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A Call for a Three-Man Rotation

Publication Date: March 16, 2004

Gather 'Round

OK, I'm hear to talk to the coaches this week. The rest of you, well, actually, the rest of you gather 'round, too; the coaches don't listen to me (and why should they?), so you're gonna have to do a little lobbying for this to work.

All right, Coach, suppose I told you that I could take your staff ace and change his season line from this:

GS  IP   ERA

13  110  4.00

To this:

GS  IP   ERA

18  110  3.40

In other words, you get fewer innings per start, but you get the same number of innings overall, and you get better quality pitching out of him.

Well, I think it can be done by going to a fairly strict three-man rotation. There are a bunch of assumptions that go into this thinking, and I want to go ahead and throw them out so you can try to point out the flaws if there are any:

Here's the plan, then. Take your top three starters and turn them into a true rotation -- let your ace throw on Friday, then Tuesday, then Saturday, and so on. Take those sophomores that are starting the mid-week games while they wait for a shot at the weekend and turn them into long relievers who are guaranteed to go in after about ninety pitches, usually somewhere around the sixth or seventh inning. You shouldn't have too much trouble selling them on that -- nobody aspires to be a mid-week starter, anyway, and they'll get their chance in higher-visibility conference games this way. Keep your starters on a tight leash, and enjoy the fact that they're not worn out in May from too many 120-pitch outings. If anybody starts to look a little worn, throw in a spot start for the fourth guy; you're going to need him in the conference tournament unless you get smart and get rid of the conference tournament (and you might get lucky but not lucky enough and need him on Sunday in a regional), so it won't hurt to get him two or three starts. For those of you in four-game series conferences, that's under your control, too, and most of you at the top of the conferences tell me you'd rather change it, anyway.

Tournament Watch

This means absolutely nothing, ignore it.

Actually, this is an experiment for me to see how predictable the postseason makeup is. I want to see how accurate my picks are (using myself as the test subject as a moderately knowledgeable observer with no input into the results) at various distances from the selection. I'm not going to bother picking a team from the one-bid conferences, since the conference tournament will just be a crapshoot, but if I only list one team from a conference, they'll get an at large bid if they don't get the automatic bid.

America East       Florida State        Notre Dame             Louisiana State
Atlantic 10        North Carolina St.   St. John's             Mississippi
CAA                Virginia             UC Irvine              South Carolina
Horizon            Clemson              Long Beach State       Florida
MAAC               Georgia Tech         Cal Poly               Arkansas
MAC                Florida Atlantic     Cal State Fullerton    Tennessee
MEAC               Central Florida      Southern Mississippi   Auburn
Mountain West      Texas                East Carolina          Mississippi St.
NEC                Texas A&M            Tulane                 Texas State
OVC                Nebraska             Texas Christian        Lamar
Patriot            Oklahoma             Stanford               La.-Lafayette
SWAC               Missouri             Arizona State          South Alabama
Southern Conf.     Texas Tech           Washington             Rice
Coastal Carolina   Oklahoma State       Arizona                San Jose State
Miami, Florida     Minnesota            Oregon State           Loyola Marymount
Wichita State      Ohio State           Washington State       San Diego

Pitch Count Watch

Rather than keep returning to the subject of pitch counts and pitcher usage in general too often for my main theme, I'm just going to run a standard feature down here where I point out potential problems; feel free to stop reading above this if the subject doesn't interest you. This will just be a quick listing of questionable starts that have caught my eye -- the general threshold for listing is 120 actual pitches or 130 estimated, although short rest will also get a pitcher listed if I catch it. Don't blame me; I'm just the messenger.

Date   Team   Pitcher   Opponent   IP   H   R   ER   BB   SO   AB   BF   Pitches
Mar 12 Northeastern Jordan Thomson North Carolina State 7.0 10 6 6 2 5 31 34 125
Mar 12 Temple Justin Mendek Evansville 7.2 13 8 8 6 2 31 40 137(*)
Mar 12 Florida Atlantic Randy Beam Campbell 8.0 10 2 1 3 9 32 38 147(*)
Mar 12 Ohio State Josh Newman McNeese State 8.0 10 2 1 3 9 32 38 128
Mar 12 Eastern Michigan Ryan Ford Texas 8.0 6 3 2 7 0 27 38 122
Mar 12 Texas-Arlington Michael Gardner Texas A&M-Corpus Christi 7.0 8 4 1 5 9 30 35 138
Mar 12 Florida Justin Hoyman Brown 7.2 4 4 3 4 13 28 32 123
Mar 12 Wiley Bryan Williams Centenary 4.0 15 20 14 9 3 27 42 150(*)
Mar 12 Southeast Missouri State Bill Clayton Alabama 5.1 5 7 6 4 3 19 28 121
Mar 12 Nicholls State Mike Prejean Mississippi 8.0 10 4 4 2 9 32 35 122
Mar 12 Mississippi Brae Wright Nicholls State 9.0 7 0 0 0 11 35 35 129
Mar 12 Appalachian State Clark Wofford 8.0 10 5 5 5 8 34 39 154(*)
Mar 12 College of Charleston Price Western Carolina 7.0 4 1 1 4 6 26 32 122
Mar 12 Elon Matt Garner The Citadel 7.0 5 0 0 2 8 26 28 129
Mar 13 Northeastern Justin Hedrick North Carolina State 7.0 10 5 3 2 4 30 33 138
Mar 13 Cal State Fullerton Ricky Romero Minnesota 8.0 7 6 5 4 10 29 34 136(*)
Mar 13 St. Peter's Sean Spicer Villanova 8.0 4 3 1 3 2 29 32 158
Mar 13 Marist George Heath Delaware 7.2 9 7 7 3 9 33 36 149(*)
Mar 13 Southern Mississippi Cliff Russum Eastern Illinois 9.0 0 0 0 3 15 26 29 125
Mar 13 Texas-Pan American Tommy Sorden Texas-San Antonio 9.2 4 3 1 7 11 32 42 152(*)
Mar 13 Alabama Wade LeBlanc Southeast Missouri State 9.0 5 0 0 2 10 31 33 126
Mar 13 The Citadel Ken Egleton Elon 7.0 9 3 3 2 10 30 32 130
Mar 13 Temple Tim Foulkrod Manhattan 8.2 11 9 3 1 0 40 42 130(*)
Mar 14 Indiana State Joe Thatcher Wake Forest 7.2 11 4 4 4 5 31 37 141(*)
Mar 14 George Mason Stacen Gant Coastal Carolina 7.1 5 3 2 2 7 27 30 125
Mar 14 Maryland-Eastern Shore Leon Tilghman Florida A&M 8.0 15 10 6 3 2 37 43 142(*)
Mar 14 Appalachian State Peterson Wofford 8.0 3 4 3 7 7 27 36 144(*)
Mar 14 Davidson Brian Akin North Carolina-Greensboro 8.0 7 2 2 4 11 28 34 129
Mar 14 New Orleans J. P. Martinez Louisiana-Monroe 7.2 6 4 4 1 12 30 31 125
Mar 17 Charleston Southern Bissell Wofford 7.2 10 5 4 4 5 32 40 149(*)
Mar 18 Arizona Koley Kolberg Long Beach State 8.0 12 4 4 2 5 35 38 129
Mar 18 Columbia Brian Doveala Miami, Ohio 7.2 10 4 4 7 2 30 40 122

(*) Pitch count is estimated.

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Boyd's World-> Breadcrumbs Back to Omaha-> A Call for a Three-Man Rotation About the author, Boyd Nation