Teams do have choices in how they use their best starters. What this might mean for the rest of this season

[2001OriolesFan]

One thing that the "experts" never seem to consider is that teams often manage their pitching sequence of starters in order to maximize their wins and loses. ..... To explain what this means with a over-simplified example.... Say you have 2 pitchers and two games coming up.............Pitcher #1 is your ace and pitcher #2 is your #5 starter. .............. Pitcher #1 against team weak team A is 90% WIN & pitcher #2 against strong team B is a 20% WIN. ...... or you could arrange things as: Pitcher #1 against strong team A is a 40% WIN and Pitcher #2 against weak team B is a 40% WIN. .....So in the first case, you get 1.10 WINS and in the second case you get 0.80 WINS. ................. I think that the O's are still getting the other team's stronger pitchers because we are not getting "respect". (smoke and mirors comments etc._.)............. I wonder if we will get more inferior opponent lineups and pitchers now that the world is appreciating that the O's are really a very good team?. .............. I remember during the NY Yankee dominate seasons in the 1960's, that the BA got fattened up by other teams playing their scrubs.

Edited July 25, 2023 by 2001OriolesFan

[LookinUp]

It's a theory.

[sportsfan8703]

My head hurts. I need some aderall or something to follow that. 

[2001OriolesFan]

13 minutes ago, sportsfan8703 said:

My head hurts. I need some aderall or something to follow that. 

Sorry Chris.

[Sanfran327]

I'd be interested to see some research on our 2014 season, because it felt like we were winning 5 nights a week in August and September that year, and we didn't nearly get off to the start we have in 2023. So even though we'd have to go 39-43 (.629) the rest of the way to break 100 wins on the year, if this starts to happen, 101+ wins (.623+) just might be within reach. 

[DrungoHazewood]

It's essentially completely random which of your starters faces which of the other team's.

In the distant past teams and managers would mix up days rest and match up starters with stronger or weaker opponents. But that threw off the pitcher's routine, and in roughly the 1958-63 period that practice went almost completely extinct. The exclamation point on that was Gene Mauch repeatedly starting Jim Bunning and one or two others on very short rest down the stretch in '64 while the Phils blew a 6.5 game lead in the last two weeks of the season.

Casey Stengel was probably the last manager who didn't really use a regular rotation, instead mixing and matching as he saw fit. You can see this in Whitey Ford's records, where under Stengel he never started more than 33 games in a season. But when Ralph Houk took over he immediately saw his workload go up to 36-39 starts a year.

Edited July 25, 2023 by DrungoHazewood

[2001OriolesFan]

6 minutes ago, DrungoHazewood said:

It's essentially completely random which of your starters faces which of the other team's.

In the distant past teams and managers would mix up days rest and match up starters with stronger or weaker opponents. But that threw off the pitcher's routine, and in roughly the 1958-63 period that practice went almost completely extinct. The exclamation point on that was Gene Mauch repeatedly starting Jim Bunning and one or two others on very short rest down the stretch in '64 while the Phils blew a 6.5 game lead in the last two weeks of the season.

Casey Stengel was probably the last manager who didn't really use a regular rotation, instead mixing and matching as he saw fit. You can see this in Whitey Ford's records, where under Stengel he never started more than 33 games in a season. But when Ralph Houk took over he immediately saw his workload go up to 36-39 starts a year.

You have data on this?  Let's see what happens the rest of this year and work out the W/L record  or ERA of opposing pitchers for the first and second half of this season.

 

[DrungoHazewood]

18 hours ago, 2001OriolesFan said:

You have data on this?  Let's see what happens the rest of this year and work out the W/L record  or ERA of opposing pitchers for the first and second half of this season.

 

I'd have to dig around for some narratives and examples. There's a Bill James article or articles I could try to find that lays out in some detail the sudden and dramatic acceptance of regular workloads for pitchers in the late 50s and early 60s. It was really like a lightbulb went off and, like a lot of innovations in the sport, within a few years routine and scheduling for pitchers became a best practice that you rarely deviated from. Going back to the Whitey Ford example, in 1954 he was healthy and pitching well all year and pitched at various times on 2, 3, 4, 5, and 7 days rest, including six relief appearances. In 1963 he only had four appearances out of 37 that weren't on three or four days rest, not counting his first start of the year.

You could look at the gamelogs of a selection of regular starting pitchers and see that after the first few games of the season it's essentially random who matches up with who. Almost every team for years and years has tried to keep their starters on a five-game rotation. The further back in time you go there were more teams using five-day rotation and using off days to sometimes skip weaker starters. But that's pretty infrequently done today, as most (all?) teams think the extra rest for everyone is more important than an extra few starts shifted from your #5 to #1 over a year.

[2001OriolesFan]

Thanks.  I guess I have a post season assignment.  Tedious but doable.  Final W/L record of opposing starting pitchers by game of season. Wonder if it will show a trend.