PITCHERS’ HEALTH A MAJOR CONCERN
Padres, other teams, holding out hope DH is reinstated for NL
A regular Major League Baseball season is a handwringing, body-beating, mindchurning grind.
Getting through the 162 games played over six months takes a lot of fortitude and a bit of luck, especially as it pertains to pitchers.
This year, teams believe that will be more true than ever.
The concern has been building, and now it appears it is almost time for teams in the National League to navigate a season unlike any other.
Padres manager Jayce Tingler has referred at least a dozen times in the past few weeks to the emphasis on pitcher health in a year when MLB teams will make the jump from playing 60 games in 2020 back to the regular 162. And on Monday he parlayed a question about a single hit by reliever Craig Stammen the previous day into another occasion to address something that has so clearly been at the forefront of his mind all spring.
“Your heart stops as he’s going down the line and he was smelling a hit and opening up,” Tingler said. “… From a manager’s perspective, it’s scary. It is. We’re going through a lot of things. I think this: I think we’re asking these guys to multiply their workload not by three times but 2.7, and we saw the (Kyle) Hendricks play the other night. I think (Cubs manager) David Ross’ quote was ‘I almost threw up in my mask.’ It’s a real deal. The health and safety of these guys is very important — and doing everything we can to keep them on the field.”
Tingler is far from the only one concerned. Other managers — including Ross, who watched Hendricks get tangled up with Padres first baseman Jake Cronenworth after a
single last week — have also said they don’t want pitchers hitting.
They didn’t last year, when concerns over safety in a tardy and truncated season prompted MLB and the Players Association to agree the DH would be instituted in the National League for one year.
Tingler on Monday confirmed what has been quietly expressed on back fields and in front offices this spring — that NL teams are holding out hope MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred and MLBPA Executive Director Tony Clark will find a compromise that allows the universal designated hitter.
“The only thing we have a little bit of faith is … Tony and Rob have done deals in the past,” Tingler said. “I think we hope they’re talking. I think they understand the concerns. … I’ve heard it from other NL managers and things like that. These are careers and these are players, and it’s something that I think the parties are aware of. And also for the product of the game, we want to see the ball in play. The fans don’t like not having much action.”
A source at the league level said it remains possible the sides will agree to implement the DH in the National League again in 2021 as a safety measure. To this point, the sides have reportedly viewed the DH as a bargaining chip — the owners tying it to their desire for an expanded postseason and the union wanting more of a financial cut of any extra playoff games.
What Tingler has on his mind above all else, as he is about to guide a team with championship aspirations into arguably the most anticipated season in club history, is this:
With or without the designated hitter — but especially without — how in the world are the Padres getting through 1,500-plus innings with a healthy pitching staff when those pitchers had to combine for just 500 to 700 innings in the 60game 2020 season?
“It’s going to be an interesting situation to say the least,” Padres pitching coach Larry Rothschild said. “Whether it dissipates, with all the talk when guys are OK as we get to the end, or if it becomes a reality halfway through where there are a lot of difficulties, I don’t know, and I’m not sure anybody can honestly answer that question, because there really has been no situation like this.”
The Padres have internally mapped out several scenarios of how they will get through the next six (or, they hope, seven) months. Tingler personally has crunched the numbers and identified just 18 MLB pitchers who in 2019 pitched 2½ times as many innings as they threw the previous season. Now baseball is essentially asking that of every pitcher.
Over the past three full seasons (2017-19), 12 of the 15 NL playoff teams had at least one pitcher make a minimum of 30 starts, 10 had two and seven had three.
Of those 15 playoff teams, 10 had at least three pitchers throw at least 160 innings. Numerous baseball people, while professing there is no way to know what some pitchers might be able to do, estimate 160 or so innings is probably about the ceiling for most starting pitchers this season after the bulk of them ended up in the 50- to 70-inning range while making nine to 12 starts in 2020.
If a team has its three leading pitchers go between 150 and 160 innings, that would leave it anywhere from 30 to 100 innings shy of what most NL playoff teams from 2017-19 got from their top three starters.
“It’s possible,” Rothschild said when asked if the Padres could expect multiple 30-game starters in 2021. “It’s on an individual basis. I’m not sure that analogy is going to play into this year because of the differences.”
Tingler was asked if he envisioned even one 30-game starter. It’s the uncertainty and the contingencies that stick out in his answers on the topic.
“I hope so,” he said. “That’s the plan but, look, things come up. The … pitchers’ safety is the most critical. It’s nobody’s fault, but as an industry, the one thing we’ve failed at as an industry right now is keeping arms healthy, keeping arms and pitchers on the field. That’s at the amateur, the youth, the college and certainly professional baseball, certainly Major League Baseball. So are there times when maybe somebody needs a blow and doesn’t need to pitch through some tightness and things like that, I think we have to be ultra-, ultra-aware of those things and handle each case individually.”
Complicating matters for National League teams is they inevitably will pull their starting pitcher for a pinch-hitter in close games earlier than that pitcher’s performance on the mound might dictate. Other than some outliers, pitchers are a liability at the plate. They struck out 43.5 percent of the time they went to the plate in 2019.
Shortening a starter’s outing will put added burden on the bullpen, when getting a collection of relievers through a 162-game season is always tricky.
Relievers, who every year contend with working the majority of days at anywhere from 80 to 90 percent of full strength because of the frequency of their work, will also be asked to subject their arms and bodies to more than twice the workload of 2020. The Padres bullpen accounted for 234 innings in 2020 after throwing between 495 and 635 innings each of the previous five seasons.
The Padres plan to be more vigilant and proactive gauging their pitchers’ health. They have impressed on pitchers the heightened importance of candor about their health this season and will also assess performance and compare what pitchers are doing in the weight room and on the field with baseline tests conducted in spring training.
“Players aren’t always going to be honest with you,” Rothschild said. “You have to take that out of the equation. You watch the training room, watch the weight room and watch their routines, which you always do, but it’s probably more important this year.”
The Padres face some unique handicaps as well. For all the apparent upgrades to their starting rotation this offseason, they will be without Dinelson Lamet for at least the first three weeks of the season. That is when they play the bulk of 24 games in 25 days.
Further, Blake Snell has pitched more than 129 innings once in five big-league seasons. Chris Paddack worked 1402⁄3 innings his rookie season and then 59 last year. Joe Musgrove has thrown more than 1151⁄3 innings once in five seasons and worked 392⁄3 in ’20.
Most playoff teams use anywhere from 10 to 12 starting pitchers in a season, with as many as seven or eight making 10 or more starts.
The anticipation of this season’s unique challenge is part of what drove the Padres to trade for Musgrove in January after already acquiring Yu Darvish and Snell in December. They will likely remain in the starting pitcher market to some degree until the trade deadline.
They also are counting on top pitching prospects MacKenzie Gore and Ryan Weathers to make starts and/or contribute significant innings out of the bullpen.
“That’s an advantage, if they’re ready to give us the quality we think they will,” Rothschild said. “When that is, it’s hard to answer that with young pitchers. At least there’s some guys there with really good stuff. If they’re close and can be developed at the major league level — and on a team that is hunting a championship — that’s part of the evaluation. Right now, we don’t have all the answers. There’s going to be more information as we go through the next week or so.”
This could end up being an overblown concern. Everyone would love that.
The challenge entering the season is no one knows.
“You can say a lot of guys got rest and maybe they are in a better spot to pitch,” Rothschild said. “But you go to the other side of that, which is the side you have to recognize more heavily, because you can be at higher risk with the innings compared to what they had last year.”