Teams get break on pitcher limits
There’s only so many Walker Buehlers dotting Major League Baseball rosters. And that’s one reason why MLB and the Players’ Association agreed to delay roster limits on pitching by one month as the game claws back from a 99-day lockout.
MLB and the MLBPA agreed on Tuesday to delay a hard 13-pitcher limit for rosters until May 30. The 13-pitcher cap was negotiated as part of the collective bargaining agreement struck last month, but due to the lockout’s length and a shortened spring training, rosters were expanded from 26 to 28 and no limit was placed on the number of pitchers until May 2. Now, MLB will step halfway between the future and mitigating the present for one more month.
Come Tuesday, rosters will return to 26 players. The 10-day injured list stint for pitchers will return to 15, another CBA wrinkle designed to discourage teams from stashing pitchers on the IL and frequently optioning/recalling players.
Yet until May 30, teams will be allowed 14 pitchers – an aggressively large amount in most years, but a decidedly normal one in what’s shaping up to be an odd April.
With larger rosters and no positional limits, some teams opted for preposterously large pitching staffs – with two teams trotting out 16-man staffs for Opening Day. Meanwhile, an offensive drought has struck MLB – runs per game are down significantly, from 9.06 for all of 2021 to 8.00 in April. (It was at 9.66 for 2019, the last pre-pandemic year and a widely acknowledged juiced ball season).
And this season’s offensive shortcomings may partially be attributed to the game’s ongoing battle with the baseball – for the first time, balls are being stored in humidors at all 30 stadiums, rather than just Colorado’s Coors Field and Phoenix’s Chase Field. Still, players remain insistent the product isn’t performing as consistently as they’d prefer, even as MLB shifts to a consistent ball after a year of mixing and matching older and newer lots.
But the relief pitching brigade can’t be ignored, either. With, essentially, bottomless pitching staffs, managers have been free to mix and match at will and launch bullpen games with greater peace of mind, knowing another line shift of pitchers will be available before the next game.
The result: A .231 collective batting average so far in April, down from an emaciated .244 overall mark in 2021 that helped inspire offensive-minded rules changes in CBA negotiations and for commissioner Rob Manfred. Teams are slugging just .368, down from .411 in 2021 and .435 in 2019.
The hope is that things will normalize soon – that starting pitchers, already an endangered breed, will soon be properly stretched out, and that hitters will catch up after a three-week spring training and begin slugging the ball again.
Until then, feats like Buehler’s first career shutout – the first in the majors this season – will be significant outliers. The median major league team is averaging 4.6 innings per start, down from 5.07 in pre-pandemic 2019.
Hours before Buehler’s gem, reigning NL Cy Young Award winner Corbin Burnes tossed 62⁄3 shutout innings against the San Francisco Giants. Yet his Milwaukee Brewers were eventually defeated, 4-2, by a Giants team that trotted out eight relievers – seven for one inning each, and one for two innings.
It was a very 2022 result. And one that will be tougher to come by five weeks from now.