Rob Manfred has downplayed the possibility of the league implementing minimum inning requirements for starting pitchers, but the Major League Baseball commissioner has another idea.
Manfred suggested that the league could incentivize teams to have their starters work deeper into games by altering transaction rules.
\"Just too blunt an instrument to fix this problem,\" Manfred said during a recent podcast appearance with Chris O\'Gorman\'s Questions for Cancer Research website. \"I do see both problems as pretty serious. I think the injury issue, our physicians have studied this carefully [and] they continue to believe that the focus on velocity and spin rate is a specific cause of the increase of injuries.\"
Manfred conceded, the starting pitcher has always been the face of the game, particularly citing marketing and even who broadcasts focus on. That\'s when he introduced his idea about transactions.
\"One of the things that happens today, guy pitches three days in a row, he gets outrighted, they bring somebody else in to give him some rest, as opposed to him staying on the roster the whole time,\" Manfred said. \"I think we need to create incentives through things like roster rules, transaction rules for clubs to develop pitchers who go deeper in the game. But I don\'t think it can be prescriptive: \'You have to go six innings.\' I think it has to be a series of rules that create incentive for the clubs to develop pitchers of a certain type.\"
Via The Athletic