Numlock Sunday: Ben Lindbergh on baseball's ambitious pitch to save itself

Photo by Tim Gouw on Unsplash

By Walt Hickey

Welcome to the Numlock Sunday edition.

This week, I spoke to Ben Lindbergh who wrote “How Can MLB Fix Its Too-Many-Pitchers Problem?” for The Ringer. Here's what I wrote about it:

On Monday, the number of pitchers that a Major League Baseball team was allowed to keep on the roster was 14, which is a very high number of pitchers, but nevertheless the mere introduction of a cap in the number of players per position is new territory for the league. That limit will drop to 13 in four weeks and then potentially down to 12 or 11 in later years. The vast bullpens of MLB teams has been one contributing factor to lots of the offensive issues in the game: The league-wide batting average of .231 in the first several weeks of April is the lowest since 1968’s .230, and the second-highest position-player strikeout rate — 23 percent — on record. Because they can get pulled out and replaced with fresher arms with such ease, starting pitchers see an opponent f…