly high on Wieters internally … and harbor concerns about his defense and his health.”
Could Miami have the SP depth to use a 3 man, 3 inning rotation with a deep bullpen of long relievers?
Or maybe not 3 innings, but something of a similar variance.
No because you’d think you’d want Chen to opt out of that contract so it doesn’t get ugly. They gave Volquez major money. They also want Conely to grow. Beyond those three they’ll probably be ok playing variations.
Chen will opt out if and only if you don’t want him to.
LaRussa tried this in 1993 – the three inning rotation. It was a real different kind of pitching staff – he had a bunch of mediocre old guys throuout the staff. Welch,,, Darling, Gossage, I think Bobby Witt was still around, Rick Honeycutt was in his last season. The thing is, though, even that experiment only lasted a couple weeks. It seemed like a good idea on paper but in practice it was a failure.
MLBDepthCharts currently has Adam Conley and Justin Nicolino in AAA, so I guess that’s a potential option for a 5 man rotation, but I really wouldn’t feel good about this five-man rotation pitching past the 5th inning. Why did it fail? I feel like intuitively if you had a bunch of more mediocre guys, limiting them to long relief would boost their effectiveness.
I think that was the plan. The problem came when the starters got lit up early and Larussa had to get into his 4-man bullpen early.
Straily SIERA 4.67, FIP 4.88, xFIP 5.02. That does not bode well going forward and giving up three prospects for that is atrocious.
I love it for my Reds. They sold high on a guy they pluck for free and again shows that the fish are the worst run team in baseball. What they see is clearly that 4 years of control at barely more than the minimum must be repeatable. I hope it is, maybe strailey figured out how to only give up solo bombs and when guys get on, he throws sinkers. Doubt it
Yeah, but they were Marlins Prospects, and their system is weaker than weak.
I doubt he gives up 31 HR again. That was some bad luck. Not saying he’s great but I think he can be a fine 5 at Marlins Park.
The one inning reliever needs to go the way of the lumberjack hitter.
Why waste a roster spot on a guy who can only give you one inning a game if you can get a guy who can give you 3 innings a game?
I’m not saying get rid of the closer or the set up guy, but why have a “middle” reliever when you can have a couple long guys?
some guys are only effective in short bursts. I’d rather a guy who can go one inning and be absolutely dominant, than a 2-3 inning guy who will have you biting your nails every time he is out there.
Most relievers regress significantly after their first inning of work. That’s the reason why they are relievers in the first place. Teams don’t really carry long relievers anymore, preferring specialists.
Strange, but true. A 7th inning guy. 8th… There aren’t a whole lot of pitchers who, if needed, will “eat up some innings” anymore, for times like when the starter doesn’t have his stuff working.
We didnt used to have 5 inning starters though. Our long men have morphed into LOOGYs and ROOGYS. The day I was born Dennis Leonard and Jim Palmer faced off in Baltimore…both went 9.
Id be a fan of taking a guy and making him into a 8-9th inning guy with less usage…more like the old days. I thought for awhile that a Tim Lincecum could be effective this way.
It used to be a starting pitchers game…he took the ball and he wasnt expected to come out. Then guys like Rollie Fingers or Bruce Sutter could go 3
Maybe that’s a factor in the spike of TJS
In minor league ball, in the day, the SP would go seven or eight. Now, especially at the lower levels, they go five or six. Maybe fewer.
And relievers tend to go balls out for fifteen or twenty pitches. Then sit out a day or two.
To make significant MLB changes, train your guys on the way up to do what they’re going to do in MLB.
Minors feed the majors.
And Sutter (I was a Cubs fan then, as well) would be great through July, but once his innings got too many, he’d run into a rough patch.
Relievers tend to hit a rather legitimate wall at 60 or 70 innings.
Therefore, if you want your starters to go only four or five innings, your bullpen has to be ready to go 12-15 outs a night, for 162 games. Likely with a cap of 60 per on most of them.
I hope you have some depth in Triple-A.
There probably is a statistical study somewhere that shows most relievers best inning is their first inning, and then the longer they are in the game the more likely they are to give up runs. i guess the next question is, when was that study done and is it outdated now?
1 IP guys can go 2 or 3 days in a row.. If you pitched every guy 2 or 3 IP out of pen every game you would be caught short handed many times during a 162 game season. Due to the required rest needed to maintain health and prevent overuse. Postseason is a different ball game.
I think teams will be trying to develop those 2 and 3 IP guys more going forward in general. If a team can find 2 of the HeLp type relievers it would be interesting to see how they handle them.
Have to account for all those bullpen warmups as well.
The “side” days would need to change to accommodate 2-3in guys. Baseball is one of the few sports left that still does things “bc that’s how it’s been done.” I think pitchers pitch too much in between appearances. There are a lot of performance metrics, but not as much on alt training regimens.
Bartolo Colon is a great example of a guy who has minimized his off day pitching. He is a different kind of guy for a few reasons, but he has lasted.
