Smart Or Disaster In The Making? MLB Is Toying With The Idea Of Requiring Starting Pitchers To Go At Least Six Innings In An Effort To Fix The Sport's Arm Injury Epidemic

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Baseball has a pitching problem and it seems they're finally trying to address it. What is that problem exactly? Arm injuries, a lot of them. Just a week into the season we saw a bevy of big names either go under the knife for TJ surgery or miss serious time with arm issues. 

The billion dollar question following all of that was how do you fix this? Is it even possible at this point to put the genie back in the bottle? Well, apparently they're toying with the idea of instituting six inning requirements for starting pitchers. I can already hear old heads screaming into their phone, but let's actually read about it and not just react to the headline. 

(ESPN) "We are interested in increasing the amount of action in the game, restoring the prominence of the starting pitcher and reducing the prevalence of pitching injuries," an MLB official told ESPN. "There are a whole host of options in addressing those issues."

The league has discussed a limit to the size of pitching staffs and the double-hook DH, according to sources familiar with the discussion. There is some belief around the game, however, that one idea could be a panacea: requiring starting pitchers to go at least six innings every time they take the mound.

The objective is to prioritize starting pitching, not to leave a struggling starter in to reach the innings threshold while his ERA skyrockets or at the risk of injury. So the league's conversations have included carve-outs, instances when pitchers would not have to pitch the required six innings. Some instances when a starter would be allowed to leave early might include:

-He throws 100 pitches

-He gives up four or more earned runs

-He gets injured (with a required injured list stint to avoid manipulation)

 It's super easy to see the words "six inning minimum for starting pitchers" and lose your mind. I imagine a ton of people did that and said this is an idea conjured up by someone who has watched one game in their life. Imagine you don't have it from the jump and give up six runs in the first on like 50 pitches, but you gotta stay in the game until you hit 100. That'd be a "we've left Earth" kind of change to the game. But when you factor in the stipulations above, it's really not all that bad. 

What this would do is immediately eliminate openers and put more importance on being a legitimate starting pitcher. Selfishly, I wouldn't care about that at all. If you're in the Rays front office, however, you may fight this to the death. They'd have to revamp their whole rationale of assembling a pitching staff. The goal of all this though is to eliminate arm injuries, something that has plagued their roster maybe more than any other team —Shane McClanahan, Jeffrey Springs, Drew Rasmussen, Tyler Glasnow, Shane Baz just to name a few. 

With these tentative rules, it's not like you'd have to be out there until your arm falls off if things are going poorly. If you're getting rocked and give up four earned runs or more you can come out of the game. If you get hurt, you can obviously come out of the game. 

None of this is perfect and absolutely none of it is finalized, but I like that baseball trying to solve this problem. In theory if this is implemented you'd get pitchers focussing more on command and durability rather than max effort because the game would ask for that. It would take time to have this impact the sport throughout all its levels, including little league, but the long-term goal of it all would be very good for the sport. Looking at the early rules, I'd probably changed the 4 earned runs rule to 4 runs in general, since the score keeper shouldn't be given that much power. Maybe do something with the rule being waived if there's a very long inning in the outing? If we somehow get away with constant max effort pitching that'd be a good thing. It's entirely possible this never gets implemented, primarily because I don't know how the Players Union ever agrees to it, but they absolutely need to do something to change the current state of pitching in baseball. 

Again, the human arm was not intended to throw a baseball as hard and as many times as MLB pitchers do. For years teams have attempted to manage arms and prevent injuries, only to see major problems arise like clockwork. It's possible nothing can stop this epidemic, but it's worth a shot.