With right-hander Dillon Gee back from the DL and slated to start tonight against the Padres in San Diego, the much debated six-man rotation goes into effect for the New York Mets.
It’s all about protecting the young arms of Jacob deGrom, Noah Syndergaard and Matt Harvey. They are the primary reason for the six-man rotation.
“We have to watch the workload of basically three young pitchers,” Collins told the New York Post.
“The only way we thought we could do it without shutting them down at some time was to add a sixth pitcher. It takes basically four starts away from them. When you add that seven innings a start, you’re looking at basically 30 innings that we short them.”
Much has been said about this hotly debated matter on both sides, but last night during the Mets broadcast, Ron Darling and Gary Cohen raised a few interesting concerns about it. I went ahead and transcribed it for you.
Gary Cohen – “So Noah Syndergaard pitched four innings, threw 84 pitches, gave up seven runs on ten hits, and struck out 10 batters. It was his first double digit strikeout game of his career and one game he would love to forget.”
Gary Cohen – “This is one of the downsides of the six-man rotation, because now instead of four games you now have five games to sit and stew about an awful start like this.”
Ron Darling – “The hard part about a six-man rotation… actually it’s a couple of things. One, now the pitchers will be throwing twice in between starts and they will have to really monitor that because it could end up that they’re throwing more pitches now than they would have had they done nothing and left things normal. Those pitches count too. So how much workload are you really saving?”
Gary Cohen – “Well it also strikes me, I just thought of this, that Syndergaard will be making his next start on Tuesday of next week because the Mets are off on Monday. So he’ll have six days of rest in between starts.”
Ron Darling – “Hmm… (long pause) I can tell you that this wouldn’t be optimal for a pitcher like me. That would never work for me.”
Gary Cohen – “I wonder about the emotional residue of a bad start like this, and now you have a young pitcher having to think about that for an entire week.”
Ron Darling – “Yeah, that’s tough. It’s going to make for a very difficult week. The longer you think about it – and well it can certainly carry over – if you think about it too much.”
Ron Darling – “At least when you’re pitching every fourth day you do what you gotta do, you do your running, then the next day you pitch on the side, and before you know it you’re back out on the mound again with a chance to redeem yourself.”
Anyway, that was the extent of their conversation on this but I thought they each raised some valid concerns.
