The 3x3 Pitching Method and How it Will Help the Royals

In my Royals 2011 season in review I talked about how going in to 2012, the concerns are not with the offense as the Royals were in the top 10 in nearly every important statistical category, they lie with the starting pitching.  Ranking no higher than 25^th in any meaningful pitching statistical category the Royals have a lot of work to do before next season if they want to truly compete for a playoff sport or division championship (and with 3 elite teams in the East, they pretty much have to win the division to make the playoffs).

How the Royals are going to solve their pitching problem is up in the air right now, and I have a suggestion for how the Royals should approach their conundrum.  This is going out on a bit of a limb, but follow with me here and I may be able to put up some convincing arguments, although there are just as many that will probably say I’m an idiot, this will still be a fun exercise.

The second half of the season stabilized a bit for the Royals staff.  Led by Luke Hochevar and his 3.55 ERA the staff seemed to show a little more consistency.  However, the first part of the season was a different story.  The biggest issue this Royals staff had early in the season was going deep in to games.  The young bullpen was able to pull them out of some jams early in the season and save games but eventually started to wear down.  Getting deeper in games was a major concern for this team.

With this being an issue people began to look for other options for the starting rotation.  Names like Aaron Crow, Nate Adcock, and Greg Holland were thrown around as possible saviors to the rotation.  Kyle Davies was finally parted ways with and Danny Duffy was brought up to hopefully start a long, fruitful career, and that still only helped a little bit.

Often times the bullpen would have to pick up the starters for at least 3 innings, and many times 4 or more innings.  This was not good for the bullpen, used a lot of pitchers, and was not good for the starters either, as it eroded their confidence and fed on itself to only make them more and more down on their performance. 

I am a big believer in that you change your scheme and methods in all sports based on the personnel at your disposal.  Lots of failures happen when you have a mindset and try to force players into it that don’t fit.  Through most of the season players like Luke Hochevar, Danny Duffy, and Jeff Francis, showed that they can make it through the first 3 innings or so pitching well, but began to fade after that.  Some of that may have been age, some may have been inexperience, some may have just been lack of ability depending on who was pitching.

The fix for this is to not try and force your pitchers to go beyond their metaphorical ‘wall.’  If Duffy can only go 3 innings, then tell him to pitch his lights out for 3 innings.  If Hochevar falls apart after four innings, then yank him after that and don’t throw him back out there hoping he turns into the elite pitcher that we supposedly drafted 6 years ago.

Why this stands in the face of conventional baseball wisdom, and there’s a large chance it probably wouldn’t work, it’s still an interesting thought.  In basketball, if Shaquille O’Neal is on your team (at least when he was in his prime), you’re going to have an offense centered around the low post game.  If Shaq is not on your team, the focus will change based on personnel, if you try to force it you don’t succeed.  Look at the Lakers with Shaq, they won 3 straight championships, but when he left, even with Kobe Bryant (possibly the best player in the NBA at the time), the Lakers struggled to make the playoffs and didn’t make much noise when they got there.  Phil Jackson didn’t change his offense based on the loss of one of the key cogs that made it go.

Part of the reason that teams like the Green Bay Packers and New England Patriots are successful is their elite level quarterbacks.  But part of the other reason, the overlooked aspect is that they place players in the positions they need to be in to ensure they succeed.  They don’t have a strict mindset of what type of system they run, they change it and tweak it based on the personnel they have year in and year out.  Players like Julian Edelman, Danny Woodhead, Wes Welker, and Jordy Nelson most likely wouldn’t see the field on most other teams.  The difference is, the Pats and the Packers are aware of the skill set these players possess and put them in position to succeed.

Why has this philosophy permeated all sports except baseball?  Baseball is the oldest of the four major sports and it seems for this reason they lag behind in most aspects of developing sport.  As methods and athletes are changing the sport has remained the same.  Look at the ‘Lefty specialist’ idea.  This gained much popularity in the 70’s and 80’s and although there isn’t much to show for it, teams continue to cling to this idea simply because that’s how baseball has always handled the situation.  Teams are slaves to the one inning closer format, when the best chance for them to win would be have their best relief pitcher (which your closer is supposed to be) pitch for two or more innings.

