How pitching became a relay race unlike any MLB has ever seen – Pasadena Star News

Roger Bannister’s name is well-known in track and field circles. He’s the first person to run a mile in less than four minutes. It’s been 68 years since he clocked a 3:59.4 in Oxford, England.

Less well-known is the first 3-minute mile. It happened here, in Los Angeles, on July 24, 1966. The time of 2:59.6 is not sacred, mainly because it took four men – Robert Frey, Lee Evans, Tommie Smith and Theron Lewis – to hand off a baton in that time in the 1,600-meter relay at the International Games.

We don’t often think about the overlaps between track and baseball, but the pitching rubber really is akin to a starting block. The nine-inning game makes for an odd sort of race, in which participants hand off the baton as frequently or infrequently as they like, at intervals of their choosing. Or they can throw a complete game – no baton necessary.

These parallels came into sharp focus this week, when Major League Baseball finally instituted a 13-pitcher limit on active rosters. The rule had been under discussion for more than a year. MLB delayed instituting the limit twice since the regular season began. As of Monday, eight-man bullpens will be no less standard than five-man rotations. It’s the closest thing baseball has to limiting the number of participants in a relay race.

Among fans – even some veteran industry folks – there still exists a degree of resistance to the concept of pitching-as-relay-race. Complete games remain an official statistic, though their usefulness as a descriptor expired long ago. Pitchers simply don’t throw complete games anymore. (There have been 11 complete games this season through Tuesday; 21 of the 30 teams haven’t authored one.)

And why should they? The disparity between the record times in the mile and the mile relay races are telling. Why should a coach deploy only one runner, if he has the option of using four and shaving a minute off his time?

But how good of an analogy is this to pitching a complete game and dividing nine innings evenly between a starting pitcher and three relievers?

Here’s what we know. A pitcher’s efficacy diminishes every time the opposing lineup turns over. Starters are allowing a .694 OPS (on-base plus slugging percentage) the first time facing a hitter in a game in 2022. The second time, the hitter’s OPS rises to .711. The third time through the order, it’s .770. This effect is well-documented. It regularly informs every manager’s in-game decision-making.

Where this gets interesting, I think, is when comparing starters to relievers. Relievers are holding hitters to a .686 OPS the first time they meet in a game, and .725 the second time. You can see the traditional effect in action: relief pitchers are just a bit better than starters the first time through a lineup, and just a bit worse the second time.

Now compare these splits to 10 years ago. In 2012, starters held hitters to a .712 OPS the first time through the batting order and .743 the second time. For relievers, it was .694 the first time through and .780 the second time (which was rare).

There’s a trend line there, and it points to the dissolution of strengths between starters and relievers. The two cohorts are more similar now than they were a decade ago. Relievers are a little more comfortable facing a lineup twice. This change was in motion even before the effective eight-man bullpen limit, which should only make multi-inning relievers more coveted by contending teams.

What’s going on here?

The answer involves both in-game strategy and offseason roster building. It’s a response to the shifting currents underlying the art and science of pitching itself.

Pitchers have long been encouraged to throw for shorter and shorter intervals – the relay-race approach to nine innings. As a result, they are able to throw harder each time out. This led to more injuries, which led to larger pitching staffs, which led, finally, to MLB instituting a three-batter minimum and 13-pitcher roster limits.

The net effect of these rules is that starters and relievers are going to be harder to differentiate in the future.

“I think that moving forward in baseball, the starters will throw shorter, the relievers will throw longer, and that’s kind of going to be the way that it is,” Josh Bard, the Dodgers’ pitching coach, told me Saturday. “You’re going to have your unicorn starters that go three times through the lineup. Those guys are really good. But those guys cost $35 million a year. And that’s the reality of it. If that guy breaks – which happens when you’re a starter – teams are starting to figure out, do we want to allot resources into three bullpen guys who can throw multiple innings?”

Here’s the problem with those three bullpen guys who can throw multiple innings: they might be better suited to the task of completing a baseball game, but they will never become household names. Just ask Robert Frey, Lee Evans, Tommie Smith* and Theron Lewis.

(*Smith won a Gold Medal at the 1968 Summer Olympics in the 200-meter dash. You know this because, when he was presented with his medal on the podium, he raised his right fist while wearing a black glove. That made him a household name, but you catch my drift.)

Roger Bannister is the equivalent of a $35-million-a-year starter. His is the household name. Limiting the size of bullpens would, in theory, make the starter’s skillset more valuable. In practice, it might merely encourage a different kind of nine-inning relay race: five innings from the starter, four from the reliever. Or three, three and three. Or three, two, two and two.

It’s an interesting precipice facing the sport. It might turn pitching into more of a team activity than baseball has ever seen.