CL to SP conversion

Okay, sticking the guy in the rotation is just a little unfair, personally.

Closers lose NOTHING in the transition. Look at Wilhite's outing against my Giants. They give closer stuff through every inning. I've done sims and people like Joe Nathan & Jon Papelbon are consistant 2 ERA guys with over 200 IP.

That's a little TOO good. Sure, Pedro used to be a closer but every good closer isn't Pedro Martinez!

Teams should be able to use their pitchers however they want to. These guys have filthy stuff regardless if they are relievers or starters. A dominant pitcher will be dominant in either role generally. John Smoltz is another example. It's not that rare, it's just that pitchers tend to have roles and stay in them throughout their career. I followed Papelbon before he got to the Red Sox and he would be a great starting pitcher if they used him there also.

Leave it as owners deciding how to use their pitchers. The thing is, relievers will hardly ever be able to throw complete games as their endurance only goes to high 60's. Also, their careers start to decline a little earlier after they are switched to starting pitchers in the game.

It's not like people become superhuman, they are just really good pitchers.

HARDLY? Pah. They throw 200 innings yearly!

200 IP isn't a ridiculous number when guys are making over 30+ starts, it's just a little more than 6 innings. I have yet to see a reliever who is converted get his endurance into the 70's.

If a guy makes 33 starts at 6 innings each, that is 198 innings. That's fine, it really isn't hard to build your endurance in real life. I can speak from experience, I was a closer/short reliever in college. My longest outing was 4 innings. I have been converted to a starting pitcher professionally and was 5th in innings pitches last year. It just really isn't that hard to convert.

uscsteve wrote:

If a guy makes 33 starts at 6 innings each, that is 198 innings. That's fine, it really isn't hard to build your endurance in real life. I can speak from experience, I was a closer/short reliever in college. My longest outing was 4 innings. I have been converted to a starting pitcher professionally and was 5th in innings pitches last year. It just really isn't that hard to convert.

Were your numbers just as good as a starter as they were a reliever?

yeah, my ERA was about the same. I got about 1 K per inning as a reliever but that has gone down as a starter. That's probably the only stat that I really noticed a difference in.

Tavarez on the red sox is currently starting, was a reliever before that, starter before that, reliever before that

Here's his stats if people want to see the #'s
http://www.baseball-reference.com/t/tavarju01.shtml

I'm sure there are others but this one off the top of my head. It definitely happens though, so I don't think it's that big of a deal. If their endurance doesn't go over 70 I think that somewhat balances out their "pitching like a closer the whole game" effect.

Maybe in the game it goes something like this.. a SP's pitch and skill ratings are based on the average over say 100 pitches, which would be better at the start then taper off at the end. Whereas a closer never really has that tapering off, because they're looking at hopefully no more than 15 - 20 pitches. Thus when you use a RP as a starter once you use him in the Majors there is a slight inflation because of this.

So the options are basically let teams do this as much as they want, don't let people convert their RP to SP, or what if we added a 3rd like, you can only have one converted RP in your starting rotation at a time. If people think this is a problem, this would prevent it from being abused.

No closer can just become a starter in one day - that takes arm build up. Any conversion should take time to build that endurance, not have an instant success at it.

That's not "realistic".

Imo, barring injury, each team can have one reliever in their rotation.

the conversion does take time.....it takes about a full season for them to reach a starter capable stamina, which in my opinion is even longer than it would take normally.

Just as a side during sportscenter they were talking about how the red sox did the right thing with papelbon by starting with the assumption he would be a starter in spring training. They basically said you could pretty much go straight to being a closer from a starter, but if they had started him out to be a closer and tried to convert him he would be behind, because it takes about a full spring training to build up your stamina.

Papelbon is awesome, just like the Red Sox, so normal rules may not apply to him though.