On the first part, Aaron Nola officially returns to the mound Sunday, per the ESPN story.
So, Phillies manager Rob Thomson is going to a 6-man rotation.
The really interesting part, per discussion here, about today versus the past and pitcher usage, and also related to r/Cardinals recent discussion about "stretching out" young starters in their first or second year up from AAA, is Thomson's concern about how much the team has been theoretically overworking its rotation, though he didn't use that term.
Philadelphia starters lead the majors with 693⅓ innings pitched. Sánchez is up to 150⅔ innings, and Wheeler is at 144⅔.
"Just getting some of these guys some extra rest 'cause we've been grinding on them pretty hard all year," Thomson said before the opener of a four-game set against the Nationals. "The one downside to it is you've got to take somebody out of your bullpen, so you're a little short there, but we'll just have to figure it out."
The overall? That 693 1/3 is in 121 games. 5.73 innings per game. A Gibson, Koufax or Drysdale would laugh. A Carlton would snort. Even later, a Maddux or Clemens would at least moderately chortle.
As for individuals? Sánchez's 150 innings in 24 starts is slightly higher, 6.25 innings. If he makes 8 more starts, which he probably will NOT do if the 6-man rotation stays in place very long, at that rate, he'd hit exactly 200 innings.
2 comments
We would get a guffaw from Randy Johnson.
I don’t think it’s the number of innings pitched that’s the problem. It’s more the number of pitchers per inning imo.
I hope more and more teams switch to a 6 man rotation. I know people are gonna say that they use to have 4 pitchers and they wouldn’t get pulled unless they were terrible but the truth is pitchers throw much harder nowadays than ever before and recovery is incredibly important if we want these guys to last for more than a handful of seasons.