I always find it hard to use guys like Colon as comps…just because the freak nature of their career…always guys in every generation like that. Clearly what we’re seeing is a bad mix of physiology and the love of the radar gun in youth sports. I believe kids throw too much…too much specialization and too many tournament weekend players. We’re also seeing guys make it farther than they ever would have in the past, and doing it with much more attention. It wasnt too long ago that prospects weren’t on the radar until they were about to impact the mlb roster. How many guys blew out there arms, and we generally didnt know about it.
The “long” guys are seldom usable the next day or two. One inning guys may be able to pitch consecutive days, or every other day. Too many long relievers makes the bullpen difficult to manage. There just aren’t many Andrew Millers.
Miller is a converted starter. Id suggest if these types of pitchers are valuable….teams convert starters earlier.
I think a lot of relievers can be most effective when pitching only one inning. A guy like Tommy Hunter as a starter sits around low 90’s but out of the pen touches 95 so the short burst of power can allow him to be used to his strengths. Seemingly most relievers, like Tommy Hunter, are failed starters that may not have that 3rd pitch that most starters rely on. The current CBA not recently being changed to 26-27 man roster really limits flexibility. It also limits managers being creative on platoons. So often we see a young guy with options get sent down after a decent start simply because the team needs to use the now vacated roster spot to keep the pen fresh. I’m not a huge fan of regular platoons but i love a team getting an edge over another team because of a manager astute enough to deploy the right platoon with the right players in the right spots. Similar in my mind, at least strategically, to managing a dh-less lineup. IMO, managing the sport itself would change drastically with just one additional roster spot added, even if it is not considered a permanent spot (like only used for transitioning players on/off the roster without having to DFA to make room opposed to just stashing a rule 5 guy).
I believe MLB continues to drop the ball by not allowing a 26 and 27 man roster, with criteria. The 26th man has to be at least 34-35 years old. The 27th man has to be at least 38-39 years old.
This would allow teams to keep popular veterans around for their one or two remaining skill sets.
I recall Todd Hollandsworth had a pretty good arm and it would have been neat to see him come into the game in the ninth inning to throw out a runner trying to score the tying or winning run on a sac fly. Instead Hollandsworth was forced into early retirement because his other skill sets were not up to par with his throwing arm.
Kenny Lofton still had his legs even when he retired, He too would have been a treat to see playing and stealing a base late in a close game.
Jim Thome led the Cleveland Indians in the second half of his final season in OPS. The next season he should have had a spot on the roster as a pinch hitter, but the Indians could not afford a 1-25 spot, but they easily could have used a 27th veteran exception and Thome could have thrilled fans for another year or two with his pinch hitting skills.
Wieters will play the majority of 2017 as a 31 year old. His catching days are over, and teams view him as purely a DH at this point which is why he hasn’t been signed. Any team that signs him will deploy him at DH then occasionally put him at C if necessary. That TJ injury really ruined his potential massive payday.
I disagree. Whoever signs Wieters will play him at C, where he is still competent. His bat is below average for a DH, average to above as a C.
Quoting “Miami may look to rely heavily on what it considers to be a deep pen, Hill suggested. “There may be situations where the starter is out in the fourth or the fifth, and a bridge guy takes you to the sixth, and you’ve got a setup man in the seventh and the eighth, and a closer in the ninth,” he explained, dubbing the expected approach “non-traditional.”” End Quote.
Or, Hill could have just said, “What Cleveland Indians Manager Terry Francona did with Andrew Miller last season and in the playoffs we’re going to also do next season”.
Burnout te bullpen by August …
By May
I can’t believe the bullpen players would buy into that, if they are uses multiple innings their effectiveness will go down and their perceived value might tank via their numbers costing them in future FA
As long as relievers coming into a game in the fourth or fifth inning is not an every game scenario, the bullpen kind of does love it because it magnifies their importance.
If a team has 3 of 5 starters who pretty much can get to the seventh or eighth inning every start, the team can overuse the pen in the other two games as long as they are also calling up spot starters and relievers from the minors when necessary.
Two starters going deep into games is cutting it thin however.
If a team has three starters who can go deep each time they start, then having games when the relievers come in early is manageable.
I really liked what the Cubs did, they went to a six man starting rotation in late July until the end of the regular season.
That will be interesting since they don’t have an Andrew Miller.
Andrew Miller by committee maybe? Their talking about taking a pitcher out in the 4th or 5th inning, The first time Francona did that with Miller, Miller was surprised, but the ploy worked as Miller plowed through the heart of the line-up.
As an O’s fan, I’d be surprised if he gets anywhere near 3/40. He’s just not that good on the field. Great mind and a great teammate, but no doubt he and Boris thinks he’s top 3 catcher in the league and it’s just not the case anymore. O’s wouldn’t even give QO this year.
Sure, Boris might think he’s a top-3 catcher, but what do Natasha and Meester Beeg think?
I knew that was coming…