The Pawtucket shuttle

[The Gray Eagle]

We have quite a few pitchers in AAA who are already on the 40-man roster who could be ready to help the major league club this year in part-time roles: Britton, Rubby, Webster, Wilson, Workman, Wright and Ranaudo.
 
I am wondering if this could allow the team to only keep 11 pitchers on the 25-man roster at some point this year. Only keeping 11 pitchers is usually not a good idea, as it's too demanding on the same 6 relievers over the course of a season, and leads to overuse and fatigue. But we could go with 5 "regular" relievers and one rotating bullpen spot. Whenever the pitcher in the rotating spot is fatigued and/or the staff needs a fresh arm, he gets sent down and one of the others comes up.
 
The main issue with this is we already have many veteran relievers who could be decent or better who can't be sent down. Going to 5 relievers plus a rotating spot means losing one or two who could be decent, so we almost certainly won't be starting the season this way. I am pretty sure all of the potential shuttle-riders will be starting the year in the minors. But once injuries and ineffectiveness come into play, and we get a better idea of how these guys are doing in AAA, this might be a direction we go in.
 
Hypothetical: Sizemore starts the year on the DL, and we have the usual 12 pitchers on the roster. Sizemore gets activated May 1, and instead of replacing a position player, he replaces a pitcher (probably someone will be hurt by then, or maybe someone has been lousy and gets cut.) So we're down to 11 pitchers. Soon, the bullpen gets taxed. We could then put a reliever on the DL or cut another one who has been bad, and bring up the first of the shuttle riders, whichever one looks like the best bet so far in AAA.
 
This roster flexibility could be quite valuable for both the offense and the pitching staff. If we played it this way for at least a while, we could have an extra position player for platooning, depth and resting banged-up starters, while also always having a fresh young arm in the bullpen ready to eat innings. It's also a way to get some experience for the young pitchers and see how they look in the majors.
 
I also think we have the depth in the bullpen to give some of the established vets a 15-day DL stint when they have been worked hard and are tiring. Many vets wouldn't want that, and that's always an issue, but most pitchers also pitch through soreness for most of the season and would benefit from the break.
 
Of course, some of these young guys wouldn't pitch well in the majors. Maybe you'd get a bit better performance from just keeping a more established vet. But the role as the #11 pitcher should generally keep them from being used in many high-leverage spots. Basically they would be the rotating mop-up guys. And the roster flexibility might be worth more than the slight difference between the rotating AAA guys and a mediocre veteran pitcher.
 
Maybe Workman and Ranaudo wouldn't be great fits for the rotating mopup role, as we will be using them as starters in AAA for most of the season. (Rubby and Webster will probably be starters in Pawtucket too, but IMO they will be relievers in the majors anyway, so I think they are good fits for this role.) If you leave Workman and Ranaudo out of the mop-up guy rotation, we still have plenty of other arms who could be used this way.
 
Even if we never go down to 11 pitchers, we will be seeing some of these young arms coming up and down this year. Could be fun, if one or two of them break through. I'm sure they will take their lumps too.
 
We will surely be using the Pawtucket shuttle for position players as well. Lavarnway, Butler and Vazquez are all on the 40-man and we have two old catchers. Brentz and Hassan are corner OFs on the 40-man who can come up if needed. Holt is an extra IF body. But the position player shuttle will probably be more traditional, and be based more on injuries than on trying to save a roster spot. With our pitchers, it could be different this time.
 

 

[Plympton91]

I was thinking generally of the old school 11 man pitching staff as a solution to the Carp / jBJ / Sizemore problem. The other good reason to consider it is that they have 5 excellent starters, and that means the 11 and 12 guys in the pen might get stale at times. And they have guys like Taz, Breslow,and Capuano who can go more than 3 outs. But, as you say, complicating this decision is the full 12 man staff of veterans without options anyway. Breslow, Taz, Uehara, Mujica, Miller, Badenhop, Capuano. It will be interesting to see what they do. I'd be more inclined to let the last 2 on that list go before parting with Carp or using Sizemore without the JBJ safety net.

 

[JMDurron]

5 starters who could theoretically be excellent in any given start is different from having "5 excellent starters".  Particularly in the cases of Peavy (stuff), Doubront (control), and Buchholz (health).  I know some posters have never liked the 12-man bullpen, but if the team has decided that it made sense to have basically from the start of the Francona Era through last year, there's no reason that it should be changed for this particular pitching staff.  Lester-Lackey isn't exactly Pedro-Schilling, either.  I'm not a pessimist about this year's rotation, mind you, but implying that 2014 is the year that we only need 11 relievers (again, assuming we ever needed 12, which seems to be the ongoing operational assumption) due to the quality of the projected rotation strikes me as borderline insanity.  
 
Dealing with the positional depth seems like the least bad option to me, but it's also possible that the injury bug will bite one of the clogged players and resolve the issue on the positional side.  

 

[mabrowndog]

Breslow, who won't face his first live hitters of the spring until Friday, could well start the season on the DL.
 
To me the biggest negatives of the shuttle approach are (a) once you option a pitcher down, you can't call him back up for at least 10 days unless there's an injury to another player, and (b) pitchers are creatures of habit, and this is especially true for developing pitchers (the ones most likely to still have options remaining). Many need routines in order to forge consistency. That goes for role, usage, and competition faced. Yo-yo'ing prospects between the majors and minors during an injury or fatigue spell on the big league staff is one thing, and it's unavoidable. Doing it intentionally as part of an asset-retention strategy is another animal altogether.
 
I'm sure some naysayers will disagree with the importance of habits and routines in player development circles. Others will toe the "Hey, they're professionals and grown men, they should just suck it up and do whatever job they're asked, whether it's in Boston or Pawtucket" line. To the latter, I'd say, yeah, ok, that's all well and good. But if you're trying to maximize a player's potential, and have identified specific strengths and weaknesses in that player, and used that information to prescribe a specific role and pattern in which the player has the best chances for growth and success -- and you've invested hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars in that player -- then you may be taking a big long-term risk for a chance at a short-term gain.