The Red Sox are selecting the contract of veteran left-hander Rich Hill, according to Robert Murray of FanSided. Corresponding moves will be necessary to make room for Hill on both the 40-man and active rosters.
Hill, 44, is now poised to pitch in the 20th major league season of his career once activated. The veteran hurler reportedly turned down major league offers over the winter in order to take an unorthodox approach to continuing his career and sign with a club in need of pitching in the second half to contribute down the stretch. Boston gave him just that opportunity after losing recently-acquired veteran southpaw James Paxton to a calf strain that ended his regular season after just three starts with Boston. Thanks in part to that injury, Hill is now back in the majors with his hometown team for the fourth time in a lengthy career that’s seen him pitch for 13 of the league’s 30 clubs. The lefty first pitched for the Red Sox from 2010-12 before returning for one-year stints with the club in both 2015 (when he shared a clubhouse with current Red Sox chief baseball officer Craig Breslow) and 2022.
It’s not yet clear what the lefty’s role in Boston will be once added to the roster, though with a relatively full rotation that features Tanner Houck, Nick Pivetta, Kutter Crawford, Cooper Criswell, and Brayan Bello it seems most likely that Hill is ticketed for a multi-inning relief role. That’ll be a major change of pace for the lefty, who hasn’t pitched in relief on a regular basis since 2014 outside of a five-appearance stint with the Padres last year after he struggled badly as a member of the rotation in San Diego. Out of the rotation, Hill has largely been a run-of-the-mill back-end starter by the results in recent years, with a 4.38 ERA (96 ERA+) and 4.36 FIP to match in 468 innings of work since the start of the 2020 season.
That might not immediately make Hill seem like an appealing candidate for a relief role, particularly when considering that he averaged just 88.4 mph on his fastball last year. With that being said, it’s worth noting that Hill’s first exposure to a relief role in a decade last year actually went fairly well: he posted a 3.38 ERA in 10 2/3 innings down the stretch with the Padres, though a 19.1% strikeout rate against a 10.6% walk rate in that limited sample size left something to be desired. Hill’s lone appearance with the Triple-A WooSox in preparation for his return to the majors saw him start the game but pitch just two innings on 28 pitches where he allowed no hits and one walk against two strikeouts. If the veteran lefty can offer that sort of production out of the Boston bullpen on a semi-regular basis, he’d be a considerable upgrade over Brad Keller in a long relief role.
The Red Sox aren’t currently in the playoff picture as they currently sit five games back of the Twins for the third and final AL Wild Card spot. That being said, Hill will be eligible for the postseason in the event that Boston manages to sneak in with a strong final month of the regular season. That would’ve been true even if he didn’t have his contract selected before the start of September because the league routinely allows players on minor league deals to participate in the postseason as substitutes for injured players, but that exception won’t be necessary for Hill because he’s now poised to join the 40-man roster before September 1.
Rich Hill is like an old-time movie star who no longer gets the leads but works regularly in supporting/cameo appearances. For a few minutes of airtime…he can be pretty darned good.
Mike – I wouldn’t rule out the possibility that he could give some effective innings with the Red Sox, but damn this reeks of a panic move. Only 2 innings pitched at AAA? Seriously?
Desperation?
Have you seen what happens when the bullpen gate opens, and the clown car drives in to the mound? A random Bozo with a red nose, floppy shoes and a fright wig or beard is disgorged, and the stadium scoreboard immediately begins to resemble one on a pinball machine.
The corpse of Rich Hill would be as predictably effective on the mound as most of the ostensibly living denizens of the current Sox pen. How is it “desperation” to roll out the next person in line?
“Alex Cora Deli, now serving Customer 93, 93, please.”
With the way they have been playing it is time for a panic move. Everything about the team has looked horrific lately. Offense, defense, pitching. The revolving door pitching staff with random barely known faces coming out of the shadows. I will happily take Rich Hill at this point.
