Ohtani pitching on Sundays

[Hubs]

Didn't see this posted, but it was on MLB.com last night.

https://www.mlb.com/news/ohtani-to-pitch-every-seven-days/c-271009862

Sorry if I'm Craiging it.

We have 11 Mondays off, so this makes some sense.

 

[Angel Oracle]

That limits his starts to around 26 or 27 in 2018 (160-170 innings max), a very smart idea since he missed most of 2017.

That still gives him close to 80 DH starts in 2018 (3 per week). 

[krAbs]

I was actually going to post a thread speculating about the Angels doing this. I'll just post the meat of it here:

My guess is that essentially we will have a 5 man rotation (1: Rich - 2: Skaggs - 3: Shoe Brid - 4: Heaney - 5: JC), except that Ohtani (X) acts as a 6th man pitching every Sunday. It seems likely that they are doing this 1. For health reasons (he is probably the most active player in baseball, hitting and pitching at the same time), and 2. To maximize how many times his bat gets in the lineup (so far, that's looked like a great choice- hopefully it will stay one as the league adjusts to him and he adjusts back). So far our rotation has looked like:

-1: Rich
-2: Skaggs
-3: Shoe
-X: Ohtani
-5: JC
-1: Rich (4 days rest)
-2: Skaggs (4 days rest)
-Day off
-3: Brid (Today)
-----

Projecting forward, I would imagine our rotation will look something like this:
-5: JC (4 days rest)
-X: Ohtani (6 days rest)
-1: Rich (5 days rest)
-2: Skaggs (5 days rest)
-3: Brid (4 days rest)
-4: Heaney (or maybe Nitro if Heaney isn't ready yet - or have nitro the next day and JC this day.)
-5: JC (5 days rest)
-1: Rich (4 days rest)
-X: Ohtani (6 days rest)
-Day off
-2:
-3:
-4:
-5:
-1:
-X: 

The advantage here is that everyone is getting a lot of rest, and also it allows you to very easily move pitchers around if someone gets hurt (see: Heaney may have started game 5, but because we had a Sunday in there, we were able to slot JC into his position seamlessly and still have Richards go the next day on adequate rest). One way of looking at this is that we are babying Ohtani and now having the pitcher with the most talent out there pitch nearly enough - and wasting a roster spot on a pitcher who can only go out there once a week. To me, its better to look at him as our full time DH (making Pujols our 1B, and Valbuena an infield utility player/left handed power off the bench player), who happens to be able to give our rotation a day of rest a week- and set the team up for a win when he does so. The obvious potential risk here is that inconsistent rest will be a detriment to our starters instead of a benefit. Unfortunately our sample size this year will be too small to draw any conclusions out of this, but I think its also very possible that the opposite is true, and this helps keep our entire rotation healthy and on their A game.

Its also possible that I'm totally off here- but, this is what makes the most sense to me, as far as predicting out goes.

[Hubs]

Since we have 11 Mondays off, 9 Thursdays, 3 Wednesdays, and one Tuesday (All Star Game), there will be a varying rotation for sure.

And we don't have 7 starter rotation, so not everyone will get the same day of the week.

I'd think that Richards and Skaggs will be kept on 4 or 5 days rest. Heaney, Ramirez, and Shoemaker will be on 5 to 6 days rest, and Bridwell and Tropeano will all fill in where they can.

[Make Angels Great Again]

Soooo....what happens in the post season?

Bet they're still trying to figure that one out.

[krAbs]

2 minutes ago, Make Angels Great Again said:

Soooo....what happens in the post season?

Bet they're still trying to figure that one out.

I've been wondering about this. How does our rotation look when we are playing the Dodgers in the post season? Presumably we are going to want Ohtani playing on the road if possible, and are presumably going to want him to pitch as much as we can. I have a feeling they cut his rest time a bit - both between starts, and possibly hitting the day after/before games he pitches.

[eaterfan]

Interesting.... 

Sundays will largely be day games. The ball carries a lot better during the day. A guy with a hard but straight fastball could be knocked around. Plus, the energy used to pitch is a lot more taxing.

I wonder how it effects attendence? I'd imagine Sunday is probably the second biggest average draw to start with. They could probably make more money starting him on Tuesdays, but it's great that more fans get to see him this way. 

[Hubs]

Ohtani will be hitting when he pitches Sunday 7/15 against the Dodgers if he really pitches only on Sundays.