It’s almost as if managers and personnel folks are too afraid to do something different for fear of being laughed at.  In the recent movie ‘Moneyball,’ despite the discrepancies people have with the story, Billy Beane chose to do something different and was laughed at, but got himself some solid results nonetheless.  No matter how much of the result was actually the result of his changed method, he chose to stand up and say that he believed in a certain way of doing things, and wanted to do them, no matter if he was laughed at, or it cost him his job.

That’s why the Royals need to step forward and be revolutionaries.  The Royals need to adopt what I am calling the ‘3x3 Pitcher Model.’  Here’s how it works: The Royals spent most of the year carrying 13 pitchers on their staff, five or six starters, six or seven relievers, and one closer.  Instead of having six or seven relief pitchers waiting in the wings while the Royals hope against hope their starters can go 6+ innings, they need to have them ready and prepared to go earlier and for longer. 

In greater detail, this is how the staff needs to be handled.  The Royals need to move from 5-man to a 4-man rotation where the main starters pitch every 4 days instead of 5.  Now, in order to alleviate some of the “extra stress” that goes along with missing that additional day, their innings will be cut down.  In order to accommodate this, the bullpen will no longer be at the manger’s disposal.  Rather, the bullpen will be on a regimented schedule, similar to that of a starter they just won’t actually be starting the games.

For example, let’s say the Royals decide that Hochevar should only be going 4 innings, after that they will put in Everett Teaford in innings 5-6, then finally they will go to Aaron Crow for innings 7-8, with the plan of bringing the closer in in the ninth.  Of the Royals 12 non-closer pitchers, they will be broken into sets of 3 and that platoon will pitch every 4 days. 

Now, there is some leeway here.  They can extend a pitcher if they need to, but the starter must go at least 4 innings.  With the decreased wear and tear on the starters and hopefully the relievers as well, there is also some freedom to move pitchers around to accommodate different matchups.  However, they would decide to do it, if they stick to the principle of the method, then they benefit greatly.  They wouldn’t have to worry about Luke Hochevar exploding in the 5^th or 6^th inning, they wouldn’t have to mind Danny Duffy’s pitch count, and they would be much more at ease with their entire staff knowing what they need going in, instead of just hoping they can get as much as they can.

One of the biggest detractions from this would be how the relievers hold up against the increased innings.  Let’s delve into this a little bit more.  With a 4 ‘platoon’ rotation, each platoon will roughly get 40 chances throughout the course of the season.  Assuming the starters pitch 4 innings and the relievers pitch their requisite 3 innings each game, that then becomes 120 innings for each starter and roughly 80 innings for each reliever. 

While the increased innings is a concern, it is roughly only 20 innings more than what most relievers o the team pitched this year.  Furthermore, if the organization has this mindset as an organization, they can train these pitchers in the offseason and spring training and they will be ready for the season.

The next biggest concern would be what to do if it’s not a save situation, which would be the majority of the games.  The obvious answer is to have the pitcher who is pitching last go through the ninth inning.  If the game is out of hand earlier and the third pitcher went 3 innings last time, then the second pitcher can go 3 innings and the third will only go 2 innings.  There is a lot of wiggle room here to make some movements.

Here is the point, baseball exists in an unfair system in an unfair world.  There is no salary cap and teams like Boston and New York in bigger population centers have more fans, generate more revenues, and can pay players more without having to deal with consequences.  However you feel about ‘Moneyball,’ the point is valid, that it is a struggle for small market teams to compete in an unequal system.  The Tampa Bay Rays have found a way to do it with their version of ‘Moneyball’ (a post to come later), but they are the exception (to this point) and not the rule. 

Some of the greatest triumphs in our country comes from people who think outside the box, take something that already exists, think of it in a new way and do it better.  MySpace already existed before Facebook, but Facebook took it to a new level.  The 4-3 defense existed in football, but then Buddy Ryan came along and came up with his “46” defense and revolutionized everything.  Look at what happened when the Wildcat came along, even though its run was short.  From that came the spread option and the game has been changed ever since. 

Baseball is ripe for the picking when it comes to revolutionizing the way the game is approached.  There is no reason to remain stagnant.  The Royals know what they have and it’s not much in the pitching the department.  Nothing is standing in the way of the Royals playing to the strength of their pitchers and changing the way they go about things.  They never know how much their going get from each starter every day, so at least with this method they would have a better idea.

Please pick this apart as much as you can, nobody would ever adopt this and it might make me an idiot but I do think it’s truly an interesting thought and it couldn’t hurt to try, it would probably hurt less than another 90 loss season.