For the last several years, Major League Baseball has grappled with the idea that it wants starting pitchers to be much more of a "main character" type player, the way they were decades ago. This discussion has moved into drastic-measure territory, apparently. According to an ESPN report, MLB is kicking around the idea of requiring starting pitchers to work at least six innings, though there are caveats.
At first blush, it might sound ridiculous because of the possibility that a pitcher could carry an excessively heavy workload in early innings, got completely shelled or fall injured. In any of those cases, shouldn't a team be allowed to remove the starting pitcher?
Sure enough, the report indicates that the exceptions to the proposed six-inning minimum could include:
Throwing 100 pitches
Giving up four or more earned runs
Getting injured (with a required injured list stint to avoid manipulation)
Don't expect this to happen any time soon. MLB isn't yet to the stage where it would be testing the mandate in the minors or even in independent leagues, and teams would need plenty of warning to begin stretching out pitchers and reconsidering workloads. We're years away from any implementation in the majors, if it ever happens, but it's very interesting that it's being discussed.
Obviously, the biggest impact here would be the outright elimination of openers and bullpen games. The main goal, however, would be to get actual starters deeper into games.
Starting pitchers in 2024 are averaging 5.3 innings per start entering play on Thursday, which means it's about 5 1/3 innings. There have only been 23 complete games and only two pitchers have multiple: Kevin Gausman and Max Fried have each thrown two. If we went back 40 years to 1984, starting pitchers averaged a full inning more at 6.3, or about 6 1/3 innings a start. Twelve pitchers had at least 11 complete games and the MLB leader, Charlie Hough, had 17.
In this day and age with the seemingly-excessive velocity and so many more breaking pitches, not to mention how good so many relievers are, we can't turn the clock all the way back to those days, but cutting into the early hooks would be the goal here.
