The game score piece was interesting to me. Basically, the difference between the top tier teams and the bottom is as simple as.......have less crappy starts. Which seems obvious.....but also comes down to depth. Maybe Minor in the rotation isn't all that bad compared to a 2021 Kowar. The million dollar question becomes even with all these pieces for the rotation. Do we really "know" which ones will consistently go out there and give you a decent start? Not really yet, which will probably lead to a higher number of bad starts as they sort through that process. Certainly makes the case for going out and getting another solid, veteran starter.
Yep, I 100% agree with that. It definitely lends itself to finding average starters who will keep you in a game. I should have put this in the article actually, but here's each starter's breakdown of the good, okay and bad starts.
Minor - 9 good, 15 okay, 4 bad
Keller - 8 good, 7 okay, 11 bad (yikes)
Bubic - 10 good, 3 okay, 7 bad
Singer - 9 good, 11 okay, 7 bad
Lynch - 3 good, 8 okay, 4 bad
Hernandez - 6 good, 3 okay, 2 bad
Kowar - 1 good, 1 okay, 6 bad
Junis - 2 good, 2 okay, 2 bad
Duffy - 8 good, 3 okay, 1 bad
There were some openers and spot starts for Zimmer, Santana and Payamps that I didn't include, but that's the bulk of them. Knowing they're going to lose 8 out of 10 bad and only 5 out of 10 okay, it really makes you realize how important it is to just not be bad. So simple, but maybe that eliminate bad football sign makes more sense if they alter it to be eliminate bad pitching.
If you would have told me before this article Minor was tied for the most good starts, have the most ok starts, and be tied for the most bad starts, I never would have believed you. There is value in that and I'm fine with him in the rotation again next year if he isn't moved.
I realized somewhere around mid-July that while the ERA was higher than they'd want, he'd been pretty much exactly what they were hoping for. Until the injury, he generally gave them five or six innings to keep them in the game.
My thoughts on the 2015 teams' starting pitchers that they were just to keep the team in the ball game until you could hand it off to the bullpen. It seems that this way of managing pitchers has crept through all of baseball especially in the post season. Has a 7or 8 inning starters, value been diminished by this philosophy? I know this thought is a little off topic but it makes you wonder as to how the Royals look at the -good-okay- bad starts numbers as it leads us back to the "addition by subtraction" formula we talked about when looking at the position players and their at bats. How would you rate that list or what kind of minimum ratio should the good/okay be to the bad if you had to pick starters for next year
I haven't looked at every team, but it seems like 23 is about as low as you're going to get on bad starts, at least for an AL team. Of course, with the universal DH likely next year, that probably extends to the NL too moving forward. If you're getting 30-35 bad starts a year, you're likely still giving yourself a chance to win 85 games. 50 good at an .800 winning percentage, 80 okay at a .500 winning percentage and 30 bad at a .200 winning percentage gets you 86 wins (I skipped out on two games for ease of math). So I think that's basically the formula. A bad offense means you probably have to have 55 good at a .750ish winning percentage and 75 bad to get similar results.
Any thoughts on the plethora of young Royals pitchers that we could do something revolutionary to move the game forward (as we did with HDH in our last championship core)? Such as, get more into openers and bulk inning guys? Have more 2-3 inning guys, and adopt the "no third time through the order unless walking on water" 3-5 inning guys? Have your Big 4 or Big 5 Closer Group that can take you to victory (HDH for for maybe 4 or 5 innings instead of just 3)? In any event, Tampa Bay, and postseason starter pitching use, has my imagination whirling. Could we take some kind of unorthodox approach, to take full advantage of an advantage that we have right now over so many (or all) other teams - having so many young pitchers - to combine with a new, advanced way to develop and use them?
Sure, I wrote about that a little yesterday. I picture a game with Asa Lacy (or Brady Singer) starting, so the lineup is stacked to face one guy and then bringing in the other and having them dominate the later innings and suddenly you get to the ninth having used two guys and can turn it over to a closer. What's really interesting to me about the Royals young pitching is that it's quite balanced right and left, so there are a lot of fun matchup games that can be played. Of course, that's dependent on them not putting rules in place to stop things like that, which they very well may.
