Baseball's Newest Innovation, Openers

The World Series ended last night with the Red Sox out-classing the Dodgers, four games to one.  I did not have a dog in the hunt although I must admit that, in virtually any contest involving a California team versus non-Cali, I pull for the latter.  As for a reason I'll just say it has something to do with my nine post-merger years working at Wells Fargo, and let it go at that.  Now I must wait five cold months for the best sport to resume play.  Before bidding farewell to the season I'm going to write about the game one more time.

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Depending on your resource, the game of baseball is believed to have originated toward the end of the nineteenth century.  For decades it was commonly labeled "America's favorite pastime" even though today the sport's enthusiasts would have to admit professional football has surpassed baseball for the top spot.  The undeniable popularity of fantasy football accounts for much of the pigskin prevalence.

MLB's executives have tried tweaking baseball's rules to make the game more interesting to viewers, especially young people.  But it's hard to accomplish that goal without incurring the wrath of the purists and traditionalists who think the rules are fine as is.  It is interesting to note that most of baseball's changes during the last ten years have been what you might call "cosmetic" rather than integral to the sport's core.  For example, since 2008 first and third base coaches have been required to wear batting helmets, the catalyst being the death of Mike Coolbaugh, a coach for the Denver Rockies' Class AA affiliate, Tulsa, in July 2007.  He was struck by a line drive while coaching first base.  Concern for safety has also led to the installation of protective netting in front of the infield seats from dugout to dugout (and in some stadia, beyond).  This came about only after several fans were seriously injured by screaming line drive foul balls.

Other more recent rules changes include waiving an intentionally walked batter to first base rather than going through the formality of the pitcher tossing four balls out of the strike zone, and limiting the number of mound visits, excluding pitching changes, to six per nine inning game.  Both of these revisions are intended to speed up the game.  The latter change has noticeably served its intended purpose; the former is more form over substance.

Since the advent of the designated hitter by the American League in 1973 there have been only two changes which clearly affect managerial strategy and the way baseball is played. It is pretty hard for a manager to come up with a unique concept or innovative approach which hasn't already been tried by the hundreds of managers who've come before, including those like Hall Of Famers Whitey Herzog, Sparky Anderson and Earl Weaver.  The first of those two changes was the employment of exaggerated defensive infield shifts.  Although infield shifts have been around since the 1940's, no one paid much attention to them until the last five years or so.  Now shifts are a prominent part of game planning, with several teams even going so far as to change their infield alignment once or twice during the same at bat, depending on the pitch count.  I'm going to save discussion of infield shifts for another day. 

The second major post-1973 change was created this season, specifically on May 19, 2018.  It was in the Tampa Bay Rays game that day against the California Angels that Rays manager, forty year old Kevin Cash (at the time MLB's youngest manager), came up with an idea that has been copied numerous times in the remaining five months of the season:  the "opener."  An opener, not to be confused with a "starter," is a pitcher who begins the game for the express purpose of throwing only one or (at the most) two innings.  His job is to face the top three to six players in the opponent's batting order, after which he is replaced by a teammate who usually functions as a regular starter in his team's five-man rotation.  The regular starter them pitches as long as he is able, which in today's style of play usually means anywhere from five to seven innings.

In that historical spring game, Cash had Sergio Romo open the game.  The thirty-five year old veteran had appeared in 588 games during his long career, but never as a starter!  Romo was unfazed by his new job description, striking out the side in the bottom of the first.  Then, according to plan, Rays regular starter Ryan Yarbrough took over the pitching duties to begin the home half of the second, hurling six and a-third innings of four hit ball, yielding just one earned run to pick up the win.

Why do managers use an opener to pitch the first inning or two instead of simply going with one of their regular starters?  There are a handful of reasons, but the two I'd place at the top both have to do with the opponent's batting order.

Third Time Through Order:  Statistics show that starting pitchers are less effective the third time through the lineup.  This is the result of a combination of arm fatigue and batters' familiarity with the pitcher's "stuff."  By the time a lineup has turned over twice, most starters, if they are still on the mound, have thrown more than seventy pitches.  Their fast ball tends to lose a little velocity, and their breaking ball isn't spinning as much.  When the fast ball is slower than it was in the early innings, not only is it easier to hit, but the difference in speed between fast ball and changeup diminishes, an advantage for the hitter who is sitting on a fastball but can more easily make an adjustment if he gets a changeup.

By using an opener for an inning or two, the starting pitcher's third time through the lineup is more likely to begin with opponents at the bottom of the order (say, those in the 7, 8 and 9 holes) than the top.  A team's weakest hitters usually occupy the bottom third of the order.

Professional Courtesy:  As you know, baseball has many so-called unwritten rules.  For example, it is deemed unsportsmanlike to lay down a late inning bunt in an effort to break up a no hitter.  Another no no is to steal a base in the last inning or two if your team is winning by more than seven runs.

An unwritten rule germane to this post is the practice of each manager announcing at least one day ahead of time who his starting pitcher -- i.e., the one designated to pitch the first inning -- is going to be.  Although managers are not mandated to make such a proclamation, it is nevertheless offered as a professional courtesy.  Most managers will set up their batting order to utilize and emphasize left handed batters facing a right handed starting pitcher, and visa versa.

The use of an opener makes the rendering of such a courtesy almost useless.  When the opponent uses an opener followed soon by a regular starter who pitches with the opposite arm, a manager's best laid plans can be thrown asunder.  For example, let's say a manager stacks his lineup with left-handed batters because the opponent's announced starting pitcher is a righty.  If a different pitcher, this time a southpaw, enters the game in the second or third inning, that manager must choose between two poisons: use pinch hitters early in the game, or be stuck with his original lineup which he drew up thinking that it would work well against the guy who turned out to be merely an opener.

Other Reasons:  A team might choose to use an opener if no one in its regular five man rotation has had the standard four days of rest between starts.  This can result from double headers or previously postponed games which now have to be made up.  On the flip side, a manager might choose to use as an opener a relief pitcher who hasn't pitched in a week, just to give him some work.

The Rays ended up using an opener fifty-four more times this season after May 19.  Seven other teams, including the Twins, experimented with the innovation as well.  The Brewers manager, Craig Counsell, took the concept to an extreme in the final week of the season when he used relief pitcher Dan Jennings as the opener, then replaced him with another pitcher after Jennings had faced only one batter, the Cardinals' Matt Carpenter, whom he retired.  One clever Twitter fan opined that Counsell brought in Freddy Peralta for Jennings to preserve the no hitter.  No wonder baseball games last so long!

Kevin Cash and Craig Counsell, ages 40 and 48, respectively, are both youthful managers.  Young managers are more likely to think outside the box, bucking methodologies which have been around for more than a century.  Last week the Twins hired Rocco Baldelli as their new field general.  At age 37, he supplants Cash as MLB's youngest.  It would not surprise me to see Baldelli use openers for around 20% of the Twins games next season, especially given the fact that the team has only two regular starters, Jose Berrios and Kyle Gibson, whose places in the rotation are etched in stone.