Good Riddance

The Tampa Bay Rays are the little team that could, a small-to-miniscule market club with the moxie to outplay a monster-revenue franchise like the Red Sox and move into the postseason.  Thank heavens the Astros disposed of them.

Why?  Because the Rays play a brand of baseball that’s poison and sure to kill the golden goose known as major league baseball.  I’m not talking about payroll.  If the Rays can find talent cheap, God bless them, and who needs Scott Boras?  No, the problem lies in the idea of openers instead of conventional starters.  Going one to three innings with your first pitcher and then using three or more afterwards is a recipe for disaster, if also the cure for insomnia.

The Rays can argue the strategy works, or at least that it did this season to the tune of a 96-66 record.  But at what cost in terms of watchability?  In their ALDS game-five 6-1 loss to Houston, the Rays used nine, count ’em, nine pitchers.  Tyler Glasnow “started” for the Rays and went 2.2 innings, after which fans and viewers were subjected to the relievers’ onslaught.  Of the eight pitchers who followed Glasnow, five threw under an inning, and six entered the game during an inning.  Somehow, the game only took 3:12 to play.

It felt twice as long.  Rays’ manager Kevin Cash made a nuisance of himself walking to the mound to change pitchers.  That the Rays in the fielder didn’t rise up in revolt over having to stand there like statues is beyond me.  I also question the overall effectiveness of the strategy.  Yes, it was good for 96 victories this year.  Now, what about next?

Human beings and the games they play depend on a rhythm; disrupt it, and everything changes for the worse.  All those Tampa pitchers accomplished what, exactly, other than to show how good Houston’s Gerrit Cole looked going eight innings while giving up just two hits?  Maybe Cole is the proof of disruption—the Rays couldn’t get into a rhythm hitting because they were forced to wait so long and so often for new pitchers to come into the game.

There’s talk of how the use of openers could lower pitchers’ salaries.  After all, Cole will be a free agent at season’s end, and he’ll be looking for one big contract; think David Price at $217 million and then some.  If that’s in fact what motivates more teams to adopt the idea, it’ll be a case of penny-wise, pound-foolish.  Me, I just don’t trust relievers.

Even though they total far fewer innings than starters, relievers tend to be inconsistent, good one season bad the next.  Mariano Rivera doesn’t count—he was a closer, not a Rays-style reliever.  I also think relievers who do tend to be good more often than not will eventually figure they should get paid more for their services.  Then, you’ll see Mr. Boras representing guys who come in for the third and fourth innings.  In the end, high-priced bullpens will replace high-priced rotations.

There’s something else other than money to consider.  Baseball has always been a game steeped in mythic personalities.  For pitchers, that would include Dizzy Dean, Stachel Paige, Bob Gibson and Sal Maglie among a whole bunch of others.  Can anyone out there name me one or two of the relievers who came in after Tyler Glasnow?  If you can’t, then don’t expect people to care for long about a game with interchangeable parts and players.