I sure hope that they put no such rules in place. I can see why they might want to tinker just a bit if this leads to further delay in the game. Perhaps no delaying trips to the mound, the reliever gets only 3 mound pitches, keep the minimum 3 batters rule and perhaps extend it into the next inning if they come in with outs already. But getting the best pitching results possible, allowing us to take advantage of our great depth - that could be a big winner for us.
Definitely. And I completely agree with hoping big rules aren't put into place. I'd love to see a way that incentivizes starters getting deeper into games but still allowing for innovation with the way arms are used, though I'm not entirely sure how that would work.
On the subject of pitching, I just saw Brent Strom resigned as pitching coach from Houston. What are the chances the Royals could that the Royals might look at him for pitching coach here. Just a thought.
From his comment last night - "I need to enjoy my life a little bit" - I think he's probably not terribly interested in coaching. But man, it'd be a nice reunion.
I stated previously I believe the Royals will be the first team to go to a 6 man rotation for the 2022 season. It will happen for 2 reasons. #1 - the plethora of starting pitching prospects in the majors and upper minors. #2 the 2020 season IP will still be felt in 2022 as starting pitchers recover to the 140-170 IP range. The Royals will by the end of 2022 know who will make up their starting rotation and move back to a traditional 5 man rotation in 2023.
When you say "If a pitcher is throwing every sixth day instead of every fifth, they’re conceivably cutting off five or six starts, which might allow them to get a little deeper here and there..." how do we balance that with the "3rd and 4th time through the lineup" issue? Is the bump in batting performance due more to the pitcher being tired (which may be mitigated by pitching every sixth day), or due more to the batter seeing what the pitcher has that day multiple times?
That’s a fair question that I don’t know the actual breakdown on the answer. Some of it is seeing the pitches multiple times and some of it is fatigue. I’m thinking in that comment that the additional time off helps to mitigate the fatigue enough that they can handle a batter having seen more of them. But maybe I’m way off there and it’s more about having seen the repertoire.
The game score piece was interesting to me. Basically, the difference between the top tier teams and the bottom is as simple as.......have less crappy starts. Which seems obvious.....but also comes down to depth. Maybe Minor in the rotation isn't all that bad compared to a 2021 Kowar. The million dollar question becomes even with all these pieces for the rotation. Do we really "know" which ones will consistently go out there and give you a decent start? Not really yet, which will probably lead to a higher number of bad starts as they sort through that process. Certainly makes the case for going out and getting another solid, veteran starter.
Yep, I 100% agree with that. It definitely lends itself to finding average starters who will keep you in a game. I should have put this in the article actually, but here's each starter's breakdown of the good, okay and bad starts.
Minor - 9 good, 15 okay, 4 bad
Keller - 8 good, 7 okay, 11 bad (yikes)
Bubic - 10 good, 3 okay, 7 bad
Singer - 9 good, 11 okay, 7 bad
Lynch - 3 good, 8 okay, 4 bad
Hernandez - 6 good, 3 okay, 2 bad
Kowar - 1 good, 1 okay, 6 bad
Junis - 2 good, 2 okay, 2 bad
Duffy - 8 good, 3 okay, 1 bad
There were some openers and spot starts for Zimmer, Santana and Payamps that I didn't include, but that's the bulk of them. Knowing they're going to lose 8 out of 10 bad and only 5 out of 10 okay, it really makes you realize how important it is to just not be bad. So simple, but maybe that eliminate bad football sign makes more sense if they alter it to be eliminate bad pitching.
If you would have told me before this article Minor was tied for the most good starts, have the most ok starts, and be tied for the most bad starts, I never would have believed you. There is value in that and I'm fine with him in the rotation again next year if he isn't moved.
*tied for the least number of bad starts*
I realized somewhere around mid-July that while the ERA was higher than they'd want, he'd been pretty much exactly what they were hoping for. Until the injury, he generally gave them five or six innings to keep them in the game.
