MLB's six-inning rule for starting pitchers is a good idea,  but implementing it won't be easy

Wary of the escalating crisis with starting pitchers, Major League Baseball has been discussing potential rule changes to combat the issue, chief among them the radical concept of a six-inning mandate.

The idea has been gaining momentum in recent years as starters have been pulled earlier than ever and pitching-related injuries increasingly have become an existential threat to the game. This past week, ESPN was the first to report that MLB has stepped up its efforts in this area (while acknowledging that any impactful rules have barely progressed beyond the embryonic stage).

The foundation would focus on a six-inning minimum for starters, obviously with the need to include some conditions, such as reaching the 100-pitch threshold, allowing four earned runs or suffering an injury. These are very basic guidelines but eventually could lead to the framework involving a new set of rule changes.

As for a timetable, don’t expect to see a throwback to those late 20th century pitching duels for a while. We’re now in a different universe from the days of Dwight Gooden, Roger Clemens, Greg Maddux or Pedro Martinez refusing to hand over the baseball during those halcyon mano-a-mano masterpieces. Forcefully manipulating games to get back there figures to be a bumpy process.

Take the pitch clock, for example. It’s been a remarkable success, working even better than MLB probably anticipated in speeding up the pace of games. Before those rules were implemented at the start of the 2023 season, they had been talked about more than a decade earlier and didn’t even evolve to the testing phase until 2014 in the Arizona Fall League, the lowest entry level of MLB’s minor-league laboratory.

The reason? The Players Association routinely pushed back against the clock for years, citing its disruption of a pitcher’s routines, and as a result, creating a detrimental effect on performance.

Ultimately, the pitch clock — along with the infield shift ban and larger bases — finally became official when MLB used its majority in the competition committee to impose the rules (all four players on the 11-person board voted against the clock and shift ban).

So what’s reasonable to expect with the proposal for a six-inning mandate? Well, plenty of experimenting in the minor leagues first, and MLB already has been trying to fine-tune its automated ball-strike system (ABS) down there for the past few years without getting the robots ready for prime time just yet.

While commissioner Rob Manfred definitely has been emboldened by the high grades for his recent menu of rule changes, any further tinkering with pitching staffs is a significant undertaking.

Even though everyone seems to agree on the need for action, the methods are open for debate, and changing how starters are used not only impacts major-league rosters but reverberates down through the organizational rungs. A six-inning mandate stands to have a far greater impact on the sport than the pitch clock, and for that reason, both sides will have to exercise caution moving forward.

Mets president of baseball operations David Stearns said Friday that these “initiatives” have been talked about at industry meetings for years now, and while he’s definitely in favor of taking these big steps, he says it’s likely to be a lengthy process.

“I think we are a long way away from completely implementing something as drastic as a six-inning rule,” Stearns said. “I think there are probably iterations we need to go through, testing we need to go through and then ultimately developmental time we need to go through.

“But I think all of these types of discussions — whether it’s an innings minimum, a batter-faced minimum, a pitch-number minimum — are worthy discussions, and we’ve shown as an industry we can implement what seemingly is drastic change and it makes our game better. So I think we should take that and be encouraged to continue to try to make our game better.”

No argument here. In the span of only 1 1⁄2 seasons, the pitch clock (and its accompanying rules) has reduced the average time of a nine-inning game from 3 hours, 3 minutes in 2022 to this year’s 2:36, a revolutionary drop. Larger bases and limiting pickoff throws to first base has increased the number of successful steals for each team from 0.51 per game in 2022 to 0.73 this year.

MLB believes it eventually can lean on the ABS to not only improve the accuracy of the strike zone but also tailor it to spike offensive production. The strikeout rate remains too high, curtailing the number of balls put in play (i.e. entertainment value).

With those plans in full swing, it’s only logical now that MLB turns its attention to the starting pitcher problem, which is nearly as much financial as it is functional. As of Friday, MLB had 151 starting pitchers on the injured list, according to Spotrac.com, for a total of 11,479 days missed at a whopping cost of $403.5 million. The next closest position? Relief pitcher, with 182 of those on the IL, for 12,514 days missed and a price tag of $130.6 million. In MLB’s eyes, that’s a lot of money for zero return.

From the game standpoint, the MLB average for innings per start is up to 5.3 this season as compared to 5.1 in 2023 and 5.0 in 2021, but that’s still well short of the six-inning target being discussed. In reality, it shouldn’t be that extreme. Atlanta’s 2023 rotation averaged 6.1 innings for a full season, but this year’s leader is the Mariners (5.84). The last time MLB got to that number as a whole was 2014 before starter innings began to steadily decline.

Of the 148 pitchers who have made 10 starts this season, only 16 of those (11%) have averaged six innings — an idea of how far MLB has to go on this front. At the top of that list is the Mariners’ Logan Gilbert (6.44), followed by the Royals’ Seth Lugo (6.37) and the Giants’ Logan Webb (6.32).

And changing the mindset of starters from the earliest days of their development, as far back as high school, could take a decade after MLB has groomed a culture of max-velocity arms. It’s impossible to abruptly shift on the fly with the current Generation K and condition them to pitch to poor contact in order to go deeper into games.

Somebody like Maddux would be the ideal in MLB’s mind, as the Hall of Famer averaged 6.77 innings per start in his 23-year career with a fastball that hovered in the low 90s. As a result, efficiency and durability were Maddux’s calling cards — not to mention how quickly he dispatched opposing hitters with bad contact.

But MLB has to realize how difficult it will be to try to artificially create such games in the future. As confident as Manfred is after his latest rounds of rule changes, this six-inning gambit is going to be the most difficult challenge yet to come across his desk.

By David Lennon

dave.lennon@newsday.comDPLennon

David Lennon is an award-winning columnist, a voter for baseball's Hall of Fame and has covered six no-hitters, including two perfect games.