As baseball has developed and evolved over time, one of the sadder changes that has taken place in MLB is the deemphasis on the starting pitcher. Their role has been reduced and sometimes replaced in recent years with the growth of analytics on the management side and the pitcher development system on the player side. To counteract the trends over recent decades and reinvigorate the hype around the starting pitcher, there are a few things baseball can do.
Starting pitching is not the only issue that baseball is dealing with. The pitch clock, substance checks and shift restrictions have uplifted the sport in many ways in recent years under Rob Manfred and Theo Epstein, but some problems do persist. Coinciding with the effort to reemphasize the starting pitcher, some rule changes can be made that kill two birds with one stone.
The Double Hook
Starting in 2022, the National League caught up to the American League and implemented the designated hitter. All baseball was now homogenous in its rules, something that it hadn’t been in nearly 50 years. The move angered hard-liners but paved the way for the scheduling of games we see in MLB today, where every team plays each other during the regular season.
My personal feelings about the DH aside, both leagues need to be playing the same game. An idea that has garnered much support in recent years is the double hook. That is where a team is allowed to have a designated hitter in their lineup until they remove their starting pitcher from the game. From then on, traditional NL rules apply with the pitcher’s spot in the order replacing the DH. This rule could prolong outings for starters and incentivize versatility and fielding for position players.
Roster Benefits for Starting Pitching
The MLB schedule has been under the microscope recently. Just this season, the start of the regular season happened in mid-March in the Seoul Series between the Los Angeles Dodgers and the San Diego Padres. Fitting in the 162 regular season games and an ever-extended postseason has become cumbersome for MLB and their fans. Clashing with football and the start of the basketball season has contributed to declining ratings for the playoffs and presents a challenge if MLB wants to keep its current postseason format.
A possible solution is to have fewer days off during the regular season. There are 183 days between April and October, save five days for the All-Star break. Reducing the amount of wasted days during the spring and summer can help tidy up the fall for MLB. To combat rest concerns for players on the field, starting pitching can have a hand in that.
Players are constantly moving between the major and minor leagues throughout a baseball season. For any given team, they will use 45-50 players in a regular season. This figure has gotten as high as 69 with the 2021 Chicago Cubs. Let’s skip all of the travel and back-and-forth and increase the roster size from 26 to 28. But there’s a catch.
A manager can only field a 20 or 21-man roster for each game. In order for starting pitchers to qualify for roster exemption, they must throw at least five or six innings in a start. This will hopefully incentivize teams to have a longer leash for their starters and get more rest time for their everyday players throughout the season without compromising the depth of their team.
How Changes Impact the MLB Schedule
If MLB can cut down the regular season duration and continue to start the year in mid to late March, they can start the postseason ten to fifteen days sooner and not conflict with other sporting events on the fan’s calendar. The season has crept up sooner and sooner in the last few years, and the Seoul Series in 2024 was just the most recent example. If MLB can pair these two scheduling tricks, Derek Jeter will be the only Mr. November in baseball lore, and Reggie Jackson will be the only legend to have a run for his money on postseason nicknames.
This is assuming that MLB keeps their current playoff format, which has undergone significant changes in the last decade-plus. If MLB wants to alter their postseason structure, which I would argue they should, that might require changes in this proposal. As it stands in the current baseball landscape, I believe these would be good wrinkles for MLB and would hopefully deal with multiple issues that continue to plague the national pastime.
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