There's a plan to get the workhorse starting pitcher off the endangered species list circulating around Major League Baseball, and it's nothing if not interesting.

But to paraphrase a certain space pirate: I like your plan, except it stinks.

Last week, Jesse Rogers of ESPN reported that there's a "belief around the game" that starting pitchers might be saved from injuries and otherwise get back to pitching deep into games if they were required by rule to go at least six innings per start.

It wouldn't have to be a firm rule. Potential off-ramps could include instances where a pitcher has suffered an injury, thrown 100 pitches or given up four or more earned runs.

It's worth emphasizing that there's no official proposal yet. Rogers' report would seem to be a blatant trial balloon, either lifted by enthusiasm or shot down by backlash.

In case you couldn't tell, backlash is the name of the game here. But let's at least grant that the league's heart is in the right place.

Starting Pitchers Really Are in Danger of Extinction

This situation feels a little like when MLB declared war on The Choate Republic when it adopted the three-batter minimum for pitchers in 2020.

The stakes are different, as restoring "the prestige of the starting pitcher," as Rogers put it, carries more weight than simply eliminating "LOOGY" from the baseball lexicon.

Nobody expects modern starters to channel Old Hoss Radbourn, but it wasn't long ago that six innings and 100 pitches were dependable standards. As recently as 2014, the average starter tossed 6.0 innings and 43.5 percent of all starts featured at least 100 pitches.

In 2024, those two figures are down to 5.3 and 13.5 percent, respectively.

It's a sad story that gets sadder when you consider the role injuries have played. Elbow issues have become especially prevalent, with Baseball Prospectus data showing upticks in 2023 and 2024 relative to 2021 and 2022.

This might seem counterintuitive relative to starters' diminishing workloads, but the shrinking distance between average velocity and max velocity points to the reality of the situation: The less pitchers throw, the harder they can throw.

That's dangerous. As Glenn Fleisig, the research director at the American Sports Medicine Institute in Birmingham, Alabama told Tom Verducci of Sports Illustrated in 2023, more velocity equates to more torque on the elbow:

"Our studies have shown that to succeed, particularly as a starting pitcher, you should vary your velocities. You shouldn't max-effort every pitch. You should mess around with the batters at various speeds of your pitches, your locations, et cetera, to succeed as a pitcher, not as a thrower. To be healthy and successful, the pitcher should vary the velocity."

Think of the Unintended Consequences

All this being said, the warning MLB should heed is one that all bosses should know: Demanding people work harder doesn't necessarily result in them doing better work.

A six-inning mandate isn't going to eliminate the times-through-the-order penalty. And within such a sample, a starter can only avoid this threat by retiring all 18 batters he faces. If he doesn't, the path to his MLB-mandated six innings will get more perilous as it unfolds.

And if he eases up on the gas, that much more so.

Suffice it to say, there's a huge gap in the batting average against fastballs of 94 mph and below (.266) and fastballs of 95 mph and above (.225). As such, pitchers prefer to throw hard because it works.

If MLB takes this advantage away from starters—or at least disincentivizes them from pursuing it—it risks further increasing the effectiveness gap between them and relievers.

It bears noting that this gap exists despite relievers occasionally contributing to the starting side as openers. The six-inning limit would send that role the way of the dodo, potentially requiring teams to scramble for fill-in starters from the minors. This, too, doesn't seem like a good way to restore "prestige" to starting pitching.

Granted, perhaps diminished effectiveness would be a fair trade-off if new workload rules resulted in healthier starters. But how much should we take for granted that would happen?

After all, it isn't just the times-through-the-order penalty that has chipped away at the prominence of the workhorse starter. It used to be that teams were primarily afraid of overworking their starters, and there was research to lend credence to that fear.

Some Modest Proposals to Fix Starting Pitching

The obvious question is: What can be done to bring the workhorse starter back from the brink of extinction?

Well, this question presupposes that the workhorse starter must be saved. Two years into MLB's New Rules Era, the average game time is down and both offense and attendance are up. With things going this well, what's happening with starters is, arguably, less existential threat and more just bad optics.

But as someone who grew up with Pedro Martinez, Randy Johnson and Greg Maddux, I can't claim I'm not nostalgic for the days when ace starting pitchers were akin to an unassailable institution. It would be nice to have those days (or something like them) back.

So, here are three alternative solutions.

1. Just Wait It Out

Nobody has a better take on the state of pitching than Justin Verlander, who hit every nail on the head back in April:

A couple of parts of this are worth responding to, including this one:

"When the ball started to change back in 2016 and they started flying out a bit more frequently, I know that for myself, personally, that started changing how I had to approach pitching. You have to start approaching the batter [with the mindset of], 'I want swing and miss. I can't have him put the ball in play.'"

The three-time Cy Young Award winner alludes to the jump in home runs in 2016, which continued the following two years and peaked at a record 1.39 per game in 2019. It then stayed over 1.20 per game in 2020 and 2021.

If you were a pitcher, it would have spooked you, too. But those days may be over.

The home run rate has been subdued in two of the last three seasons, finishing at 1.07 per game in 2022 and 1.13 per game this year. Whether it's because of how the actual baseballs are handled, how the new rules have changed offense or some combination of the two, it amounts to hope for pitchers that the home run boom is over and it's safe to ease up on the max-effort stuff.

If so, things may take the organic path back to how they were.

2. Shorten the Season

Then again, perhaps this shouldn't be about how starters might work more. Perhaps it should be about how they might recover better.

Just sayin', Anthony Rendon had the right idea when he said the season is too long. To boot, shortening it from 162 games to 154 games would be pretty easy.

It takes between 26 and 27 weeks to knock out a 162-game schedule. Slot one guaranteed off day per week plus the All-Star break into the same span, and you get a straightforward path to 154 games.

Any owner who reads this is instinctively going to think about lost revenue. But those same owners should consider this: If shortening the season results in a better product, that won't necessarily happen.

3. Change the Culture

Lastly, something else Verlander said ought to elicit a cringe: "I can't look at my Instagram feed without seeing some kids trying to learn to throw as hard as they can at 10 years old."

If he's overstating it, it's only for effect. It is generally true that a culture of max-effort, high-velocity pitching doesn't merely exist at the top. It exists at all levels of baseball—Little League, high school, college—precisely because it exists at the top.

It helps explain why young pitchers are blowing their elbows out more frequently, yet MLB front offices have not adjusted to be more discerning of what they're looking for in young pitchers. They have been expected to expect less of them.

Rogers noted that the average start at Triple-A is only 4.3 innings.

Arguably more than what happens at the MLB level in the short run, it's what happens here in the long run that matters. Front offices must shift their focus from young guys who can merely throw to those who can actually pitch. And while teams don't seem to care now, they darn well should if a young pitcher is already damaged goods.

In other words, MLB shouldn't be trying to magically conjure workhorses. It should be trying to grow them.

Stats courtesy of Baseball Reference, FanGraphs and Baseball Savant.