The Tampa Bay Rays made headlines during Spring Training when they announced that they'd be going with a four-man starting rotation this season. They've since taken it to a whole different level. Last week, reliever Sergio Romo started back-to-back games. Now, in their upcoming weekend series against the Orioles, all three games will be started by relievers, with Romo pitching the first and third games.
It's unorthodox to say the least, and its sure drawn its share of reaction--both positive and negative--from around baseball. When Romo made the consecutive starts against the Angels, it actually worked. He pitched a combined 2 1/3 innings, struck out six and didn't allow a hit over the two games. But it certainly feels gimmicky, and you wonder how well it would work on a team that's actually a contender.
One of the reasons the Rays can get away with this is precisely because they don't figure into the AL East mix. If they did, they'd likely be employing a more conventional approach with their pitching staff. Likewise, if they had any worthwhile starting pitching prospects, I doubt they'd be starting relievers instead of giving these young starters a chance. The fact that neither of those things is actually the case, however, lends itself to this unconventional bullpen usage.
At the start of the season, Tampa Bay really only had three legitimate starters in Chris Archer, Blake Snell and Jake Faria. Yonny Chirinos was their fourth starter in April before he ended up on the DL, and Faria has since joined him on the DL. So, this strategy has come about more from necessity than any sort of groundbreaking sabermetric thought process (although, former Rays manager Joe Maddon is the one to thank for the abundance of shifts in the modern game).
Although, if you look at the Rays' roster, it appears that this is also by choice. They have several other pitchers who've been starters in the past (some for Tampa Bay), but they'd rather do it this way instead. Matt Andriese, for example, was in the Rays' rotation until this year, and Vidal Nuno was mostly a starter until he was converted to a full-time reliever by Seattle last season. Lefty Anthony Banda, meanwhile, got the start in his Rays debut and is essentially their long man.
They could easily stretch out Andriese and Banda if they so chose. They'd just prefer to have a nine-man bullpen. Which sounds like a great plan come playoff time, but how sustainable is it in May? If you've got a reliever starting the game, he's gonna throw a maximum of what? Three innings? So, doing that three games in a row means that the Rays will be asking the rest of the bullpen to give them a minimum of 18 innings in the series. Which also puts additional pressure on Archer and Snell to go at least six, if not seven, in the other two games.
Speaking of Chris Archer, his name is one of the first to come up whenever people start discussing players who might be moved at the trade deadline. He'd be a logical fit on a lot of contenders who need a starting pitcher (the Diamondbacks, Braves and Cardinals all immediately come to mind as fits for Archer). Say he does get traded. Would they seriously move forward with Snell as the only bona fide starter on the pitching staff?
There's obviously been some injuries, too, that have contributed to their lack of depth in the rotation. And who's to say if they continue this experiment when and if they get Faria and Nathan Eovaldi (who hasn't pitched in two years) back from the DL.
But the fact that they don't have any Major League-ready starters in their Minor League system is ridiculous. That, frankly, is why they're in this situation in the first place. You'd think a team like Rays, especially, would have an abundance of Minor League talent. Especially since their thing is loading up on low-cost prospects when they trade off key players.
Starting pitching is the thing that you can never have enough of. (Do the Astros win the World Series last year if they don't get Justin Verlander?) Which is why it boggles my mind that the Rays literally don't have enough starters to fill out even a four-man rotation. And I'm not even talking about good starters. I'm talking about serviceable starters. There seriously isn't anybody on the Tampa Bay roster who can give you five innings every fifth day?
Of course, the craziest thing of all is that despite all of this, the Rays are just three games under .500 and in third place in the AL East (although, to be fair, they're 10 games behind the Yankees and 11 behind the Red Sox). And, as long as it's working, there's no reason for them to do anything differently. As a result, we're probably going to see Tampa Bay continue this NCAA midweek, non-conference bullpen game thing for a while. At least until Faria comes back.
Is this a trend that's going to catch on, though? That seems unlikely. Starting pitchers are a valuable commodity, both in terms of salary and what they mean to the organization. With starting pitching, less is more is definitely not the best long-term approach to take.
In fact, the opposite is true. You can never have too much starting pitching. Unless you're the Rays.
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