Can You Have Too Much Starting Pitching?

Shane Bieber pitched what is expected to be his final rehab start on Friday night in Buffalo. He threw 90 pitches (64 strikes) over seven innings, getting four strikeouts and giving up six hits, while earning a shutout win. Provided he recovers after the start as expected, his next stop should be joining the Blue Jays. 

Toronto is in first place in the American League and holds the tiebreaker against the majority of its closest rivals (NYY, BOS, DET, and SEA). They’ve gotten to this point behind a remarkably stable rotation of Kevin Gausman, José Berríos, Chris Bassitt, Max Scherzer, and Eric Lauer. In fact, those five have been so stable that the last win earned by a Jays starter that wasn’t one of those five was way back on April 18 when Bowden Francis got the win over Seattle. A game that happened so long ago that Anthony Santander and Alan Roden both had RBIs in the win.

The Jays didn’t acquire the former Cy Young winner to not have him start, so the question becomes how to integrate him into a winning team without upsetting the balance. One option would be to pivot to a six-man rotation. Bieber could slot in to pitch one of the upcoming games in Pittsburgh, and everyone else just gets bumped a day. This would provide an extra day of rest for one of the oldest pitching staffs in the league. Lauer, considered the baby of the rotation, is over 30 years old (as someone older than Scherzer, it kills me to think of Lauer as ‘old’, but we can at least agree that he’s older than the league average). Interestingly, Bieber is just three days older than Lauer and will help bring an injection of youth into the rotation. Before the season, when talk of a six-man rotation was floated, both Gausman and Bassitt spoke out against the idea, preferring the rhythm of a traditional five-man cycle. Both vets have also talked about ‘doing what’s best for the team’ (a much easier ask when the team is winning), with Bassitt most recently volunteering to pitch out of the ‘pen heading into the All-Star break if a situation warranted it. That scenario didn’t come to be necessary, and I would have to imagine Bassitt’s opinion on being a bullpen option becomes different the more permanent the move is talked about.

Suppose one of the starters is going to the ‘pen based on seniority; that’s undoubtedly Lauer. Of course, he’s fresh off being named Jays Centre Pitcher of the Month, so maybe he isn’t the most deserving based on results. If the Jays are going to go with a five-man rotation, the other option is to have one of the current starters turn into a piggy-back guy and essentially make a scheduled long relief appearance every fifth day. If this is the route the Jays take, the optimal way to decide it is by looking at the pitchers' splits as they face the same lineup multiple times. I looked at the opponents' batting average and FIP for each of Toronto’s current starters to see if there is an obvious candidate. I also included the MLB average and Shane Bieber’s career marks as reference.

The first thing that jumps out to me is the averages against Lauer. He’s giving up the most hits both the first time through the order and the third. Lauer’s BABIP (.367) also takes a big jump his third time through the order, so perhaps his struggles there have a hint of bad luck about them. Berríos’ numbers aren’t as glaring, but he’s also been worse than the league average on both his second and third passes through the order. I don’t want to drum up bad memories for anyone, but can we collectively envision a scenario where Berríos is limited to twice through the order before being lifted for a lefty? Maybe in a playoff elimination game? At least our chances of facing Minnesota are smaller this year. I’ll take a second to go on record here and say I supported the Berríos-Kikuchi move that year and think it was a case of the right methodology, but with the wrong results - but back to present day, before I really go on a tangent - a Berríos-Lauer pairing where they get four innings each every 5th day has some potential for success and would give the rest of the bullpen a built-in off day which will help keep them fresh for the other four starters.

We’re not getting out of here without talking about Scherzer’s massive FIP jump his third time through the order. Over his last six starts, Scherzer has looked the best we’ve seen from him in a Jays uniform, and he has delivered on exactly what we had hoped to see when he was signed. He has also surrendered eight home runs across those games, with six of those homers coming on his third time facing a batter, and they are the only earned runs he's surrendered. He’s got the resume, pedigree, and ‘future hall-of-famer’ title to be given more runway to work through those issues, but if the trend continues, I wouldn’t be surprised to see Scherzer get the Berríos Treatment come playoff time. On a recent episode of TSN’s Overdrive, guest and retired major league player, Eric Hosmer, presented a more extreme option: Mad Max, Blue Jays closer. Hosmer mentioned a concern about the workload on Scherzer’s arm and that a move to the ‘pen (especially for the postseason) could be a way to achieve maximum effort from Scherzer and take advantage of his ultra-competitive persona.

Using Bieber’s career numbers isn’t exactly fair statistically, but he also doesn’t have any 2025 numbers to work with yet. At the risk of muddying the table, I left the career numbers of the other pitchers out of it, but you can take my word for it: Bieber is (historically) the best of the bunch. Once his rehab is behind him and he gets some major league innings under his belt this season, we could be in for something special.

No matter what you believe, Bieber is coming, and that means changes.