Overworking college pitchers who are pro prospects...

[Maroon Eagle]

Here's a Grantland article from earlier this afternoon. It cited an article from Baseball Prospectus last week as well as a New York Times piece on North Carolina pitcher Kent Emanuel and Boydsworld's pitch count page.

Anyway, I thought it was fairly interesting even though it probably won't get any attention since it's football season now.

 

[patdog]

The regional format is criminal. All season long you play 3-4 games per week and then suddenly you have to play 5 games in 4 days. With only 11.7 total scholarships. It's insane. A lot of the blame also falls on the coaches, but they're under a lot of pressure to win and advance, so it's not surprising that some of them do this. They really need to add a weekend to the postseason and play 3 rounds of best 2-of-3 series to get to Omaha. Probably not practical to add it to the end of the postseason, so they'd probably have to move the 1st round up to Memorial Day weekend, which is when the regionals used to be played anyway.

 

[Maroon Eagle]

I could go for the season starting one week earlier and three rounds of best of three series to go to Omaha.

 

[Heawww]

They have already tried to make it better by spreading it out. The old 6 team regionals were even worse. Not sure what you want them to do to make it better. The CWS is spread out over damn near 2 weeks as it is.

Problem is with the coaches, not the format. Format SHOULD actually be playing 4-5 games a week throughout the season, and then again in the postseason. Just pass a rule where you are only allowed 9 innings per 7 day period, Monday-Sunday. Done.

Credit goes to Cohen also, for not pitching Graveman before he was ready in the CWS Finals. Something that got glossed over back during the event.

 

[patdog]

I thought I made it pretty clear what I think they should do to make it better. 3 weekends of best 2-of-3 series to get to Omaha. Problem is with both the coaches AND the format. But the coaches are under a lot of pressure, so they can't be relied on to do the right thing. A 9-innings per 7 days would be a big improvement, but you'd still have pitchers with often less than 20 innings all season starting the deciding game in a regional, which is a pretty poor way to decide a postseason tournament.

 

[Heawww]

Not if you're already playing 4-5 games per week all season. Playing 3 games a week is what is criminal. HS teams play that many games. Should be playing Tues/Wed then a 3 game weekend series or once midweek and a 4 game weekend series. Possibly Tues or Wed DH to cut down on travel, if that's the issue.

You should be expected to have 4 or 5 starting pitchers IMO. Not 3.

And to add to that, the regional formats are what make college baseball great.

 

[patdog]

5 games per week and 5 rotation starting pitchers is just never going to happen. I agree. It would be great to have 25 scholarships and play 5-6 days per week. That's the way baseball is meant to be played. But that's never going to happen in the college game. So, given the realities of 3-4 rotation starting pitchers, it makes no sense to play 5 games in 4 days to decide who advances to a super regional. Who really cares about the other games in a regional that don't involve your team anyway? Very few. If you moved to a 3-weekend format, you'd have 32 hosts the first round, 16 the 2nd and 8 the 3rd. Total of 56 host weekends. Compared to 24 with the current format.

 

[Heawww]

To clarify, only ONE team presumably has to play 5 games in a regional, and that's someone coming out of the loser's bracket. The winner's bracket team only plays 4 at most. So it makes sense to me to make the loser's bracket team earn their way.