What does a post-COVID rotation look like?
Why depth starters like Joey Lucchesi and Jordan Yamamoto will be more important than ever in 2021
🧓 by Blake Zeff
In normal times, you could look at your team’s top five starting pitchers — and based on that quintet alone, decide how optimistic to be about your season. When the Mets had guys like Harvey, deGrom, Syndergaard, Wheeler and Matz in the rotation, you knew there was a floor the team was likely to exceed that year. And if they had — oh, I don’t know — Rick Porcello and Michael Wacha as pillars of the rotation, that was evidence enough that you might end up watching games more for the Gary/Keith/Ron banter than for any playoff implications.
But, coming off the COVID 2020 season, where teams played 60 games and no pitcher surpassed 84 innings, the calculus of what comprises a sufficient starting rotation will likely need to be adjusted. Five starters probably won’t give you a complete picture (or season) any more. Given the low number of innings pitched in 2020, how realistic is it to expect 200-plus frames from anyone this season?
For younger guys who were slowly ramping up to be able to go deep into long seasons (say, David Peterson), what did a season of 49 innings last year (after two years of 128 and 129, respectively) due to that upward progress? Can they still be expected to break 100 innings this season? 150?
The short answer is no one knows for sure, because there’s simply no precedent for such a season in modern times. Even the strike-shortened 1981 season contained nearly double the number of games as 2020 (103-111, depending on the team).
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As one long-time MLB insider with significant scouting experience told me, the effect could vary from pitcher to pitcher. Yes, young arms could suffer, but the time off could also be fine for some veterans — and in some cases, actually have helped the player. Ultimately, he said, pitchers’ arms aren’t logical and this is uncharted territory. Teams will protect their young players and significant monetary investments, but other players may be extended. “Bottom line,” he said, “it needs to be managed.”
Regardless of all the uncertainty, it is clear that relying on five starters will not be enough to get you through a season (in truth, it never was, due to injuries, but the effect may be even more dramatic this season). As a practical matter, if your team has five starters, and 2 or 3 are no longer built up for a long season, you’re looking at effectively a seven or eight-man rotation — because that’s how many pitchers you’ll need to start games, in a best-case, injury-free scenario.
Let’s look specifically at the Mets. Jacob deGrom is a super-human and should be fine. But then there’s #2 starter Carlos Carrasco. Due to his well-documented medical history (leukemia) in 2019, “Cookie” threw just 60 innings that year, followed by 68 in the shortened 2020. He went 200 and 192 in the two years prior, so you know he has the ability to go deep into a season. But, will the last two years of significantly curtailed workloads serve to strengthen his arm (via rest) or leave it unequipped for a long season? No one knows.
Marcus Stroman threw no innings last year, after opting out due to COVID. The year before, he went 102 innings. But, like Carrasco, he hovered around 200 in each of the two years prior. Taijuan Walker has thrown 67 innings over the last three years combined. Is it realistic to expect him to go 150 this year? And then there’s Peterson, who had been on a nice steady incline, building up to a full-season workload, but then took a step back innings-wise, last season.
Add to that a post-Tommy John Noah Syndergaard scheduled to return mid-season, and here’s what it all adds up to: The Mets, like every MLB team in 2021, are going to need to rely on starting pitching depth — not merely for spot starts or emergency injuries, but as potential rotation mainstays later in the season.
The good news is that the club now possesses an assortment of quality depth starters that it didn’t in years past. In 2020, the team was forced to ask the likes of Walker Lockett, Ariel Jurado, Corey Oswalt and Robert Gsellman to start Major League baseball games. The results of that state of affairs were predictable and self-evident. This year, if you consider Syndergaard a part of the rotation, your 6-8 starters are Peterson, Joey Lucchesi and Jordan Yamamoto (with other options like Jerad Eickhoff also available).
As JB detailed in this space last week, the Mets’ depth starters are well above league average, according to several different metrics.
That’s a good thing. They will almost certainly need them.