Excellent analogy.MLB version of a Donald Sutherland (RIP)
Don’t look beside you, Satchel Page… someone is gaining on you…
He wasn’t good last year so I’m not sure why people think he’s going to magically be the answer this year for the Sox.
How about they actually pony up and fix the starting pitching situation instead of dumpster diving for the 5th straight season?
This season is over… If he helps take some of the load off the younger arms, that’s all positive.
They do need to add some pitching in the off-season.
The young arms need to figure out how to pitch and be effective in September.
They had so many chances to add to the rotation, the greatest area of weakness for the past 5 seasons. Instead, after the off-season (before Giolitos injury) one could argue from a talent perspective (swapping Sale for Giolito) they were actually worse, but Giolito’s best asset was his health.
After Giolito and Whitlock went down, they still didn’t get any reinforcements to the SP.
At the trade deadline, when the team is in the middle of a playoff hunt, the only addition they made was James “IL” Paxton.
It’s embarrassing how obvious the problem is and how simple it is to fix.
Yeah, that’s basically it in a nutshell.
The counter argument is that pitching is very expensive and (due to high injury/attrition rate) has a limited lifetime. You don’t buy ace pitching today because you might need it tomorrow. You buy today because you need it today.
I don’t believe ownership had any real intention to contend in 2024, and thus they entered the season with a “good enough to get by” rotation rather than a “deep enough to contend” rotation. Was pretty broad consensus that they didn’t achieve the latter.
The hope is that with the emergence of the young talent they will be willing to take 2025 seriously.
They could conceivably have added a better arm at the trade deadline, but given where they were in the standings I don’t think it made sense at that time. They still wouldn’t have had enough to really make a push this year.
tff17: Well said. I think the Red Sox likely intended to compete as much as possible this year as long as the moves to do that didn’t impact their young core that is moving up.
Agree. The question now is will the offseason bring any relief to the fans and the team. They need a pitcher or 10 for starters. I hope the reinforcements who are waiting in wings arrive guns blazing next spring.
I would like to see them acquire an ace SP and an ace RP, at least a #2 if not a #1 in each case. They could also benefit from an elite bat (preferably a RHH) though they have sufficient numbers to cover that need internally.
Priester and Fitts are basically ready, but unexceptional. Best to use them as minor league depth. Can never have too much pitching.
no one is suggesting that he’s the answer but he has the experience to help the sox stay afloat
If he is not the answer to the Sox pitching problems, why was he signed? That’s the whole reason you being players on.
If you think “he has the experience to help the Sox stay afloat” then you think he’s the answer to their pitching woes. Those two things are directly related.
The only issue is that Rich Hill isn’t the answer. Just like Paxton wasn’t the answer. Time to stop signing washed up players and actually address the issue.
Ownership wants to give off the impression like they’re trying their best to fix the issue, which some people like yourself buy. However, others see that they are just dumpster diving trying to get all the profits they can while investing the bare minimum into the team.
The fanbase needs to stop crying cheap at every move; the Sox payroll is still 11th in baseball at $189M, in a luxury tax reset year.
If they were just trying to maximize profits, the team would not have just spent a couple million extra dollars on Hill for the last six weeks of the season.
Poisoned – The Red Sox literally print money for FSG. There is no reason why they should be spending that far away from the luxury tax.
The team signed Hill to a minor league deal, and I may be completely wrong, but that’s not a couple extra million.
The team already reset the tax, as they were under last season.
That’s a lot of money that they could have spent on starting pitching that would actually be helpful and not Rich Hill and James Paxton.
I’m not mad that they signed Rich Hill
I’m mad that their Starting Pitching depth is about as deep as a kiddie pool and there’s any number of 10,000 different things that myself or any other armchair GM not getting paid millions of dollars could have done to fix this problem 7 months ago.
What in the flying f***, Craig? Aren’t people who went to Yale supposed to be smarter than this? Or did you major in some nonsense like philosophy like Bloom did?
This problem was so obvious to anyone with a brain going into the off-season. They had multiple chances to add to the rotation. It’s embarrassing.
The team plays better than anyone expects and at the deadline they only add Rich Hill (for SP).
