Bold new rules have reshaped
baseball. Could more changes save starting pitching?
[March 25, 2025]
By STEVE MEGARGEE
SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. (AP) — Bold decisions to change Major League
Baseball’s longstanding rules quickened the pace of games and
revived the popularity of stealing bases over the last few years.
A similarly creative move may be needed to help starting pitching
regain the relevance it enjoyed as recently as a decade ago.
Only four pitchers (Seattle’s Logan Gilbert, Kansas City’s Seth
Lugo, San Francisco’s Logan Webb and Philadelphia’s Zack Wheeler)
threw as many as 200 innings last season, down from 34 in 2014.
During that same 2014 season, all 30 major league teams got over 900
innings from their starting pitchers and five had over 1,000. Last
year, only four teams had their starters pitch at least 900 innings,
led by Seattle with 942 2/3.
While this shift has been years in the making, the numbers
themselves provide a cold slap of reality to longtime fans who
remember seeing Bob Gibson throw three complete games in the 1967
World Series or Jack Morris pitching 10 shutout innings in Game 7 of
the 1991 Fall Classic.
Going back to the days of Cy Young and Walter Johnson, part of the
game's beauty was watching a pitcher work his way through a lineup
three or four times.
With every team having multiple relievers who can come out of the
bullpen and throw in the high 90s, what could prompt teams to let
their starters work deeper into games?
Managers and players struggle to come up with a solution.
“Outside of just changing rules to incentivize managers to keep guys
in games longer,” Los Angeles Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said.
Roberts’ Dodgers exemplified the bullpen emphasis during their run
to the 2024 World Series title. Their starting pitchers worked as
many as six innings in just two of their 16 postseason games.
Texas’ Nathan Eovaldi went 5-0 with five postseason quality starts
(defined as going at least six innings while allowing no more than
three earned runs) a year earlier while helping the Rangers win
their first World Series championship. Yet even he understands how
much things have changed for starting pitchers since he made his
big-league debut in 2011.
“Bullpens are a lot different now than they were back then,” Eovaldi
said. “You’ve got a lot more guys who aren’t just eight- and
ninth-inning guys. They can come in, in the sixth or seventh, go
multiple innings. They all have multiple pitches now as well. I
think that’s one of the fascinating things about the bullpen. You
don’t have guys who are just a two-pitch mix anymore. They’ve got
three or four pitches coming out, and two of them are really, really
elite.”
And that’s why there seems only one way to get starters working more
innings.
“Putting in rules that you have to,” San Francisco Giants manager
Bob Melvin said. “We’ve created our own monster. It is what it is.”
What rules could MLB create to promote starting pitching?
MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred says it’s too early to explore rules
changes.
“Our focus right now is training methods, particularly offseason
training methods,” Manfred said. “It’s going to be somewhere between
education and recommendations. It’s very hard to tell people you
can’t do X, Y and Z, right? They’re grown men and there’s no way to
monitor it during the offseason.”
One problem is the lack of a clear consensus on what rule changes
could work best.
For instance, MLB had the Atlantic League experiment in 2021 and
2023 with a rule change that would force a team to lose its
designated hitter if its starting pitcher didn’t finish at least
five innings.
Instituting that kind of rule could be a tough sell in the majors,
where some of the league’s most bankable stars such as Shohei Ohtani
and Bryce Harper have received ample playing time at DH the last few
years. Fans paying to see those stars likely wouldn’t be happy to
see them get removed as collateral damage from an early pitching
change.
MLB hasn’t announced any similar types of rules experimentations in
the minors this season.
The maximum number of pitchers allowed on MLB rosters was lowered
from 14 to 13 in 2022, though that limit rises to 14 when rosters
expand from 26 to 28 on Sept. 1. A more extreme rule change would be
to require starters to work at least five or six innings unless they
get injured, throw a certain number of pitches or allow a particular
number of runs.
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Texas Rangers pitcher Nathan Eovaldi throws against the Los Angeles
Angels during the second inning of a spring training baseball game,
Friday, March 21, 2025, in Tempe, Ariz. (AP Photo/Matt York)
Rangers manager Bruce Bochy said he wouldn’t mind
seeing the minor leagues try out more rule changes designed at
lengthening starting pitchers. He wants those pitching prospects to
get accustomed to working deeper into games.
“That’s the way it used to be with starters,” Bochy said. “Now I
think the mentality can be, ‘Hey, I’ve done my job. I’ve thrown four
or five innings.’ “
Giants pitcher Robbie Ray says the history of the game shows that
starters can adapt to longer outings.
“I think starting pitchers are capable of doing it,” said Ray, who
won the 2021 AL Cy Young Award with Toronto. “It’s just a matter of
kind of training our bodies to do that again because what’s been
expected of us has changed over the years.”
Restoring endurance as a valued skill
A 62-page MLB study released in December showed how the focus on
rising velocities and maximum effort on each pitch had resulted in
more injuries among pitchers. That study also revealed that starts
of five or more innings dropped from 84% to 70% in the majors from
2005-24 and from 68.9% to 36.8% in the minors.
“Because we’re trying to create this engine and this repetitive
thought of just pure stuff each and every pitch, yeah, starters are
going to fatigue sooner,” Cleveland Guardians pitching coach Carl
Willis said. “And at the same time, we’re training them that way.
We’re training them to do so.
“Everybody still talks about wanting to go out for the sixth,
wanting to go out for the seventh and getting deep into games. I
don’t know that we’re training them to do that, and I don’t know how
we are kind of teaching nowadays can allow that to happen.”
A change in approach could allow those starters to get that
endurance. Right now, it’s the older guys who seem more used to that
workload.
The MLB leader in quality starts last season was the 34-year-old
Wheeler, who had 26. Lugo, 35, had 22 quality starts to tie for
second place.
Even so, the 2024 season did offer some encouraging signs for the
future of starting pitching.
MLB pitchers threw 5.22 innings per start last season. That
represented the most since 2018, though it was still far off the
2014 average of 5.97.
The 2024 season also featured an MLB average of 85.5 pitches per
start, the highest since 2019. Starters haven’t thrown as many as 90
pitches per appearance since 2017.
Perhaps it’s inevitable that the pendulum swing at least a little
more toward getting starters to work longer. The recent focus on
relievers puts more pressure on them, causing bullpens to break
down.
There’s one obvious method to change that.
“I don’t think necessarily the game is going to all of a sudden turn
back the other way, but there’s a huge push to understand how you
can keep a bullpen healthy,” Milwaukee Brewers manager Pat Murphy
said. “And one of the biggest ways is those starters getting through
that first bulk and getting you into the sixth or seventh.”
Now it’s just a matter of figuring out how those starters can pitch
deeper into games more often.
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AP Baseball Writer Ronald Blum contributed to this report.
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