Blue Jays making case for modified six-man rotation

Injury Prevention key to handling 21st Century rotations

Should major-league baseball, in order to maximize and protect their significant financial investment in their pitching, be moving toward the era of the modified six-man starting rotation?

If it’s not already on the MLB radar, we suggest that given the kid-glove way in which most organizations handle their top prospects, with annual pitch-count and minimal innings limits as they move through the system, it should be a strategy to be considered. If so, the Blue Jays are seemingly ahead of the curve, with a talented, durable and locked-in foursome of Kevin Gausman, Jose Berrios, Chris Bassitt and Yusei Kikuchi, all signed for 2024 and beyond.

The veteran lefthander, Kikuchi in his third season in Toronto, remains the only starter entering his final season. He will be eligible for free agency at the end of ’24. The other three Jays’ starters are locked in to longer deals – Berrios through 2028, Gausman through ’26, while Bassitt is under contract through ’25. These are pricey, longer-term assets that should be protected and that, in itself, would be reason to seriously consider the move to a modified six-man rotation.

LESSONS LEARNED FROM BILLY MARTIN’S 1980 A’s

A certain segment of modern sports fan will forever lament the loss of the old-school workhorse rotation, a mythical quintet that routinely would work 250-plus innings, taking it as a personal insult when they saw someone warming in the ‘pen, in the seventh inning or earlier. The perfect example of an old-school workhorse staff would be the 1980 Oakland A’s under first-year manager, Billy Martin.

The season prior to that, in 1979, the top five starters, for a 54-108 pedestrian A’s team, managed by Jim Marshall, were righthanders Rick Langford, Matt Keough, Steve McCatty, Brian Kingman and Mike Norris. That emerging group combined to start 115 of 162 games. Enter the chaos of Billy Ball in 1980.

The A’s improved from 54 wins in 1979 to 83 victories a year later under their fiery new manager --- but at what cost? Martin rode his starters like one of Charlie Finley’s rented mules. The Fab 5 of 1980 A’s starters combined to go an impressive 79-68, with 159 starts, 1,257.1 innings and an astounding 93 complete games. The individual stats for the A’s starting five in 1980 are as follows:

1-    Langford … 19-12; 33 GS; 28 CG; 290.0 IP

2-    Norris … 22-9; 33 GS; 24 CG; 284.1 IP

3-    Keough … 16-13; 32 GS; 20 CG; 250.0 IP

4-    McCatty … 14-14; 31 GS; 11 CG; 221.2 IP  

5-    Kingman … 8-20; 30 GS; 10 CG; 211.1 IP

Those are amazing numbers for any five-man rotation from any era. More amazing is that the remainder of the A’s 1980 pitching staff of 10 relievers combined for just 214.1 innings over 162 games. Was it worth it for the future of the five starters? That huge workload had repercussions for all five men. Here’s how the five A’s performed for the remainder of their shortened careers.

*Langford lasted six more years, making 78 more starts, retiring at age 34.

*Norris was done in three more seasons at 28, managing just 67 more starts.

*Keough pitched six more seasons in the majors, making 84 starts and retired at age 30.

*McCatty was done at 35-years-old, making 105 total starts from 1981-85.

*Kingman lasted just three more years, making 35 starts, done at age 29.

Following a season in which they averaged 32 starts and 254.1 innings, the five pitched an average of three more seasons each, averaging just 16 starts per year. Thank you, Billy Ball.

THE LOGIC OF A MODIFIED SIX-MAN ROTATION        

For a period of time last summer, the Jays, planned for and in fact, proceeded with the six-man rotation. Looking ahead in June, they saw that the schedule presented them with 27 games in 29 days, late July and early August, coming out of the all-star break. To help soften the load, they added a rehabbed Hyun Jin Ryu and a reconstructed Alek Manoah for that dense part of the schedule.

When the off-days finally kicked in, the front office chose Ryu over Manoah and retreated to the traditional five-man. The demotion of Manoah did not go well, as he was kept short of Super-Two arbitration status. But the success of a six-man for that brief stint, may have had them thinking. Would six be workable all the time?

All four of the Jays starters have admitted that whenever they have an opportunity for an extra day, they appreciate it and, in fact, career numbers reflect it. Gausman’s opponent’s OPS on four days rest is .780 and on five or more days drops to .695. Berrios on four days has a career .718 OPS, down to .706 with extra rest. For Bassitt, it’s an improvement of .717 to .650 and for Kikuchi, who was used to the extra days while pitching in Japan, the OPS numbers are much closer, at .796 to .789.         

There is a comfort level. Let’s examine this imaginative six-man possibility deeper. The Jays’ top four starting pitchers, as a quartet, will be earning a combined $72-million for 2024. Only the Texas Rangers are currently committed to a more expensive 2024 American League rotation, at $135.3 million for their five starters – RH Max Scherzer ($43.3M), RH Jacob deGrom ($40.0M), RH Nate Eovaldi ($16.0), RH Jon Gray ($13.0M) and LH Andrew Heaney ($13.0).

Be preventative. The Jays were the only team in 2023, with four pitchers at 30-plus starts. Is that sustainable and repeatable? The only other time it happened in franchise history was 1984 — Doyle Alexander, Jim Clancy, Luis Leal and Dave Stieb.

THE JAYS ’24 FIRST-HALF SCHEDULE AND HOW IT WELCOMES A SIX-MAN PROJECTED ROTATION

The Blue Jays have 88 games scheduled in the first 99 days of the 2024 schedule, prior to the all-star break, July 14. The four starters who are mortal locks for the first four games of the season against the Rays, are Gausman, Berrios, Bassitt and Kikuchi.

If Alek Manoah is not traded before next season, he could be the fifth starter. The sixth starter under the proposed scenario would be one of Bowden Francis, Mitch White, Wes Parsons, all on the current 40-man roster, or else they might move to a yet to be determined veteran free agent, someone that could be signed in January or February, to a short-term, one-year, or one plus an option contract.

Here's how the revised Jays rotation schedule might break down, using off-days to maximum advantage, creating whenever possible, a rotation with five days between starts for the main guys. The Top 4 would be able to handle 70 of 88 starts, while the 5-6 guys would combine to be responsible for the remaining 18 assignments. For the main starters, 64 of the 70 assignments would be with five days of rest, with just April 10-17, May 1-8-15-28, plus July 14 on four days of rest.

Under this modified six-man scenario, the four veteran starters would each be asked to make 17 starts pre all-star and, at the all-star break, the rotation could be re-calibrated to set up for the stretch drive, dependant on injuries and performance. At some point in the second half, No. 1 prospect Ricky Tiedemann might be a factor.

There are legitimate arguments to be made for a more rotation-heavy use of a major-league pitching staff. There are 13 pitchers on every 26-man roster with the common thread being that pitcher No. 13, at the bottom of the bullpen is a reliever that fans never trust when your team has the lead, a guy to mop up in a blowout either way. How about using that spot for a sixth starter who will make seven starts in the first 88 games before the break and when not starting, could be useful in long relief.

Baseball used to be dominated by four-man rotations, but evolved slowly into five-man starting staffs. Could it be time for the next step, given heavy investments in long-term contracts, pitch-count restrictions in the minor leagues and the obvious depth and quality of strong MLB bullpens, with 95-100 m.p.h. being routine. Five days of rest seems to work for most modern starters, so why not plan around it from Day 1?