What a joke.
Wake me up when FSG cares about winning again.
Oh whoops, said hill instead of James “IL” Paxton but whatever.
“The team plays better than anyone expects ”
Yes, that’s the key.
They could have added better than Paxton/Hill, but the cost at the deadline would have been high and the guys who got moved weren’t going to help you in 2025. They also wouldn’t have singlehandedly saved the playoff hopes in 2024.
So they chose a cheap/futile path rather than an expensive/futile path. I don’t fault them for that one.
I’m more willing to fault them for not believing in this team in the off-season, but you yourself suggest that they have played “better than anyone expected”.
The only pitcher at the deadline that was expensive in terms of prospects was Kikuchi for some reason. There were many upgrades to be had for minimal cost. Even Martin Perez would have been a more meaningful addition than Paxton.
And if the team is playing better than expected, you should reward them by fixing whatever roster holes you can at the deadline.
Adding only Paxton as a SP was them essentially waving a white flag on the season at the deadline. What a waste of good seasons by Duran, Devers and others.
Can’t wait for the year that FSG decides they actually want to win another championship and they will actually spend to improve the team.
Do you believe Martin Perez was the ticket to the promised land? I don’t…
Their bullpen was already toast by the deadline. Very difficult to reverse that mid-season, and while Paxton didn’t help the problem, another starting pitcher wouldn’t have been THAT different.
Do I believe Perez magically fixed the rotation?
No.
Do I have more confidence in Perez actually being healthy and contributing as a SP as opposed to Paxton who the Sox have paid to live on the IL and not actually pitch? You bet.
Since being traded, Paxton has pitched 11 innings. Perez 26.2 of wow 2.65 era ball. Now hindsight is 20/20, I didn’t even know Perez was a trade candidate but he checks the same boxes as Paxton but he actually has a track record of starting 30+ games.
The bullpen was toast at the deadline, they made some additions and then Paxton going .2 IP and getting hurt caused MORE stress on the bullpen. The additions then get overworked because they didn’t address the root cause of the issue.
Until they get good, quality SP they will continue to have these bullpen issues which has plagued the team since 2018.
You cannot pull 600+ innings (more or less the ML average these days) from an 8 man pen without some guys throwing multiple inning stints. The numbers simply don’t add up.
That’s on the manager, not the starters. Not that I disagree that they need one more top starter. Of course neither Paxton nor Hill is the answer to any meaningful question.
How is this on the manager? Should Cora just leave the starters out there when they’re cooked?
Yep, Pivetta getting rocked for 8 runs in 2.2 IP. Better just leave him in there so the bullpen is saved. That makes a ton of sense.
This is completely on Breslow and the refusal to adequately address the SP issue. This was blatantly obvious during the off-season and prior to the deadline and yet they did literally nothing to fix it.
You know perfectly well that I didn’t say anything of the sort. If you look at the facts, instead of just randomly making stuff up, you will realize that the starters averaged 5.4 IP/GS in the second half of July, MORE than the major league average for that span. You can’t blame it on the starters.
Cora stopped using his relievers for more than one inning at a time, instead switching to shorter appearances with a lot of mid-inning switches. It was that two week period during which the bullpen burned out.
Everything since then is just damage control. The results have been ugly and worse than ugly, because there is no way to fix a bullpen when essentially everybody is overworked.
Even with Paxton’s disaster and three more bullpen starts, the Red Sox starters still had just 2 fewer innings in August than the Yankees. If the bullpen weren’t badly broken it would be survivable, but overusing the bullpen in the second half of July left them ineffective to cover the need in August.
Always look for the root cause if you want to address the problem. Otherwise you’ll end up throwing good money after bad, repeatedly patching the plaster every time it rains when the problem is that the roof leaks.
Another way of looking at it…
The Red Sox SP have given them 174.2 IP since the All-Star break, broken down Paxton and bullpen games notwithstanding. That’s not great (it is #23 in the majors), but it is just 0.2 innings behind the Yankees and just 8 IP below the league median of 182.2 IP.