My thoughts on the 2015 teams' starting pitchers that they were just to keep the team in the ball game until you could hand it off to the bullpen. It seems that this way of managing pitchers has crept through all of baseball especially in the post season. Has a 7or 8 inning starters, value been diminished by this philosophy? I know this thought is a little off topic but it makes you wonder as to how the Royals look at the -good-okay- bad starts numbers as it leads us back to the "addition by subtraction" formula we talked about when looking at the position players and their at bats. How would you rate that list or what kind of minimum ratio should the good/okay be to the bad if you had to pick starters for next year
I haven't looked at every team, but it seems like 23 is about as low as you're going to get on bad starts, at least for an AL team. Of course, with the universal DH likely next year, that probably extends to the NL too moving forward. If you're getting 30-35 bad starts a year, you're likely still giving yourself a chance to win 85 games. 50 good at an .800 winning percentage, 80 okay at a .500 winning percentage and 30 bad at a .200 winning percentage gets you 86 wins (I skipped out on two games for ease of math). So I think that's basically the formula. A bad offense means you probably have to have 55 good at a .750ish winning percentage and 75 bad to get similar results.
Any thoughts on the plethora of young Royals pitchers that we could do something revolutionary to move the game forward (as we did with HDH in our last championship core)? Such as, get more into openers and bulk inning guys? Have more 2-3 inning guys, and adopt the "no third time through the order unless walking on water" 3-5 inning guys? Have your Big 4 or Big 5 Closer Group that can take you to victory (HDH for for maybe 4 or 5 innings instead of just 3)? In any event, Tampa Bay, and postseason starter pitching use, has my imagination whirling. Could we take some kind of unorthodox approach, to take full advantage of an advantage that we have right now over so many (or all) other teams - having so many young pitchers - to combine with a new, advanced way to develop and use them?
Sure, I wrote about that a little yesterday. I picture a game with Asa Lacy (or Brady Singer) starting, so the lineup is stacked to face one guy and then bringing in the other and having them dominate the later innings and suddenly you get to the ninth having used two guys and can turn it over to a closer. What's really interesting to me about the Royals young pitching is that it's quite balanced right and left, so there are a lot of fun matchup games that can be played. Of course, that's dependent on them not putting rules in place to stop things like that, which they very well may.
I sure hope that they put no such rules in place. I can see why they might want to tinker just a bit if this leads to further delay in the game. Perhaps no delaying trips to the mound, the reliever gets only 3 mound pitches, keep the minimum 3 batters rule and perhaps extend it into the next inning if they come in with outs already. But getting the best pitching results possible, allowing us to take advantage of our great depth - that could be a big winner for us.
Definitely. And I completely agree with hoping big rules aren't put into place. I'd love to see a way that incentivizes starters getting deeper into games but still allowing for innovation with the way arms are used, though I'm not entirely sure how that would work.
On the subject of pitching, I just saw Brent Strom resigned as pitching coach from Houston. What are the chances the Royals could that the Royals might look at him for pitching coach here. Just a thought.
From his comment last night - "I need to enjoy my life a little bit" - I think he's probably not terribly interested in coaching. But man, it'd be a nice reunion.
I stated previously I believe the Royals will be the first team to go to a 6 man rotation for the 2022 season. It will happen for 2 reasons. #1 - the plethora of starting pitching prospects in the majors and upper minors. #2 the 2020 season IP will still be felt in 2022 as starting pitchers recover to the 140-170 IP range. The Royals will by the end of 2022 know who will make up their starting rotation and move back to a traditional 5 man rotation in 2023.
When you say "If a pitcher is throwing every sixth day instead of every fifth, they’re conceivably cutting off five or six starts, which might allow them to get a little deeper here and there..." how do we balance that with the "3rd and 4th time through the lineup" issue? Is the bump in batting performance due more to the pitcher being tired (which may be mitigated by pitching every sixth day), or due more to the batter seeing what the pitcher has that day multiple times?
That’s a fair question that I don’t know the actual breakdown on the answer. Some of it is seeing the pitches multiple times and some of it is fatigue. I’m thinking in that comment that the additional time off helps to mitigate the fatigue enough that they can handle a batter having seen more of them. But maybe I’m way off there and it’s more about having seen the repertoire.