MLB: Will teams get creative with rotations, bullpens in shortened season?

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(Photo by Scott Cunningham/Getty Images) /

Clayton Kershaw may not start more than 12 MLB games this season. Same for Gerrit Cole. And Jacob DeGrom. Heck, throw Max Scherzer in that group too.

On the heels of hearing the news of MLB’s announced 60-game pandemic-shortened season, my mind began spinning.

“Scratch a 200 inning season, 30 start season,” I thought. “Justin Verlander may throw as many innings as Kenley Jansen did last year,” I pondered.

Well, not so fast.

Even though the 60 games are going to be vacuum-packed into roughly 70 days for maximum efficiency, the total number of innings pitched and pitches thrown will drop significantly for hurlers around the league, starters and relievers alike.

Relievers are used to pitching in high-leverage situations with high-effort deliveries that yield electric fastballs for somewhere between 50 and 70 innings in a 162-game season, roughly 37% of their team’s contests. Are they now only going to pitch in 37% of the shortened season, which comes out to just about 22 games?

Certainly, in a season where each win or loss will weigh more heavily on a team’s place in the standings, the best relievers will want to be on the mound as often as possible.

And let’s not leave out the starters either. You don’t think Marcus Stroman and Trevor Bauer will go out and try to convince their managers to let them throw 130+ pitches per start if it helps the team win? Or maybe shave down their rotations to four featured starters and an all-in bullpen game?

With this shortened season comes uncharted territory. No MLB season has been this short since the 19th century, and that certainly means managers will be scrambling to field a viable strategy. No idea can be laughed out of a room when no one is in a laughing mood and when there can’t be spit-takes, sunflower seeds or otherwise.

This topic deserves a deep dive, where no stone goes unturned in determining the most efficient ways to utilize the million-dollar arms that have hung relatively dormant on the sides of Major League Baseball’s best pitchers since mid-March.

There is no doubt in my mind that front offices will come up with ideas far grander and far more practical than I in this article, but I figured I’d at least run with a few ideas and let you, the readers, rein me back in when I stray too far.

Could four-man rotations be the answer in a shortened 2020 MLB season?

In my mind, a shortened season full of live arms who’ve been pensively firing bullpens on sparsely populated fields lends itself to a group of pitchers who will want to come out of the gate guns blazing. Suddenly, in a short season, there is less of a need for an innings-eating workhorse.

This is especially true due to the expanded rosters managers will have access to. According to ESPN reporting on the new season, “active rosters will be 30 players during the first two weeks of the season, 28 during the second two weeks and 26 after that.”

With five extra players early on in the year and a taxi squad that can mix-and-match 60 players across all levels of the minor leagues, GMs and managers will have the ability to get creative when it comes to building their rotations. And this is especially true for teams that will be looking to make this season into a sprint rather than the usual marathon that characterizes the baseball season.

The trade deadline comes on August 28. By this point, teams may decide fighting to compete in a fanless, short season is not worth any prospect cost, however minimal, and throw in the towel. This might lead to a firesale, especially amongst teams that want to get whatever they can, however, small the return, out of their rentals.

With such a short season and with the trade deadline looming so large so early on in the year, could teams decide to put it all on the line right off the bat and see where they land come the end of August?

Take the Reds for example. Out in Cincinnati, Luis Castillo, Bauer, and Sonny Gray make a compelling case that the Reds could mean business in a 60-game season. Sure, the rest of their rotation is weak, and their offense is full of unknowns, but in a short season, who knows what could happen. Couldn’t that attitude lead to a four-man rotation anchored by a combination of offseason acquisition Wade Miley? The southpaw Miley could be supported by righties Tyler Mahle and Michael Lorenzen and then, the next day, they could help Raisel Iglesias and Amir Garett in an all-out bullpen game.

Intriguing, no?

Ultimately, having a four-man rotation is what will give teams the best chance to win, as we’ve seen in the playoffs since playoffs began. And in a season that puts so much stock into a single game, managers will be hard-pressed to come up with a more efficient use for starting pitchers besides locking them into an abridged rotation.

Getting creative with the bullpen in a shortened 2020 MLB season.

Imagine fourth and fifth starters, think the Mike Leake’s and Mike Fiers’ of the world, who no longer will have to toil through 5 innings or 100 pitches of mediocrity. Instead, their accuracy and wide pitcher arsenals can be pared down and translated into relief work. And these transitions, even before 2020, have led to success. Think about a league full of Wade Davis mimicry, where league average and below starting pitchers can put all their energy into a short season and become bullpen stalwarts.

That’s how I envision the MLB bullpens to be structured in 2020. I imagine a whole lot of talent crammed into a short season that offers far fewer innings to its players. Expanded rosters will mean more arms will be available, and young kids like Mackenize Gore of the Padres and Forest Whitley of the Astros can get a taste of baseball at the highest level without needing to conserve their innings.

Think for a moment on this hypothetical.

Chris Paddack fires three perfect innings, mowing down the opposing team for his Padres. He could certainly continue, but let’s say this is the fifth day of the first week of the new season, and San Diego’s brand new manager Jayce Tingler wants to be cautious. Enter Gore, who swallows the fourth and fifth innings to make his MLB debut, followed by rehabilitated Garett Richards, who gets through the sixth.

Now, the flamethrowers can get to work. Emilio Pagán sets down the first three hitters he faces and lets Dinelson Lamet strikeout the side in the eighth, setting up Kirby Yates to pitch in the ninth. So many arms, so many options, how can you lose?

Summing up how interesting the 2020 MLB season will be.

Managers will have arsenals of previously unimaginable breadth at their disposal all season long. This will certainly benefit the teams with deep starting rotations and powerful bullpens, just like 162-game seasons do.

The separator will come by way of craftiness.

More from Call to the Pen

Will Joe Maddon unlock new potential from a lackluster Angels pitching staff using a shorter rotation and bullpen games? Can Kevin Cash and the Tampa Bay Rays continue to lead the way and act as MLB’s pacemaker when it comes to rotational creativity? Could the opener give way to four different pitchers going 2-3 innings a game?

The options really do seem limitless at this point, and because my baseball mind has been shuttered and locked deep in the back of my mind since the lockdown began, I’m open to thinking far too long and much too hard about this.

I am someone who was already intrigued by the idea of pitching multiple starters in a game last season. As a Dodgers fan, I got to see Ross Stripling and Julio Urías combine for a win. Piggybacking off each other and bringing vastly different arsenals to the table, I got excited for things to come. I wanted to Dustin May work as a part-time high leverage arm and part-time opener and Alex Wood bridge the gap between May and Tony Gonsolin.

dark. Next.

In a 162-game season, that may have been too much variability to ask for. Sure, postseasons allow for whacky managerial moves, but not regular seasons. But thanks to this short season, I think my 2019 hopes and dreams may still come true, even in this wildly different nightmare that we call 2020.

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