A Call for Fewer Calls to the Bullpen

This blog post is long overdue.  The terrible start for the Dodgers has really hurt my desire to finally write this post.  Anyway, the last stop on my Easter vacation trip was San Francisco.  Tom and I were supposed to go to Dodgers-Giants on Friday night after I got in.  That didn’t happen.  The Giants were rained out five times in their first seven years in AT&T Park, but the game we were supposed to go to was the first rain out since 2006.  My tickets were good for the rescheduled game later in the month.  Of course, I wasn’t going to be in San Francisco for that.  So I posted those on Stubhub and bought tickets for Saturday afternoon as soon as the Friday game was rained out

I don’t know why I originally got tickets for Friday night and not Saturday afternoon.  As long as the weather isn’t ridiculously hot, I prefer afternoon games to night games.  I was hoping to go to the Saturday afternoon game and then get back to Tom’s apartment to watch Notre Dame play for the National Championship in hockey.  But the Saturday forecast was a little questionable for early in the day so the game got pushed back from 1:00 to 3:00.  So I avoided twitter and told my college friends not to text me about the game.  The plan was to watch it on my ipad at the airport that night.  And it looked like my plan was going to work, but a TSA guy ruined my plan when he saw my sweatshirt and made a comment about our loss.  I guess if I was going to have a plan like that ruined, it was better for it to happen after a loss than a win.  I didn’t end up watching the game.

Before the game, we went to Ike’s Place.  We went there last summer when Tom was moving in.  I had the Joe Montana sandwich (chicken, bacon, avocado, havarti, and Asian sesame dressing) since Notre Dame was playing for a National Championship that night.  I liked it a lot more than the Adam Richman sandwich that I had last year.  Then we were off to the stadium.  It was my second game at AT&T Park (after going to a second game there, I reaffirm the issues I have with AT&T Park, it's very good, but there are better stadiums).  It was an exciting game.  The Dodgers fell behind 1-0, 3-1, and 4-3.  They kept coming back.  Chase Utley tied it 4-4 with a home run in the 7th.  And the score stayed that way until the 14th when Logan Forsythe gave the Dodgers their first lead of the game with an RBI single.  I was flying home that night, but my flight was so late that it wouldn’t be an issue under normal circumstances.  But 14 innings in 5 hours and 16 minutes wasn’t normal.  We started talking about when to go at some point during extra innings.  I made the call to move down for the top of the 14th and probably leave after that.  After the Dodgers took the lead, we waited to watch Clayton Kershaw pinch hit (he struck out) and he left after that.  It was Kershaw’s fifth career plate appearance as a pinch hitter and the second time I’ve seen him as a pinch hitter.  He’s 0-3 with two sacrifices in his career as a pinch hitter.  The Dodgers had a 5-4 lead and in my mind, that’s how the game ended.

Our view for most of the game

Me and Tom

The hot fudge dispenser was messed up and this was slightly disappointing.

I think this was some Sierra Nevada beer.  Day baseball and outdoor beer is a great combination.

We moved down at the end.  I'm pretty sure that's Clayton Kershaw hitting.

I’ll finish with some thoughts on baseball in general.  The game highlighted some issues I have with baseball.  I love baseball.  I don’t mind long games when they’re good and meaningful because, again, I love baseball.  But the length of regular season games is an issue.  A nine-inning game in June between the Pirates and Marlins doesn’t need to be three hours and 45 minutes.  This game was long because it went 14 innings, but it probably didn’t need to be 5 hours and 16 minutes.

There are a lot of reasons for the length of games constantly increasing.  And there are some possible solutions that might slightly reduce the length of some games.  They did away with the four pitches on the intentional walk.  I didn’t like it because of the very rare time when something interesting happens on one of those pitches.  And you’re saving maybe a minute on something that happens less than once every two games on average (I think).  Then there’s the pitch clock, which is probably coming.  I don’t like the idea of a clock in baseball, but they do it in the minors and I’ve barely noticed it when I’ve been at minor league games, so whatever.  Again, I don’t think it will make a big difference.

Can you cut the number of warm up pitches between innings and shorten commercials?  That’s a legitimate question.  Do pitchers really need as many warm up pitches as they get?  I don’t know.  Can you actually make batters stay in the batter’s box?  There’s no reason why a batter has to step out  and take a little walk after taking a pitch with nobody on base.

The big issue with the length of games is having long stretches where nothing is going on.  And the biggest reason why that’s happening is because the amount of innings pitched by starters decreases each year and the number of pitching changes increases each year.  The Dodgers had a stretch last year when they had 14 pitchers on the roster (this was before rosters expanded in September).  And they made use of that ridiculously large bullpen.  In this game, the Dodgers used 24 players.  Ten different pitchers pitched (their starter wasn’t all that good, but he wasn’t getting killed either and he only went four and no reliever pitched more than an inning and two-thirds) and two more were used as pinch hitters.  They were on their fifth pitcher and they were out of legitimate pinch hitters in the 8th inning.

So if we can limit pitching changes, we can start to actually deal with this problem.  I’ve heard people suggest only being allowed to change pitchers once in an inning.  I don’t like that.  It’s too drastic of a change to the way the game is played.  But I do have a solution that won’t drastically change the way the game is played.  My original solution was to limit the number of roster spots for pitchers to 11.  If you do that, managers would change the way they use their bullpens.  You’re going to try to get more innings from a starter and try not to be on your fourth reliever by the sixth inning if you only have six relievers to use.

I like my idea to limit roster spots for pitchers.  But the union would probably not go for that change so that’s not going to work.  I’ve found the answer to that.  You expand the rosters to 27 players.  You get 13 pitchers and 14 position players.  However, only 11 pitchers can be active for a game (actually I’d probably prefer 26 man rosters with 12 pitchers and only 11 active, but I can live with one more pitcher spot).  And there would have to be starter/reliever designations for pitchers.  You get five starters and eight relievers, but you could only deactivate relievers.  All five starters would always be active for the game.  So you’d end up with a six-man bullpen for every game.  There would have to be some flexibility.  You could change pitchers between starter and reliever, but I think you’d have to have a rule that you couldn’t be changed from starter to reliever until four days have passed following a start.  There might have to be a rule about listing starters for the next four games or something and then if a guy didn’t make his scheduled start, he’d have to go on the DL or something to prevent teams from activating extra relievers but just listing them as starters.

I think the union would go for this.  You create 60 extra Major League roster spots.  It would be great news for marginal position players.  And it would make managers more hesitant to make pitching changes.  Hopefully it would help deal with another problem in baseball.  Strikeouts are so high right now.  The ball needs to be in play more.  One of the reasons that strikeouts are so high is that pitchers are being coached to go all out because they’re not going to be in the game that long anyway.  That would have to change a little bit.  The next change would be to de-juice the ball.  I mean, the home runs really got ridiculous last year.  Home runs are exciting, but when just about any full time starter is hitting at least 20 home runs, they’re not as exciting anymore.  Fewer strikeouts, fewer home runs, more balls in play, fewer pitching changes, less time when nothing is going on, shorter games.