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Wednesday, August 10, 2011
Five-day rest rotation
The standard rotation is either a 5-man rotation (meaning each starter will pitch in a rotation of 5 starters), or a 4-day-rest rotation (meaning that your best pitchers will pitch every fifth day if possible, and each subsequent pitcher gets the same treatment, which will make it so that your 5th starter will “miss” the occasional start by pitching on 8 or 12 days of rest).
So, in a 5-man rotation, each starter will make 32 or 33 starts, while in a 4-day-rest rotation, your top 3 starters will make 35 or 36 starts, while your 4th starter might make 30, and your 5th might make 25.
In The Book, we talked about giving pitchers 5 days of rest (since that’s their optimal rest period). This will force the use of a sixth starter to plug the holes as needed. This DRaysBay article is a good introduction to that topic.
Joe Sheehan talks about the six-man rotation (as opposed to the 5-days-rest rotation) here.
Go with a six-man, and your No. 6 starter gets 27 starts, same as your No. 1. This is a horrible way to run a business, taking opportunities from your best and giving them to your worst.
I would hope that when a team talks about using six starters that they don’t mean it in a six-man rotation sense (giving each starter 27 starts), but rather in a 5-days-rest rotation, using the sixth guy to plug in the holes. By using a strict six-man rotation, you will occasionally give your starters six or seven days of rest. And it’s just as bad giving a pitcher not enough rest as it is giving him too much rest.
The idea of the sixth man in the rotation is that he’s a true swingman, coming in to plug the hole created by the five-day-rest rotation, and being used in long relief appearances to keep him sharp.
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