 

[Angel Dog and Beer]

Damn. I'm going to the Sat 4/21 game vs. the Giants. Guess I won't see him play unless he pinch hits. 

[Mark68]

50 minutes ago, Hubs said:

Didn't see this posted, but it was on MLB.com last night.

https://www.mlb.com/news/ohtani-to-pitch-every-seven-days/c-271009862

Sorry if I'm Craiging it.

We have 11 Monday's off, so this makes some sense.

 

Calling English Cop...

[Warfarin]

Great move.  Obviously with a unique situation like Ohtani's, where he is both pitching and hitting, we need to have some sort of schedule for him to provide a level of predictability.

So we will see him start qSu, then likely DH Tu-Fri.  This will give him amble at-bats (up to 4 days a week) to hone his hitting craft, while also helping maintaining a reasonable level of innings, too.

[krAbs]

1 minute ago, Warfarin said:

Great move.  Obviously with a unique situation like Ohtani's, where he is both pitching and hitting, we need to have some sort of schedule for him to provide a level of predictability.

So we will see him start qSu, then likely DH Tu-Fri.  This will give him amble at-bats (up to 4 days a week) to hone his hitting craft, while also helping maintaining a reasonable level of innings, too.

This was my speculation as well, but this article seems to be thinking that he will have more days off and fewer games DHing. I'm hoping he does end up DHing 4 days a week though. That would give him about 23 starts (162/7 - he will get more or less depending on how days off fall), and about 93 games DHing. That would be quite an active season, but ironically probably not quite enough to qualify for pitching or hitting titles.

[Angel Oracle]

14 minutes ago, krAbs said:

This was my speculation as well, but this article seems to be thinking that he will have more days off and fewer games DHing. I'm hoping he does end up DHing 4 days a week though. That would give him about 23 starts (162/7 - he will get more or less depending on how days off fall), and about 93 games DHing. That would be quite an active season, but ironically probably not quite enough to qualify for pitching or hitting titles.

Actually about 27 starts (27 weeks to this season) 

[Hubs]

10 minutes ago, krAbs said:

This was my speculation as well, but this article seems to be thinking that he will have more days off and fewer games DHing. I'm hoping he does end up DHing 4 days a week though. That would give him about 23 starts (162/7 - he will get more or less depending on how days off fall), and about 93 games DHing. That would be quite an active season, but ironically probably not quite enough to qualify for pitching or hitting titles.

It's actually 27 starts because of days off. You calculated it as if they play 162 games in just over 23 weeks, when it's actually 162+24 DAYS OFF (186/7) so 27 (26.5) weeks.

He'll get 85 starts at DH if he DH's every Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. I'd expect that to be around 80 as they'll be days where he won't hit because it's a tough lefty, or what not.

It also means Pujols is going to play 1B on the days he is the DH, which is occasionally 4 days straight. That would happen 12 times, so it's possible that either Ohtani is not the DH for 4 days or that Pujols gets a day off.

Nothing wrong with sitting Pujols 12 times IMO but it's more likely they sit Ohtani or Pujols, not both.

 

 

[Hubs]

And also three more during the series in NL parks:

Pujols would then start at 1B FOUR Days in a row, at Colorado and then vs. Minnesota in May.

Pujols would start at 1B SIX Days in a Row at SEA and at the LAD in July.

Pujols would start at 1B FIVE Days in a Row at SD and at Texas in August.

 

So it's possible that Pujols DH's instead of Ohtani during the AL portions of these stretches, and in other times.

 

Still, it's likely both get at least 70 days as the DH. Which is around 300-350 PA for Ohtani.

 

 

 

[Warfarin]

35 minutes ago, krAbs said:

This was my speculation as well, but this article seems to be thinking that he will have more days off and fewer games DHing. I'm hoping he does end up DHing 4 days a week though. That would give him about 23 starts (162/7 - he will get more or less depending on how days off fall), and about 93 games DHing. That would be quite an active season, but ironically probably not quite enough to qualify for pitching or hitting titles.

Right, so I did say up to 4 days a week, but I agree that it’s likely he’ll probably rarely have 4 straight starts at DH.  Maybe we see that during the stretch run against key contenders, but not during the first part of the season.

[m0nkey]

49 minutes ago, Mark68 said:

Calling English Cop...

