A sold out arena on a Saturday night. Every seat in the building is full. The crowd is buzzing with anticipation. The Rolling Stones are playing. The lights are about to go out. There’s two bands on the bill. Who do you think is going to play first? Who is going to close out the show?
When the Nationals and the Mets have a series coming up, the first thing we do is check is to see if the rotations line up to give us a Scherzer/DeGrom match-up. If we get lucky enough for the two of them to face off, it is a near-guarantee that at least one of them will be in the clubhouse for the last 2 innings or more. If they have both pitched well, it is likely the game will be decided after they are both gone.
We’ve already seen teams utilize the opener. Tampa Bay’s test case is well known. They had enough success that the team has stated publicly that they will be utilizing it during the 2019 season. Their strategy for the upcoming season is so obvious that they didn’t feel the need to hide it – Cy Young Award Winner Blake Snell needs no openers. He will start, and he will be replaced by a relief pitcher when he is out of gas. Free agent pick-up Charlie Morton won’t have one either. They will only use the opener when they don’t have a high-caliber starter. Why not take it one step farther? What if “The Opener” was like an opening band?
Diego Castillo takes the hill as the opener. He gets through one clean inning, and we either put in another set-up type reliever or let Castillo go another one. Say we get through those two innings scoreless. And then we bring in Blake Snell. We have our boot on the neck of the opponent now – and it’s only the 3rd inning. If Snell is having a great day, he can just cruise on home. Maybe he’ll head out for the 9th only having thrown 75 pitches and he can really air it out. If the pitch count piles up, we still have our closer and the rest of the bullpen available. We were going to use the bullpen anyways to nail down a W – Blake Snell didn’t have a complete game in 2018 and his longest outing was 7.1 innings.
The downsides are relatively minimal here. Clearly the worst thing that can happen is our opener gets hit hard. We don’t want our ace to get knocked out of his rhythm, but we also don’t want our best pitcher coming into a game where we are losing 4-0. However, at least having the option to save Snell for tomorrow is marginally preferable to a scenario where Snell throws 6 shutout innings, leaves with a 2-0 lead, and the bullpen gives up 4 runs to lose, right? Statistically speaking, the majority of the time we can escape those 2 innings with no worse than a 2-run deficit. Very frequently we will either be tied or have a lead. In those games we will have an enormous advantage.
Bullpen usage has changed drastically over the past few years. Andrew Miller showed us all the value of being able to use our best relief pitcher in the highest leverage situations. Josh Hader won the Trevor Hoffman award and finished 7th in the Cy Young voting with a measly 12 saves. Relief pitchers have proven that they can increase their value and effectiveness by being flexible enough to deliver their highest quality pitching in any situation put in front of them. Who will be the first high profile ace-caliber starter to give up on the notion that “routine” is so important and just try to pitch the maximum number of high-leverage innings? A realistic opportunity to have the best pitcher on your team on the mound in the 7th, 8th, and 9th innings of a close game is incredibly valuable. If we could take each of Blake Snell’s 2018 innings and place them into the highest leverage spots during the games where he pitched, why would we not do that?
The effectiveness of taking the opener to the next level depends on pitchers, and not just any pitchers, but the highest profile pitchers in the game, to embrace new roles and new routines. We would all have to admit to ourselves that complete games aren’t really a thing anymore. I know that every time Chris Sale takes the mound, I want to see him throw a perfect game. As hard as it would be for me to admit that it isn’t going to happen, it will be much more difficult for Alex Cora, Dave Dombrowski, John Henry, and Sale himself to accept. We can always start with our second tier of starter pitchers. Sale might not be able to accept that he isn’t going to throw 9 when it’s his turn, but maybe David Price would be open to coming into a 1-0 game in the 3rd and trying to put it on ice? As the Scherzers and Verlanders of the league retire and we’re left with more guys like Snell who win Cy Young awards without ever finding out what pitching in the 9th inning feels like, it could become even less of an issue.
