Stretching Out The Starters

By Jack Flynn
Posted Wednesday, May 21, 2008

The revolution will not be televised. On SportsNet New York, that is.

Look nearly 1,200 miles to the west at the town of Springfield, Missouri, where the Springfield Cardinals are taking a novel approach to the modern dilemma of getting more innings out of starting pitchers while remaining deferential to pitch count thresholds.

The Cardinals, who are an affiliate of the St. Louis Cardinals and compete in the AA Texas League, aren’t going to be limiting their starters to approximately 100 pitches anymore. At the beginning of May, the organization announced a plan to allow selected members of the starting rotation to increase their maximum pitch count limit to 120 – a number that no New York Mets starter has yet reached in 2008.

The new edict was issued by the Cardinals’ roving minor league pitching coordinator Dyar Miller, a former Met who spent two seasons with the club at the end of his pitching career. Miller, who spent seven seasons playing baseball and pitched in relief for four different clubs, had a simple explanation for the organization’s new direction.

“Some of these guys will throw 100 pitches in five innings, so we want to get them built up so they can pitch into the seventh inning and eighth inning sometimes,” Miller said in a phone interview last week.

That sounds exactly like the problem Mets manager Willie Randolph is having with his starters this season, especially with John Maine. Before yesterday’s dismal performance in Atlanta, Maine had reeled off seven straight strong performances. However, he only made it into the seventh inning twice, in part because of pitch count issues.

Maine has emerged into one of the better starters in the National League, but he may never make the next step to elite level status unless he can find a way to become more efficient. That said, had Maine been put on a plan that the Springfield Cardinals hurlers are being put on while he was in the minor leagues, perhaps he would have the strength, the stamina and the mental fortitude to give the Mets 120 to 130 pitch outings, instead of generally remaining between 100 and 110 pitches.

That’s why the Cardinals’ decision to increase pitch counts for organizational hurlers when they’re in AA ball is so important and so interesting. In a time where other organizations have become more conservative, not only with pitch counts but also with innings pitched limits for minor league starters, St. Louis is actually going in the other direction.

Dyar Miller is confident that it will pay dividends for the club down the road. If he is right, the Cardinals will have a competitive advantage that perhaps no other team in baseball will have – a cadre of starting pitchers specifically trained to go deeper into ballgames than their opponents.

Miller, to use the traditional parlance, is a baseball lifer. He signed with the Philadelphia Phillies out of college, but didn’t reach the major leagues until the age of 29. Once he finally got there, Miller gave Earl Weaver’s Baltimore Orioles two solid seasons out of the bullpen starting in 1975. A slow start in 1977 precipitated a trade to the California Angels, where Miller regained his effectiveness over 41 appearances with the Halos.

He struggled with the Angels and the Toronto Blue Jays over the next two seasons, but Miller rejuvenated his career with the Mets in 1980. He didn’t join the club until after the All-Star Break, but gave the Mets 42 innings of solid relief for a team that needed all the help it could get. Miller’s final season was interrupted by the player’s strike of 1981, but he still retains fond memories of New York.

Miller specifically mentioned his manager with the Mets, a guy by the name of Joe Torre, and teammates like Dave Kingman and Doug Flynn (no relation!). Another teammate that Miller remembered from his Mets days was Mike Marshall, who was in the last season of a remarkable career that included two All-Star appearances and a Cy Young Award in 1974.

Marshall was known for his durability as a reliever and his reliance on the screwball, neither of which was lost on Miller. “He was a hard worker, very strong, and he could do things that other people couldn’t,” Miller said.

Both men remained in baseball after their playing days were over. Marshall has gone on to develop a revolutionary new system that radically alters pitching motions to minimize stress on the elbow and shoulder, although he struggling to find believers on the professional level. Miller has coached at a number of levels in the minor leagues and has been in the Cardinals’ organization since 1995.

He was part of a plan to increase pitch count thresholds as the pitching coach for the AAA Memphis Redbirds seven years ago, and last month’s decision was an expansion of that plan to the AA level. Dan Haren and Adam Wainwright, two of the more durable young starters in the National League, both developed under Miller’s tutelage – the Cardinals are hoping that recent first-round picks Adam Ottavino and Clayton Mortensen will see similar results.

However, Miller was quick to stress that not all Cardinals starters will initially have the opportunity to go deeper into a game. The organization looks at an individual’s overall strength, body type, durability and injury history before making a decision about whether or not to stretch him out. There is also a built-in caveat; any starter who approaches the 120-pitch limit in three straight outings will be scaled back to 80 pitches his next time out.

“We’re just trying to be a little bit flexible and cater to the individual,” Miller said. “If they can do it, why hold them back?”

Willie Randolph keeps asking for more length from his starting pitchers. Dyar Miller, through his work with a rival club, has created an organizational blueprint for doing just that.

Will the Mets organization be willing to consider it?

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