That’s a @yk9001 special

[Inside Pitch]

1 hour ago, eaterfan said:

Interesting.... 

Sundays will largely be day games. The ball carries a lot better during the day. A guy with a hard but straight fastball could be knocked around. Plus, the energy used to pitch is a lot more taxing.

I wonder how it effects attendence? I'd imagine Sunday is probably the second biggest average draw to start with. They could probably make more money starting him on Tuesdays, but it's great that more fans get to see him this way. 

The flipside -- shadows may help hide the split a bit better.

[ettin]

1 hour ago, Make Angels Great Again said:

Soooo....what happens in the post season?

Bet they're still trying to figure that one out.

This is part of what I was very concerned about in the Primer Series write up on the rotation.

If we go after anything at the deadline this year it will almost certainly be starting pitching to give us more firepower.

[krAbs]

33 minutes ago, Hubs said:

It's actually 27 starts because of days off. You calculated it as if they play 162 games in just over 23 weeks, when it's actually 162+24 DAYS OFF (186/7) so 27 (26.5) weeks.

He'll get 85 starts at DH if he DH's every Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. I'd expect that to be around 80 as they'll be days where he won't hit because it's a tough lefty, or what not.

It also means Pujols is going to play 1B on the days he is the DH, which is occasionally 4 days straight. That would happen 12 times, so it's possible that either Ohtani is not the DH for 4 days or that Pujols gets a day off.

Nothing wrong with sitting Pujols 12 times IMO but it's more likely they sit Ohtani or Pujols, not both.

 

 

Okay, yeah. I had a feeling that it would be something like that. Presumably at some point we will have no games on Sunday - wonder what we will do with Ohtani on those days. Presumably play him on Saturday or Monday.

[Warfarin]

3 minutes ago, ettin said:

This is part of what I was very concerned about in the Primer Series write up on the rotation.

If we go after anything at the deadline this year it will almost certainly be starting pitching to give us more firepower.

Should we be fortunate enough to reach the postseason, then that’s when we ask players to do a bit more than we did during the regular season.

If he continues to hit like he has, then I absolutely think we would see Ohtani DH the day before or after a game he starts in the postseason.

If we are playing in the ALDS, then we just need Ohtani to start once.  We can have Richards pitch game 1 and 5 (if necessary), with Ohtani pitching game 2.  Alternatively, if we used Richards in the wild card game, we could have Ohtani pitch games 1 and 5.  There are usually 5 days off in between those games, so he would pitch on 5 days rest instead of 6.  I could see us going for that, if the situation presented itself.

[Gil]

It'll be interesting to see if Ohtani is able to take advantage of the rock pile during day games like Weaver did throughout his career. 

https://www.fangraphs.com/tht/do-pitchers-get-a-boost-from-angel-stadiums-rockpile/

Both are tall lanky right handers but I'm not sure about their comparative release points (since Weaver was known for throwing across his body). Anybody know where to find the pitch f/x  or stat cast data on release points?

[Hubs]

2 minutes ago, krAbs said:

Okay, yeah. I had a feeling that it would be something like that. Presumably at some point we will have no games on Sunday - wonder what we will do with Ohtani on those days. Presumably play him on Saturday or Monday.

We play every Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Never have those days off. The most common day off is Monday, as stated above, but it is unique that we have two non All-Star Wednesday's off this season. I don't know if I've ever seen a non-All Star Wednesday off.

Prior to the 15 team in each league, they had no need for an odd number of teams off in each league, as they often do when there is no interleague play.

We used to only have Mondays and Thursdays off.

 

[Hubs]

