jpx7
Very Flirtatious, but Doubts What Love Is.
Again, the confusion for me, in terms of the thesis and tenor of your response, is that "a shortage of pitchers who can go three times through an order" relative to previous eras is not what I was discussing or asserting. I was talking about team behavior, and more and more teams definitely seem to be constructing their roster around the idea of limiting the exposure of their starters to later-inning and third-time-through PAs, stuffing their 25-man with the sort of talented-with-caveats pitchers that in times past might have bounced around as fourth and fifth starters but are now being tasked with concentrated-effort multi-inning relief roles.
Is that the optimal corrective for the fact that most SP's performance degrades over the course of a given game? I don't know, and I wasn't not saying it is. I was just refuting the idea that such a corrective, embraced as it is, will make the Max Frieds of the league more valuable by generating demand—since, as I said, I think one reason teams are pursing this specific corrective is because a lot of organizations have a few Max Frieds hanging around.
What I'm definitely not saying is that suddenly pitchers forgot how to pitch past the sixth, or through the third time, like two or three years ago. And I was even arguing Thursday that Kapler's decision was bad for a rebuilding team because if you don't let guys try to pitch deeper into games, you'll never know if they generally can; indeed, we might be seeing a little hyper-correction at the moment in that regard. Plus: one of my favorite game-types is the ten-inning CG, so I'm certainly not hoping that all starters start to see the quick hook in all situations.
