BP Unfiltered

"Let’s assume that the [first] four innings of statistics -- the by-inning statistics -- are representative of what a pitcher would throw in innings five through eight. He’s coming in fresh, and if you look at how pitchers perform over their first four innings, you’ll see that it’s much better than how they perform over the successive innings."

That just feels like regression towards the mean. Let's say you have a pitcher who randomly gives up 1 run every other inning(his true ERA is 4.50). He also is always yanked if he gives up 4 runs. If you were to look only at his starts where he pitched 8 innings, then almost by definition they were starts where he outperformed(was lucky) in innings 1 thru 4, that's the only way a guy like that gets to pitch 8 innings. So, while it may look like his performance declines in later innings, it's really just a bias in how the data was selected.

The other thing that strikes me is that any team that tries to implement such an approach will be severely handicapping themselves in terms of talent acquisition. Just because one team decides to use starters this way doesn't mean that all teams will, and doesn't mean that starters will be paid according to this new usage pattern vs the established makrers like ERA, IP, Wins, etc. In other words, which top free agent pitchers would choose to pitch for a team employing this strategy? Which homegrown pitchers would choose to stay with a team employing this strategy instead of demanding a trade or leaving via free agency ? It seems that the costs in terms of talent acquisition would surely be high, but the returns on this strategy are hardly guaranteed, so I can't imagine anyone ever trying it.

I'm a proponent of tandem pitchers. 96 runs would seem to be a huge exaggeration. I'd be happy to review Greg's research if he wants to email it to me: tom~tangotiger~net

The paper was more detailed than what we covered in a five-minute conversation, so I have invited Greg to jump in here to both clarify and elaborate. Hopefully he will find the time to do soon.

Yeah, due to blowback, you'd be building your pitching exclusively through pitchers you can control: pitchers drafted in the mid-rounds or later. Free agents would never come there, but also high draft picks in the amateur draft would go back to school, most of them. So, really, you'd be building this staff with 5th and 6th starters, not 3rd and 4th.

That said, starting pitching is where a lot of money gets wasted in free agency and the draft, so that might be a place where the "loss" is actually a gain.

IfI were the Pirates, I'd try this out during the inevitable August and September snooze period, as they'll be mathematically eliminated. September rosters seem particularly suited to this.

Also, the author should account for what would happen when they hit the playoffs and lacked anything resembling an ace.

Hi all-

I wrote the paper, and thank you for your feedback. I'd be happy to send the full paper to anyone who would like a more in-depth discussion of how I got to the results I did. Email me at gjr250 (at) stern dot nyu dot edu

I'll have more time tomorrow to cover some of the issues raised.

Also, this paper by no means was meant to cover every aspect of tandem pitching...only the most transparent ones. There are a number of analyses that I would have liked to do if given the data.

Greg

If you let the starters go 5 innings rather than 4, they could still get the official 'W'. And with 40+ starts per year, you'd again get 20-game winners. I think that would effectively address the political issues. You'd also transfer some innings from your 5-8 'best' pitchers to your top 4.

Yessiree, the '4-Day Richie Rotation!!!' (you can tell how good it is by the extra '!'s) Your top 3 throw 45 starts a year averaging 5 IPs per start. (an occasional efficient 6, occasional pulling after 3-4 when they're already down by a decent amount)

First, I wish you and all Stern grads named Greg unbridled success, as I myself am one.

Now then, I have always seen a few problems with real-life tandems, despite their handiness in sim games like Hardball Dynasty:

1) Invalid assumptions about performance: "Let’s assume that the [first] four innings of statistics -- the by-inning statistics -- are representative of what a pitcher would throw in innings five through eight." I don't think that's a valid assumption. Starting pitchers are accustomed to set pre-game routines based on a known starting time (not quite - obviously some variation for the visiting pitcher - but less variation than when the 5th inning will begin). I think altering that routine would noticeably degrade performance, largely b/c it would hamper the type of fine tuning in the bullpen that is important for starters, resulting in higher BB rates and poorer command of secondary pitches. I say this largely given my own experience and not based on statistics, but I suspect there aren't enough examples of starters moving into a tandem role to create a meaningful sample anyway.

2) Workload management: There is some leverage in starting pitching - a starter's going to be throwing long toss, maybe flat ground, plus 30-40 pitches in the bullpen before entering a game, and he has to do that every time no matter whether he throws 60 pitches or 100. When he throws 60 in-game pitches every 4 days a higher percentage of arm wear is being allocated to warm-up than if he throws 100 in-game pitches every 5 days. In other words you aren't maximizing the wear on your staff's arms, which I think would be costly over the course of a long season. In the shorter term, a strict 4x2 tandem would leave only 4 bullpen arms, only 1 of which could be a long man, so if one or both tandem pitchers can't make it through 4 innings the bullpen will get gased very quickly.

3) tbwhite's last point above, which is dead on, echoed by others. Sure, it could be cheaper, but every free agent knows he won't get paid. I think you'd attract long men who can't find a job as a starter, and the rest of your pitchers would be youngsters not yet eligible for free agency. As soon as they are free agents they will leave, as they won't earn fair value in arbitration. And draftees other than college seniors probably will not sign with a team that employs that strategy either, as they also know they won't get to be a regular starter, with the associated money and glory.

I don't mean to be outright dismissive. Over time you could see some experimentation with tandems. Perhaps teams will experiment with the 5th slot in the rotation, particularly those like the Twins who are long on mediocre starting pitching (though not the Twins themselves as they would never try something unorthodox). But I don't think a full-on 4x2 tandem rotation will ever happen, nor do I think it would work nearly as well in practice as theory might suggest.

I posted a reply to Greg's paper on my blog, as well as posting his paper there.

Interesting idea.

What happens when starter #1 gets bombed in the second inning? You can't use the other 7 starters or your "closer". I guess you also propose having 2 mop-up men on your staff? Seems a shame to use your worst pitcher in the second inning down 4-0, effectively giving up the game.

I think this could be an interesting idea, though the idea that the team would pitch better seems very unlikely.

I think the idea is interesting based on the concept that money saved on starting and short relief pitching could be spent on offense and defense, perhaps more than offsetting the pitching losses.

However, I don't think the idea has much merit, at least as presented above, as a way to enhance a team's pitching performance. The biggest flaw in the data, as I see it, is going with the average starting pitcher. In the scenario presented, a team would be using eight "starting" pitchers. Yet the data used was for the most "average" starting pitchers among the 83 with the most innings pitched. If I'm reading this correctly, that means the data for roughly the 42nd best starting pitcher in 2009 was used to compute what would happen with a four-man rotation and tandem starts. With 30 MLB teams -- and acknowledging that this team would purposefully not be focusing on the top pitchers, either in free agency or the draft -- this seems to be a wholly unreasonable assumption.

Instead, this seems to advocate taking innnigs from the top 1-5 starters and top (non-closing) short relivers and giving them to the 5-8 starters. As I said, I can see the merit of the idea in that this should reduce pitching costs, allowing the team to spend elsewhere (perhaps more efficiently) but I cannot see how the data supports that this would be a more effective pitching staff.