Their bullpen has 140.2 IP, fifth most in the majors, but just 5 more innings than the Yankees and 15 more innings than the league median. Half of that extra workload is due to the bullpen games (which admittedly could have been avoided if they had picked up a real SP or even just left Criswell alone), half is due to the extra inning games. The bullpen workload is tough but not extreme.
Somehow the Rays, Rangers, Guardians, and Tigers all have covered more relief innings over that span (the Tigers are running a lot of bullpen games) without their bullpens collapsing. Doesn’t that make you wonder?
The difference is that the Rays have 116 appearances, the Rangers have 108, the Tigers have 114. By using a lot of short relief stints, Cora has run the Red Sox total up to 138 appearances in just 35 games since the ASB, an average of just under 4 relief appearances per game.
The Guardians bullpen has been carrying a similar load, far more successfully, but perhaps they have younger and more resilient arms? But most of the teams that find themselves needing to cover a lot of innings go to LONGER appearances rather than trying to cram in more of them.
That aspect is 100% on Cora. It isn’t like he doesn’t know how to manage a bullpen. He was using a lot of 2-inning stints earlier this year. But at the ASB he decided to start managing “aggressively” in his words, with a lot of short relief stints, and that simply doesn’t work in this day and age.
But sure, go ahead and put it all on the starting pitchers for coming up 8 innings short. I don’t deny that the rotation could have done better, or that Paxton was a pretty useless pickup, but trying to shift the blame is ridiculous. Cora simply needs to learn what other managers around the game already know: longer appearances spaced farther apart give you more overall innings.
Troy – Totally agree! Except for the few front office suckups here (many who have since disappeared BTW), we all knew it was a huge mistake to start the season with so little pitching depth.
And what’s ironic, the Sox haven’t had hardly any SP injuries since the start of the season. Only Whitlock has been injured, all four others have been healthy for most of the season and haven’t missed a start in months. Even the bullpen has been healthier than expected. Who would have thought Jansen would not only stay healthy all season, but have one of his best seasons?
What we are seeing now with the latest team collapse is the result of the front office not believing in the team and not even attempting to make the postseason this year.
As for Breslow, he’s a very nice guy who is a rookie and therefore lacks the knowledge to be a good HOBO right now. I do think he will improve over the next 3 years, but for now it’s no surprise he got swindled in the Sale trade and many of his other sad acquisitions were driven by the cheapness of the owners.
I also think Cora totally snowed Breslow into the contract extension, being on his best behavior and putting in the effort to look good and get the extension. I had predicted once he signs the extension, the “real” Cora will return …. and that’s exactly what has happened.
Go ahead Cora, keep right on playing Gasper. His getting his first MLB hit in front of his family should be your top priority, not actually winning games.
Fever– Can get put out to pasture by many in the Sox fan base for saying anything negative regarding Cora. Who cares if he’s -0- clue regarding roster moves and in game situational analysis. Team would have been better off letting another have a crack at his so called “genius” self
john – When Tek says goodbye and goes to manage another team, it’s gonna kill me …. absolutely kill me.
TPiP
“myself or any other armchair GM”
Would love to see those disasters of teams.
Fans have the luxury of forgetting their mistakes and only remembering their wins
One minor league start lasting two innings and under 30 pitches. I guess they had no other choice, but seems foolish. That bullpen is already the death of them and with Hill, it’s only going to get taxed and exposed further.
Slider – There are bets on whether Hill will last longer than Paxton did.
Rich Hill, with more wins in his 40s (25) than in his 20s (21)!
Sale could win a Cy Young…baseball is weird.
Got all of.his injuries out of the way in Boston.
Meanwhile Vaughn Grissom is abysmal.
slow – Really not a surprise there. Former 6-time Cy Young finalist and future HOF’er finally gets healthy and moves to a quality organization, all the makings were there.
The bigger surprise is this could be his first-ever Cy Young win.
