PITCHERS IN FOR AN EXTENDED SEASON

After last year’s short campaign, Padres must muster innings

The Padres are likely going to be down a man at the beginning of a steep climb.

That makes already tricky math a bit more daunting.

They must find a way to wring more than 1,400 innings from their arms in 2021. They hope it’s more like almost 1,600.

“You look at not only going 60 (games in 2020) to 162, but you look at being with a team like this, where we expect to go deep in the postseason and playing that final week of baseball,” starting pitcher Joe Musgrove said. “It’s quite a task we have ahead of us.”

Yes, the major league season has been 162 games for as long as anyone in the game now has been playing. But it wasn’t last year.

And at the top of every team’s thoughts, especially those that believe playing in October is a possibility, is how to keep arms healthy and effective after a year in which virtually every pitcher will be looking to increase his workload as much as three-fold.

“I’m not sure there is a clear path for that,” pitching coach Larry Rothschild said.

“I think we’ve gone a little bit slower with some guys just to be sure they’re ready. … The proper way to do it is we need to keep them healthy the whole year and not worry about them for that first game or whatever. I know all the games count, but the healthier we stay, the more those games are going to pile up and the better off we’re going to be able to win them. I think that’s part of the puzzle early in the season. It will be interesting how all those questions get answered this year.”

Dinelson Lamet is being slow played this spring to better ensure his elbow is sound for the entirety of the season. He still harbors a desire to be pitching the first week of April, but he won’t start a Cactus League game until next week at the earliest and the Padres seem to be inclined to delay the start to his season.

That means they are in the process of deciding who will

take his place.

There is the expectation an improved starting rotation will pick up more innings than Padres starters have in the past. But those pitchers will take some time to build up past 75 or so pitches.

While that is happening, the Padres have 24 games in the season’s first 25 days.

“That’s a pretty good workload right off the bat,” manager Jayce Tingler said of the one day off in that opening stretch. “That’s something we’ve got to be ultra aware of.”

The Padres could decide to employ six starters for a time.

Whatever they do, we’re probably in for a surprise, a move that in another season might seem odd.

It could be Ryan Weathers in the bullpen over a more established starter. If so, it would be true that the Padres are high on their first-round pick from 2018 and see the lefty in their rotation someday. But it would also be true they simply need innings this season, especially early.

It could be MacKenzie Gore and Adrian Morejon in the rotation. Or Gore and Weathers.

It seems virtually certain that at least one of the three young left-handers, likely Morejon and/or Weathers, will be available out of the bullpen. (The Padres’ belief is Gore is a starter, while the other two possess pitch mixes more suitable for bullpen stints.)

“I don’t think it’s a secret, you look at some of the arms we have in the bullpen, we’ve got a lot of guys that historically have been one-inning guys,” Tingler said. “The importance of having length in the bullpen and being able to go multiple innings, it’s always valuable. I think it’s ever more so valuable when you go (from) 60 games to 162. I think it’s incredibly valuable early in the year as your pitchers aren’t built up to 100, 110, 115 pitches at the start. The length out of the bullpen becomes even more important.”

The Padres believe the depth of their bullpen is a strength, but especially with Matt Strahm sidelined for at least April as he recovers from patellar tendon surgery, the group lacks length.

Craig Stammen is the only reliever among the leading nine candidates to have gone even two innings last season. Historically, he is also their most durable bullpen arm, having pitched in more games (173) and more innings (185) than all but one other reliever in the majors (Yusmeiro Petit, 180 games and 1972⁄3 innings) since the start of the 2018 season.

Mark Melancon threw two innings four times in 2019 but topped out at one last year.

Drew Pomeranz has maxed out at two innings (three times) and has topped one inning nine times since converting to a reliever in the middle of ’19. Emilio Pagán threw 21⁄3 innings once in 2019 and two innings another eight times but topped out at 11⁄3 last season.

Dan Altavilla threw three innings in a game once in 2017, which is the last time he went longer than 12/3, and he has gone longer than an inning just seven times in the past three seasons. Tim Hill went two innings five times in 2019. The last time Keone Kela went longer than an inning was 2018. Pierce Johnson went three innings once in 2018 but was not a multiinning pitcher in Japan in ’19 and topped out at 11⁄3 innings last season. Austin Adams reached two innings three times in 2019 and has gone longer than one inning eight times in 41 career games.

Another issue is how often relievers are asked to go back-to-back days — and how seldom they were asked to do so in 2020. Mindful of the odd year in which pitchers had ramped up in the spring, sat down for 3½ months and then gone through an accelerated summer camp, Tingler only sparingly called on relievers to work on successive days last season.

Then there is the hidden use that relievers have to deal with — being asked to warm up to get ready to go in a game and not getting in. They say it is almost like having pitched.

It will be on Tingler and Rothschild, as well as bullpen coach Ben Fritz, to monitor pitchers’ health and be particularly cognizant of workload.

And it will be on the pitchers to know the difference between being at 90 percent and needing a rest.

“Communication,” Johnson said.

“We’ve all got to be honest with each other. Especially with the guys we have, we’re going to have a big league bullpen in Triple-A. We’re going to have guys fill in when they need to, and they’re going to do a great job.”

And maybe, just maybe, it will be a case of less is more.

“I’ve pitched a lot of games and a lot of innings,” Stammen said. “It’s not a bad thing to have a little bit less wear and tear on the arm. … I think maybe for the rest of the guys, too, maybe a little bit of a breather to handle this big season coming up, because we’re going to have to be at the top of our game from day one. Everybody is going to be coming at us. We were the team chasing everybody else last year. Now they’re going to be chasing us. We’ve been all over the TV, all over the media. With that comes (the fact) we have to bring our ‘A’ game every day. … Our bullpen is ready. We’re willing to handle that workload for sure.”

But there is only so far most pitchers can be asked to go if they have previously only been asked to go a certain distance.

“It’s a dicey situation,” said the 37-year-old Stammen, who began his career as a starter and has in recent years been called on to do everything from face onebatter to go 12⁄3 innings two days after going two. “You don’t quite know.”

His ability to bounce back is rare. Stammen has thrown more than one inning in 42 of his 173 games since 2018. But he professed a belief there are future versions of himself in the bullpen.

“They can do the same things I’ve been doing — with better stuff,” he said. “It’s going to be exciting for all of us to take on roles that aren’t necessarily glamorous, but they’re hopefully going to make us a 90-something-win ballclub and a division champion and a world champion.”

High school results should be reported immediately after the contest.

For football, basketball, soccer, baseball, softball:

Phone in results to (619) 821-8208 or email to sdsports@sportngin.com

For all other sports:

Email results to sports@sduniontribune.com

Please do not call the sports hotline as we are not in the office at this time.