SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. — Bold decisions to change Major League Baseball’s longstanding rules quickened the pace of games and revived the popularity of stealing bases over the last few years.
A similarly creative move may be needed to help starting pitching regain the relevance it enjoyed as recently as a decade ago.
Only four pitchers (Seattle’s Logan Gilbert, Kansas City’s Seth Lugo, San Francisco’s Logan Webb and Philadelphia’s Zack Wheeler) threw as many as 200 innings last season, down from 34 in 2014.
During that same 2014 season, all 30 major league teams got over 900 innings from their starting pitchers and five had over 1,000.