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Relief is sweet, but don’t overlook rotation
- Updated: January 2, 2017
While the Chicago Cubs were putting an end to a 108-year World Series championship drought in 2016, the baseball public became engrossed with the way managers Terry Francona of the Indians and Joe Maddon of the Cubs turned the seven-game Series into a chess match with bullpens.
Relievers combined to work 58 1/3 innings, with Francona calling on the bullpen to work more innings (32 1/3) than the rotation (30 2/3), and speculation grew about whether the World Series would create a radical philosophical change in bullpen usage.
Not likely.
With a New Year having been rung in, Opening Day just 90 days away, and teams moving ahead in their focus on the 2017 regular season, don’t look for a major overhaul of how the game is played come April.
A solid rotation is the key to regular-season success, which has remained a staple despite the major changes the game has undergone since the emergence of analytics as a critical part of baseball.
And that was underscored in 2016. The Cubs ran away with the National League Central, then knocked off the Giants and Dodgers in the playoffs, thanks in no small part to their rotation. The Cubs’ primary five starting pitchers all worked the 162-inning minimum to qualify for an ERA title, and combined to start 156 of 162 regular-season games.
It’s one thing to extend a bullpen during a World Series — where a maximum of seven games are played over a nine-day stretch, assuring …