It’s been fun to watch his resurgence. I’m a fan of both teams, so not trying to rub it in. Baseball gods have punished Atlanta enough this season, they don’t need me tempting their fate.
Several of the RS young SP pitchers have reached and/or exceeded their career totals in innings pitched. Anyone that saves their young arms a game or two is worth it (Ex. the Paxton signing). This year is toast after the sweep yesterday Save the kids for 2025..
Bee – Sorry I don’t buy into that. Houck is 28, Pivetta is 31, Crawford is 28, and Bello is 25.
It’s not like these men are 22-year-old kids. They are old enough to push toward that 200 IP goal that all SP’s should have.
They will never learn how to be successful and durable if they don’t increase their innings.
Look at Lugo, before last year he never pitched more than 101 innings and then last year he went to 146 and now this year he’s already up to 172 innings. THAT is how you develop starting pitchers.
Example: Crawford’s last seven games: 2 – 4 8.32 era. He actually looks worse if you’ve watched his last few starts. Laboring is an understatement.
The guy needs some time off or he’ll be a TJ candidate by the end of the year.
Recommendation: Shut him down for remainder of 2024.
“They will never learn how to be successful and durable if they don’t increase their innings.”
Of course. So this year they are increasing their innings, and scuffling in the process. The two that have been ridden the hardest, Houck and Crawford, are both a shadow of what they were earlier this year.
Houck had a 2.54 ERA and 2.68 FIP before the ASB. Outstanding numbers including 8.62 K/9, 2.00 BB/9, 0.38 HR/9. Since then he has a 5.18 ERA and 5.18 FIP, a 5.40 (!!) K/9 and 3.89 (!!!) BB/9, with 1.08 HR/9. He isn’t missing bats any more. Still giving them innings, as a great pitcher should, but they aren’t nearly the same quality as his earlier work.
Crawford had a 3.00 ERA and 3.77 FIP before the ASB, with 8.84 K/9 and 2.45 BB/9, with 1.11 HR/9. As you know he has always had a bit of an issue with the longball, but he had that under control. Since the ASB he has an 8.13 ERA and 7.91 FIP, his K/9 has fallen to 6.82 and his HR/9 has jumped to a crazy 3.67. Still throwing strikes, but again he isn’t missing bats and those strikes are going a LONG way. Crawford hasn’t made it through 6 innings even once since the ASB.
Their age doesn’t really matter (except that I might worry about their health if they were younger than 25). Neither Houck nor Crawford has ever carried this workload before, and it is an adjustment for them. Houck was making some adjustments after last season, which is why he has done so much better at sustaining his stuff through 6 innings now. But the second phase of that growth is learning to sustain it through 30 GS and 180 IP, and that is what both Crawford and Houck are working on this year.
Next year should come much easier, but in both cases this is their first season topping 25 GS. That’s something every successful pitcher has to push through eventually.
Note that Lugo made 26 starts last year and only exceeded that mark *this* week. Houck exceeded his previous mark on August 3, Crawford on August 13. Both are also pitching a lot more IP/GS than last year, which is why the strain was showing even before that.
tff – You really thought what the staff was doing at the start of the season was sustainable?
There’s two reasons why most people didn’t.
The weather is one factor, 32 games played in very cold weather from April 9-May 16. MLB’s cumulative OPS was .696 March – May, compared to .732 OPS for July-August. Heat and humidity vs cold temps is obviously a huge factor.
The other factor is the Bailey effect, at the start of the season opponents were caught offguard which is expected. It was an unusual new approach, fewer fastballs and a lot more sweepers/sliders/curveballs/cutters/changeups.
The stats are incredible:
Red Sox are DEAD LAST in MLB throwing just 17% four-seam fastballs (6 teams have more than double that percentage).
The Red Sox have thrown at least 1,500 more sweepers than any other MLB team!
In fact the 20% sweepers is the highest in the history of the Statcast era.
This is NOT a “starting pitchers tiring out” thing because far too many OTHER Sox pitchers are also getting hammered.
Since the All-Star Break they’ve given up an MLB-high 52 homeruns and MLB-high .873 OPS …. that’s even worse than the pathetic ChiSox!!