DAY	DATE	Opponent	Starter	Days OFF
THURS	3/29/18	OAK	Richards	NA
FRI	3/30/18	OAK	Skaggs	NA
SAT	3/31/18	OAK	Shoemaker	NA
SUN	4/1/18	OAK	Ohtani	NA
MON	4/2/18	CLE	Ramirez	NA
TUE	4/3/18	CLE	Richards	4
WED	4/4/18	CLE	Skaggs	4
THURS	4/5/18	OFF	OFF
FRI	4/6/18	OAK	Bridwell	NA
SAT	4/7/18	OAK	Ramirez	4
SUN	4/8/18	OAK	Ohtani	6
MON	4/9/18	TEX	Richards	5
TUE	4/10/18	TEX	Skaggs	5
WED	4/11/18	TEX	Heaney	NA
THURS	4/12/18	KC	Bridwell	5
FRI	4/13/18	KC	Ramirez	5
SAT	4/14/18	KC	Richards	4
SUN	4/15/18	KC	Ohtani	6
MON	4/16/18	OFF	OFF
TUE	4/17/18	BOS	Skaggs	6
WED	4/18/18	BOS	Heaney	6
THURS	4/19/18	BOS	Shoemaker	6
FRI	4/20/18	SF	Ramirez	6
SAT	4/21/18	SF	Richards	6
SUN	4/22/18	SF	Ohtani	6
MON	4/23/18	HOU	Skaggs	5
TUE	4/24/18	HOU	Heaney	5
WED	4/25/18	HOU	Shoemaker	5
THURS	4/26/18	OFF	OFF
FRI	4/27/18	NYY	Ramirez	6
SAT	4/28/18	NYY	Richards	6
SUN	4/29/18	NYY	Ohtani	6
MON	4/30/18	OFF	OFF
TUE	5/1/18	BAL	Skaggs	7
WED	5/2/18	BAL	Heaney	7
THURS	5/3/18	BAL	Shoemaker	7
FRI	5/4/18	SEA	Ramirez	6
SAT	5/5/18	SEA	Richards	6
SUN	5/6/18	SEA	Ohtani	6
MON	5/7/18	OFF	OFF
TUE	5/8/18	COL	Skaggs	6
WED	5/9/18	COL	Heaney	6
THURS	5/10/18	MIN	Shoemaker	6
FRI	5/11/18	MIN	Ramirez	6
SAT	5/12/18	MIN	Richards	6
SUN	5/13/18	MIN	Ohtani	6
MON	5/14/18	HOU	Skaggs	5
TUE	5/15/18	HOU	Heaney	5

[Hubs]

DAY	DATE	Opponent	Starter	Days OFF
WED	5/16/18	HOU	Shoemaker	5
THURS	5/17/18	TB	Ramirez	5
FRI	5/18/18	TB	Richards	5
SAT	5/19/18	TB	Bridwell/Tropeano	NA
SUN	5/20/18	TB	Ohtani	6
MON	5/21/18	OFF	OFF
TUE	5/22/18	TOR	Skaggs	7
WED	5/23/18	TOR	Heaney	7
THURS	5/24/18	TOR	Shoemaker	7
FRI	5/25/18	NY	Ramirez	6
SAT	5/26/18	NY	Richards	6
SUN	5/27/18	NY	Ohtani	6
MON	5/28/18	DET	Skaggs	5
TUE	5/29/18	DET	Heaney	5
WED	5/30/18	DET	Shoemaker	5
THURS	5/31/18	DET	Ramirez	5
FRI	6/1/18	TEX	Richards	5
SAT	6/2/18	TEX	Bridwell/Tropeano	NA
SUN	6/3/18	TEX	Ohtani	6
MON	6/4/18	KC	Skaggs	6
TUE	6/5/18	KC	Heaney	6
WED	6/6/18	KC	Shoemaker	6
THURS	6/7/18	OFF	OFF
FRI	6/8/18	MIN	Ramirez	7
SAT	6/9/18	MIN	Richards	7
SUN	6/10/18	MIN	Ohtani	6
MON	6/11/18	SEA	Skaggs	6
TUE	6/12/18	SEA	Heaney	6
WED	6/13/18	SEA	Shoemaker	6
THURS	6/14/18	OFF	OFF
FRI	6/15/18	OAK	Ramirez	6
SAT	6/16/18	OAK	Richards	6
SUN	6/17/18	OAK	Ohtani	6
MON	6/18/18	AZ	Skaggs	6
TUE	6/19/18	AZ	Heaney	6
WED	6/20/18	OFF	OFF
THURS	6/21/18	TOR	Shoemaker	7
FRI	6/22/18	TOR	Ramirez	6
SAT	6/23/18	TOR	Richards	6
SUN	6/24/18	TOR	Ohtani	6
MON	6/25/18	OFF	OFF
TUE	6/26/18	BOS	Skaggs	7
WED	6/27/18	BOS	Heaney	7
THURS	6/28/18	BOS	Shoemaker	6
FRI	6/29/18	BAL	Ramirez	6
SAT	6/30/18	BAL	Richards	6
SUN	7/1/18	BAL	Ohtani	6
MON	7/2/18	OFF	OFF