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Cover your ears baseball purists. You are not going to like this. What the Tampa Bay Rays are doing with starting relief pitchers is the wave of the future in baseball. The days of workhorse starters pitching 200 to 250 innings a season are over.
Between innings limits and the fear of Tommy John surgery, teams are exploring creative ways to keep their pitchers healthy and get the most out of them. What Kevin Cash and pitching Kyle Synder are doing in Tampa is genius. In five years from now, it could be more the norm than a gimmick.
The Rays have been ridiculed since announcing that they would start a reliever once every five days. Pundits and purists alike have denounced the plan claiming that the small budget Rays were doing this so that they wouldn’t have to pay another starter. That might be partly true. The Rays are strapped for cash, that’s why they traded Jake Odirizzi but there is a method to their madness.
Between having limited resources and a strong bullpen, Cash and Synder along with the Rays analytics department decided to experiment with starting relievers once a turn. Essentially, they decided to work backwards. It is an unconventional thought process but one that has worked out thus far.
The Rays are 13th in baseball with a team ERA of 3.90. I know what you thinking. How has it paid off? They are middle of the pack in all of baseball. When you consider that their only two reliable starters thus far have been Chris Archer and Blake Snell, the starter by committee approach has worked. It has kept the Rays in contention at 28-26. At one point, people around the league were wondering if this team was going to lose 125 games. Now they are a legit wild card contender.
Can this strategy work over the course of an entire season? It is too early to tell. There are many factors that go into whether or not the Rays can continue to rely on their bullpen so much. Injuries, innings limits and payroll will all determine just how the Rays can continue to start relievers. The strategy has been effective thus far and in this age of leveraging situations with your bullpen, the Rays have taken unconventional usage of pitchers to another level.
Baseball purists don’t like it but in this era of analytics and small market budgets, it makes sense.