Of those 52 homeruns, 11 were on Sweepers …. 11 were on Cutters ….. 7 on changeups …. and 10 on four-seamers.
Since the All Star break opponents have been hitting .336 with a .680 SLG against Sox cutters, and they are also slugging .606 on changeups and .519 on sweepers.
When Kutter gave up 13 homeruns in 4 starts, 8 of those homeruns were on Cutters or Sweepers!!
So knowing all that, don’t you think the Sox have become too predictable with their over-reliance on pitches with spin?
And if fatigue is indeed a factor, how can you NOT point to the record number of sweepers they are throwing? Sweepers strain the arm more than any pitch, because they require BOTH high arm speed and high spin rate!
Sorry but lots of people are now pointing fingers at Bailey, and rightfully so.
Tell me again why the Giants let him walk for a lateral position with the Sox???
You realize that Houck has always thrown a lot of sliders? The major change to his pitch mix has been replacing FA and FC with FS.
Crawford is throwing 6% more sliders instead of curves. His fastball usage is similar. Similar changes for Pivetta, who still throws his fastball about half the time.
I’m sure what you say about sweepers putting a strain on them is true. That’s part of the fatigue. At the same time I don’t think Houck wants to go back to his 5.01 ERA from 2023. These guys are throwing crazy hard and maxing the spin on their pitches, and that takes a toll on you over time. In some cases, like Zach Kelly, I’m pretty sure they are overthrowing and losing command. Nothing beats a well-located fastball and a plus changeup
Bello has a 4.21 ERA since the start of July, just a matter of getting his mind right (and reintroducing his fastball to give hitters a different look). Nice changeup too, when he is going right.
“Anyone that saves their young arms a game or two is worth it ”
In that case, get us some Big Sexy at Fenway! Can’t be much worse, performance-wise, and he would certainly be a larger (ahem) draw.
Rich Hill gives all us old folks hope we can still play!
For the Red Sox, making the playoffs is an Up-Hill battle.
Old enough that he was teammates with Greg Maddux and Mike Remlinger. Good for this guy. Makes me feel young!
Good for him, I loved watching Jamie Moyer pitch when he was in his mid 40s. The way the game has changed into try to throw it through the backstop and swing hard in case you hit it, guys who can’t break a windshield with their fastball are a breath of fresh air. John Tudor gave the Mets sluggers fits doing that in the 80s.
DICK MOUNTAIN!
(Thank you Brock Holt for the nickname.)
Another season goes by where I am still not older than every single athlete who played a big 4 sport. Thanks, Rich, for making me not officially middle aged yet!
“… I am still not older than every single athlete who played a big 4 sport.”
But are you older than the married ones?
The inevitable return of the legendary DICK MOUNTAIN
Rich Hill… while the Redsox lie on BOOT HILL…
I am sure Red Sox fans still dream about the days when they had Curt Schilling, Josh Beckett, Jon Lester, and the late Tim Wakefield in that rotation, and even though Dice K may have not met expectations, he still won 15 games in his first year and started 32 games and threw 200+ innings.
I still can’t believe Lonborg went skiing.
Whyhayzee
Yes, neither should Michael Schumacher have gone skiing.
They traded for two relievers who seemed to be decent pickups but all they’ve done is pour gas on the fire. Which makes me wonder, did they tinker with these guys as soon as they got them? Or did they just leave them alone? I don’t know which it is but the results stink. And the team sinks. Paxton could have worked a little bit more than that, what rotten luck that Dom Smith couldn’t field a ground ball and he had to try too late to cover first base. Now Hill? How many innings can he provide? It’s a weird year, now all of a sudden with Casas back and hitting, the offense goes cold. They are apparently doomed to .500 at best even after showing signs of being a fun team to watch this year. But it’s all about the death of the pitching, it really has stunk for the last three months. And the defense has been shoddy as well. What the heck? How many times has a relief pitcher come in the middle of an inning and given up a three run homer to the first guy he faces? Huh? What the heck!
hayzee – I would hope there’d be no tinkering this late in the season. ST and the first half is when the tinkering should occur, not when you’ve got a month left to win a postseason spot.
