MLB Reportedly Discussing 6-Inning Minimum for Starters, Other Pitching Rules Changes

After implementing major rules changes last season to hasten games and create more action on the bases, MLB is now taking aim at other ways to spur offense and curb the rising tide of arm injuries. As Jesse Rodgers of ESPN reported, league officials are toying with several changes to pitching rules, including a six-inning minimum for starting pitchers and a limit on pitching staff sizes.

Forcing starters to go at least six innings could spell disaster for Javier Assad, who went 4.2 Wednesday night for the longest of his last three outings. He’s only lasted six frames once in his last 13 starts and four times in 22 starts this season. Not that the league is worried about one Cub over the health of the sport and so many other individual athletes.

“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,” ESPN was told by an MLB official. “There are a whole host of options in addressing those issues.”

The goal here is apparently to “restore the prestige of the starting pitcher,” which sounds like an appeal to boomers on Facebook. While I understand the idea at some base level, the game has evolved to its current state naturally and I’m not sure it’s in baseball’s best interest to implement limitations — even with necessary exceptions. Although short of changing mound dimensions to lower or move it farther back or penalizing pitches thrown above a certain speed, the league may have no other recourse.

While many will continue to blame the fact that technology exists to measure exit velocity and launch angle, vilifying hitters and coaches for understanding numbers, the real culprit is better pitching. Today’s game is vastly different from what even Gen X’ers grew up watching and it’s silly to think hitters could turn things around by being more like, say, George Brett.

“I get in arguments all the time with hitting coaches and players today,” Brett told Jon Morosi on The Road to Cooperstown podcast. “My bat [was] coming through the zone on the same plane as the ball. That’s why I didn’t strike out. Nowadays players strike out all the time, because their bat is in and out of the zone, on the same plane as the ball, for a short period of time. I will go to my grave vowing that my theory is better than they’re teaching now.”

I’m not going to dispute Brett’s hitting prowess, but his sentiment lacks a great deal of context. The average fastball during his Hall of Fame career was somewhere around 90-91 mph, which is equivalent to the average cutter in 2024. Now the average heater is 94-95 mph and batters see far more pitchers in a game and season, thus limiting the ability to get familiar and adjust. Only 330 pitchers made MLB appearances during Brett’s debut season in 1973; that number was up to 507 during his final season in 1993. With well over a month remaining this season, there have already been 776 different pitchers used.

Mandating longer outings for starters would lower that latter number, particularly if pitchers also spend less time on the IL. The latter factor is merely hypothetical, but it stands to reason that fewer relievers would be needed and that offense would benefit as a result.

Another pressing issue for hitters is that outfield defense is better than ever before. As Mike Petriello laid out for MLB.com, the four lowest BABIP months since 2002 have all come this season. Not only are outfielders getting younger and faster, they’re also aided by much better data that has them starting in more ideal positions based on batters and environment.

Between all the improvements in pitching and defense, the game just isn’t fair for hitters. Well, most hitters.

But does it make sense to shift more of unfairness to the mound? I mean, we don’t need to create some dystopic Harrison Bergeron future for baseball in which the playing field is leveled to the point of boredom. As radical as a mandatory minimum seems at the outset, however, it may start to make sense when you check under the hood.

First, it’s important to note that such a drastic adjustment would take years to come to fruition. It would have to be tested for a long time at the minor league level and possibly tweaked to account for various caveats; Rogers noted 100 pitches, four earned runs, and injury as possible exceptions to the rule. Speaking of which, forcing starters to go deeper might actually reduce the number and severity of arm issues we’ve seen lately.

The thinking is that having to go at least six innings would force pitchers to rely more on craft than emptying the tank for max velocity. If that’s really the impetus for the changes, we may as well call this the Greg Maddux Rule.

“It’s different pitch mixes, different attack plans, different looks,” Cubs GM Carter Hawkins said. “It might weed out the guy that isn’t as efficient.”

I tend to think the toothpaste is out of the tube when it comes to throwing hard and generating as much spin as possible, but the bigger issue is that I think trying to solve the arm injury epidemic at the highest level. As easy as it is to demonize big velo and spin numbers, the real damage from repetitive stress occurs in youth baseball. Many of the pitchers who reach MLB have been overworked from the earliest stages of kid-pitch ball because they developed earlier and could help coaches win plastic trophies.

I’ve witnessed this firsthand in travel tournaments, like when a young pitcher for a team we faced at the 15U level through 140 pitches in a nine-inning complete game. That’s egregious in and of itself, but it falls into the category of outright abuse when you consider the kid had thrown 78 pitches over seven innings just two days earlier. A month later, he threw 123 pitches over 6.2 innings on a Thursday and then threw 49 over four frames on Saturday.

Two players on that team logged over 600 pitches in the month of June and both were everyday position players when they weren’t on the mound. And this isn’t unique to a particular team, age, or region. Now consider that this is just publicly available data I pulled from viewing their GameChanger info. What about the kids who are floating between different teams over the course of a summer with no coordination between coaches on usage?

Cubs pitching prospect Ben Leeper told our Rant Live podcast back in 2022 that his ability to throw exceptionally hard at a young age had him traveling all over the country with different teams as a young teen. I can’t say that’s the cause of his three Tommy John surgeries over the last decade, but it’s hard to see it as merely correlation. And that’s just one example of thousands who don’t even make it to the professional ranks.

MLB promotes its Pitch Smart guidelines, but they’re worthless if enforcement remains as lax as it’s been to this point. What’s more, the culture of youth baseball is heavily rooted in tournament play that sees kids playing four or more games each weekend for several months in the spring and summer. If you’re in a warm-weather climate or are willing and able to travel, there may be no offseason to speak of.

So while I applaud any attempts to curtail the growing rash of injuries at the MLB level, I don’t think it’ll make much of a difference if we don’t get a handle on what’s happening at the lowest levels of the sport. We might even find that promoting proper arm care and rest will produce pitchers who can throw harder with greater finesse AND better health. But until kids’ long-term health is prioritized over janky rings and promoting the number of college commitments an organization can lay claim to, the only answer is trying to put horses back in the barn as professionals.