It's be awhile since I posted my first Thoughts on Openers. Just to recap, I related a game from the 1960's where Giants Manager, Herman Franks, used is LOOGY, Bill Henry, to open the second game of a doubleheader against the Reds. He faced 2 batters before the "real" starter, Bobby Bolin, came in and promptly gave up a double and 2 WP's probably because he wasn't used to the routine. Trying to deke your opposing manager into altering his lineup by starting your LOOGY is bush league and basically isn't going to work. Are there some situations where a well planned "opener" strategy might produce better results than the traditional starting rotation plan?
First of all, there are not enough roster spots to use an Opener every game. That would tie up at least 2 and probably 3 of your relievers as Openers and leave just 4 or 5 for all the rest of the back-end innings. Yes, your "starters" might be more likely to get into the 7'th or 8'th innings but there are no guarantees and they would still have to get through the lineup the same number of times.
One obvious situation where you might want to go with an "opener" strategy is if you are facing a platoon heavy team. Let's say your scheduled SP is, say, Chris Stratton and the opposing manager has a lefty-heavy platoon he can put out there. He's not going to change that for LOOGY he knows is only going to face 1-3 batters, but what if you ran Ty Blach out there to open the game? Blach is a guy who can go at least once through a lineup and face both lefty and righty batters. This creates a dilemma for the opposing manager. If he keeps his lefty-heavy lineup, Blach has a matchup advantage for 3 or 4 innings. If he puts his RH lineup in to counter Blach, Stratton enters the game earlier. If he replaces his RH hitters with a lefty platoon, then he's used his entire bench by the 2'nd inning.
Here's another one. Let's say your SP is Stratton or DRod and the opposing team has 3 LH hitters in the top 4 lineup spots and 1 LH hitter in the last 5 spots. Why not bring in, say, Tony Watson as an "opener" to fact the first 4 batters? From that point, 9 of the next 14 batters are RH. You then bring in your RHP "starter" to face those 14 batters then make your next decision after that?
That's about it. I don't think you want to be fooling around with "openers" when your ace is the scheduled SP. You obviously can't do it every game or you burn out your bullpen. I do think there are selected situations where it can give you an advantage. Can you think of other situations where it might work?
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What I don't want to happen is the ridiculous situation that the Brewers ran out every game in the NLCS last season. If an opener is dominant, great. However, often a reliever comes in and just doesn't have it. If he's an opener, then you've just given your team a nice 3-4 run deficit to start at the game. And, as you pointed out, your starter is out of his natural rhythm to begin the game.
ReplyDeleteYou definitely need the right situations and the right players. It is also unsustainable to do it every game, even in the postseason.
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