This was not a situation like when they got Robles and Davis. Both of those guys sucked before they got them.
Garcia was actually very good since June 15th with a 1.65 ERA in 16 innings.
Sims was also good since June 5th with a 2.25 ERA in 16 innings.
So yeah, all signs point to the Red Sox manager and/or coaching staff as the cause for those two sucking since the trade.
As for the hitting, the signs were there all along. Way way too much free swinging which led to the massive number of strikeouts.
Rafaela swung at LITERALLY every pitch he saw in yesterday’s game …. but yet Cora and Fatso refuse to get him to change his approach.
We knew Ref and Wong and Hamilton would regress, but let’s face it ….. Devers and Duran carried the offense most of the season. Now that Devers is in a bit of a funk, they won’t win games with just Duran and Yoshida contributing.
As for TO ….. 23 homeruns and only 47 RBI to show for it? Seriously?
They pitched the acquisitions in almost every single game until their arms fell off… Both are complete toast at this point, despite being long time veterans with solid careers.
You just can’t do that with a 37 year old reliever!!!
tff – All I can say, if MLB does reduce the pitcher roster limit down to 12 or 11 then Cora is gonna have a really difficult time adapting to that change. He absolutely loves making pitching changes, if he’s burning out relievers now with a 13-pitcher limit then just imagine what he does with a 12-pitcher limit.
You have to think in terms of longer outings… As a rough estimate (depends on the pitcher’s age, how hard he throws, etc.) you can throw one inning every 3 days (60 IP per year) or two innings every 4 days (90 IP per year) or 3-4 innings every 5 days (100-120 IP per year) or 5 innings every 6 days (150 IP per year). And of course pitchers in their prime can do a bit better than that.
Very few pitchers these days throwing 180 IP/year, just an average of 24 per year over the last three years. Heck, there’s only 43 pitchers per year who qualify for the ERA title with 162 IP.
Once upon a time in the not-so-distant past the starting pitchers would go 6-7 innings and turn it over to the pen. Line up good arms in the 7th, 8th, and 9th and close out the game.
Then they ran out of guys who could make it that far effectively, and told their starters to throw hard for 5-6 innings. But those extra bullpen innings have to come from somewhere.
Now we have these “bullpen games” in which nobody throws more than 3-4 innings. That is NOT an improvement.
Either they figure out how to get back to where they were, with 6+ inning starts, or they need to start taking long relief seriously. Most short relievers can be very effective pitching two innings (or a partial inning followed by a full inning) every fourth day. Put half your pen on that schedule, half your pen in conventional one-inning relief, and you have enough innings to cover the average workload for a season.
Just can’t do it exclusively with one-inning relief. You would need ten relief arms, not eight, to make the numbers work.
Another long, cold, lonely winter in Boston……….
xpens – Until the Celts and Huskies begin defending their titles ;O)
That’s cool, this’ll help (until HE breaks…)
Pats at the Bengals Sunday Sept 8th. The lead up and the after glow (or Gloom) will take the heat off the RS.
The Pats are inconsequential. I should know, I live in the state where two pathetic teams ”play” and don’t even include the state in their name.
hayzee – Agreed, most of the Pats bandwagon fans jumped ship after Brady left.
Two innings at AAA all season and up he comes. Tell me the Sox haven’t turned into a true minor-league outfit.
The entire Sox lineup of starters has been pitching on fumes for about six weeks now. It still kind of blows my mind that GMs haven’t decided that giving starters a couple skips in the lineup 2/3 of the way through the season could be beneficial.
Rich Over-the Hill will not help the Bosox
Brad Lidge excavated Rich Hill from an archaeology site in Italy as part of Lidge’s doctoral research.
The season was doomed when they extended Big Ego Alex Cora .
They’re like a new team with Hill, catching up on the Yankees. Turning point.