It’s been a busy period for sports news (Stanley Cup? A couple of Game 7s?), but there was one piece of news you might have missed recently from the Tampa Bay Rays. Career reliever Sergio Romo has now made four starts for Tampa in the first demonstration of a bizarre new strategy of scrambling the traditional starter/reliever dynamic of baseball. The Rays are rarely leaders of anything in baseball, but they might be onto something, so here’s an explanation of what exactly this is and what it could mean for the game.
Normally, teams open the game with a starting pitcher who generally throws between five and seven innings, more if possible and fewer if things aren’t going so well. An average start usually gets through the nine-man batting order between two and three times. After the starter comes a series of relief pitchers who ideally pitch around an inning each. Within each team’s group of relievers, there is usually some combination of specialists, including setup men, closers, lefty specialists, and long relievers. What the Tampa Bay Rays have done is taken this normal routine and reversed it, starting one of their better relief pitchers to pitch around an inning to open the game, get through a team’s top three to five hitters, and then be replaced by a “reliever” who then goes for 5-7 innings. Other relievers then follow to finish the game.
So what’s the point of this strategy? The idea is that the ultimate goal is to get 27 outs while minimizing runs allowed, which incentivizes teams to seek the best pitcher/hitter matchups possible. The problem with the traditional starter/reliever paradigm is that many pitchers have limitations--for example, “starters” are generally good the first and second times through the batting lineup but fall apart the third time through. Other pitchers are simply limited in talent and are thus unable to reliably get through the most talented hitters at the top of a lineup. So for a team like the Rays that has a thin (and bad) starting rotation, it’s better matchup-wise for them to deploy a good reliever like Romo to open the game because he’s better suited to face the most talented 3-4 hitters at the top of the lineup than Tampa’s limited fourth or fifth starter. After Romo takes care of the top of the lineup, the guy who would have been a starter can open up against the bottom of the lineup, get those outs, and then go through the full lineup once or twice. Essentially, starting a good reliever manipulates the matchups to minimize the exposure of poor starters to the opposing team’s best hitters.
The main positive effect of this strategy is that it allows teams to maximize the efficiency of their pitchers by putting them in the best matchups to get outs. In a game where starters are pitching fewer innings every year and there are more situational uses for relievers, starting relievers could simply be the culmination of the MLB bullpen craze. However, there are significant obstacles to this approach becoming the new baseball reality. First, in a world without starter/reliever labels, how are pitchers evaluated? What metrics exist to measure the efficiency of out-getting? I honestly don’t know how one would attempt to evaluate a pitcher’s success in this new system. Second, how does this work over a 162-game season? One problem with relievers is that they tend to burn out easily, and even starters have had more injuries in recent years. Given the vulnerability and value of arms, having a system of heavy situational reliever use would totally change the dynamics of roster construction and bullpen use. Managers would have to figure out how to stagger outings such that arms stay rested and effective. These challenges are potentially surmountable, but they certainly provide serious obstacles to the success of a starter-less rotation.
This tactic is still brand new, born out of the necessity of a Tampa Bay Rays team that lacks a real--or at least conventional--starting rotation. However, other teams are reported to be taking notice and even thinking about trying it themselves. Starting relievers seems unlikely to transform the game now, but people would have said that about sabermetrics 20 years ago, and now baseball is absolutely a numbers game. I’d never thought I’d say this, but keep an eye on the Rays everybody; they could be revolutionizing baseball, one start at a time.
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