Atlanta Braves and pitching: when rebuilding, do you need more or less?

Guns or butter? Coke or Pepsi? Ford or Chevy? DH or not? Pitching or hitting? These are some of the polarizing questions that lead to great arguments.

The Atlanta Braves are clearly basing their rebuild on the premise that overwhelming pitching can dominate games. This is not the only rule in their guidebook, but when in doubt, “pitching” has been the answer to the difficult questions.

There’s a national baseball commentator on XM Radio who has put forth the premise that the Cubs and Phillies have done (or are doing) their rebuilds ‘the right way’ by concentrating on position players.

By extension and implication, you could assume he feels the same about the Astros and Padres. His theory is that you ‘can always find pitching’, and thus the bigger challenge is to get enough quality position players.

I don’t believe that I would fully subscribe to this opinion… and that’s even as the pitching paradigm of the last century-and-a-half is changing for perhaps the fourth or fifth time ever.

How Pitching Has Evolved

The 1892 Boston Beaneaters, National League champs and winners of 102 games had 6 pitchers on their roster (plus a catcher who threw 6 innings of 1 game)… but only 4 of those pitchers appeared more than once. 3 of these recorded 300 innings (okay, 1 had 299.2) with Kid Nichols and Jack Stivetts both exceeding 400 innings that year.

By 1940, the NL Champion Cincinnati Reds roster named 12 pitchers – but just 2 starters averaged 300 innings; 3 others shared duties in a 4-man rotation, and 5 primary relievers rounded out their staff.

The 4-man rotation was the norm of baseball society through the 1990’s: our 1999 Braves used Greg Maddux, Tom Glavine, John Smoltz, and Kevin Millwood for the majority of the innings, but Odalis Perez made 17 starts as a quasi-5th-starter – throwing 93 innings.

By then, the era of the relief pitcher was in vogue. Goose Gossage’s career lasted from 1972 through 1994, and though he he 1 year of 29 starts (1976), he made his name as a tough relief pitcher – often throwing 2 and 3 innings and reaching 100+ innings.

During that same era, Dennis Eckersley began a specialization trend. He himself was an accomplished starter, but as his effectiveness waned, he was moved into a new closer role – typically 1 inning to finish a game… and for multiple years in the late 80’s and early 90’s, he dominated.

21st Century Thinking

Now the era of the 4-man rotation is dead. The era of the 300-inning pitcher is gone (the last one was Steve Carlton in 1980 – before that you have to go to the late 1960’s to find common occurrences). The demise of both has led to the era of specialization (closers first) and now the rise of the dominant middle relievers such as Andrew Miller.

So now we are in a time in which the Analytics experts are in the process of declaring another paradigm shift: limiting starter innings.

Just 10 years ago – 2008 – thirty-three pitchers threw for 200+ innings. Only 15 pitchers did that in 2017. Chris Sale was tops at 214.1. In 2016, there were 15 as well with only 9 combining for 400+ in 2016-17. I won’t even bother discussing complete games.

But now the fear involves allowing pitchers to see hitters a third time through the order, noting how their effectiveness drops off significantly. Here’s an interesting quote from a detailed article from BaseballProspectus (emphasis added):

"“In an article I wrote [Michael Lichtman] two years ago about the benefit of “quick hooks,” I showed that a typical NL team could add from a half to a full win per season simply by removing a starting pitcher who is not an ace whenever he comes to bat in a high-leverage situation after pitching at least five innings, even if his replacement is a league-average reliever.”"

As an aside, here’s another telling – almost shocking – stat from the same piece:

"For an individual batter, the number of pitches seen makes a huge difference. The largest difference is from the first to the second time through the order. If a batter sees fewer than three pitches in his first PA, he hits 10 points better his second time at the plate. If he sees more than four pitches his first time up, he hits 25 points better on his second go-around!"

This is almost a demand that hitters ‘work the count’ early in games. On top of the offensive performance improvements, it serves to raise pitch counts for the opposition, which clearly make managers itch these days as the triple digit mark approaches.

So the question is this: in a rebuild, do you need more or less pitching?

A 2-Way Argument

You could actually take either side of this and build a plausible rationale set to bolster your viewpoint. Let’s try:

PRO-PITCHING

You can never have enough pitching. Just look around the league and see how many teams are looking for that one additional starter – especially one with quality. The answer? Most of them.
The price of quality pitching is still high – even with this year’s off-season market taken into consideration. Whether you’re thinking ‘free agent signing’ or ‘trade market’, there are significant prices to pay. That sounds like a sellers’ market. You don’t want to be buying pitching in a seller’s market, yet this is hardly an unusual situation.
If you do develop your own pitching, it doesn’t mean that you are void of position players. So fill in those gaps via free agents or trades… and if you actually do have a pitching surplus, that makes these gap-fillers easier to get.
The better your pitching, the less you need to be concerned about a juggernaut offense.
It’s a trend thing: if more teams are making runs on position players in the draft, then stock up on what’s left – the pitching.

PRO-POSITION PLAYER

More from Tomahawk Take

If you’re going “All In” on the sabremetrics, then you may come to realize that it only takes average pitching to get through the 5th inning. After that, your bullpen takes over, and that means you only need to worry about having a decent set of relievers… who are much easier to acquire… or to develop on your own.

If you don’t need starters who can deliver more than 150-160 innings, then your cost of acquisition just dropped dramatically.

Better defenders can overcome (or at least bolster) your own mediocre pitching. Better hitters, too.

My own view is on the fence – if your organization is excellent at developing pitching, then by all means do it. If not, then stick with what you’re best at doing. For the Braves, that has been “pitching”.

That’s been the philosophy of this team in recent decades, and it served them well in the 1990’s. The 2020’s have yet to be written, but the trend seems good for them again.

Next: Speaking of Great Pitching...

Meanwhile, it’s hard to argue against the recent successes of the Cubs and Astros.

Home/Braves News