Rockies will keep four-man rotation, 75-pitch limits for 2013
Colorado’s switch to a four-man rotation with starters on 75-pitch limits
hasn’t exactly worked wonders, but the Rockies are sticking with that setup
for the remainder of this season and plan to continue using it next year as
well.
Troy Renck of the Denver Post reports that they’ll make a slight change,
essentially pairing each starter with a “piggyback” reliever who’ll be
expected to throw around 50 pitches. And in theory 75 pitches from the
starter and 50 pitches from the reliever would get the Rockies deep enough
into games to then rely on more traditional bullpen usage.
Coors Field and pitching at altitude has made it extremely tough for the
Rockies to get consistently good or even decent starting pitching for
basically their entire existence, so experimenting makes some sense and
pairing pitchers is an interesting concept. Of course, it’s worth noting
that the switch to a four-man rotation hasn’t really done much good so far.
Before the switch Rockies starters had a 6.28 ERA and since the switch
Rockies starters have a 5.61 ERA. So they’ve been better but still really,
really bad and the extra stress placed on relievers has caused the bullpen
ERA to rise from 4.00 before the switch to 4.52 since. Basically all the
improvement with the rotation has been canceled out by the bullpen getting
worse (and throwing more innings).
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