Baseball has a pitching problem and it seems they’re finally trying to address it.
What is that problem exactly?
Arm injuries, a lot of them.
The billion dollar question following all of that was how do you fix this?
Is it even possible at this point to put the genie back in the bottle?
Well, apparently they’re toying with the idea of instituting six inning requirements for starting pitchers.
“There are a whole host of options in addressing those issues.”
That’d be a “we’ve left Earth” kind of change to the game.
But when you factor in the stipulations above, it’s really not all that bad.
What this would do is immediately eliminate openers and put more importance on being a legitimate starting pitcher.
Selfishly, I wouldn’t care about that at all.
If you’re in the Rays front office, however, you may fight this to the death.
They’d have to revamp their whole rationale of assembling a pitching staff.
If you get hurt, you’re free to obviously come out of the game.
Maybe do something with the rule being waived if there’s a very long inning in the outing?
If we somehow get away with constant max effort pitching that’d be a good thing.
It’s possible nothing can stop this epidemic, but it’s worth a shot.
