Major League Baseball is soon going to come to a point where each team will schedule two pitchers to pitch in a game. With starting pitchers going fewer and fewer innings, the game is headed to a point where teams will need one pitcher to pitch the first four innings and a second pitcher to pitch the next four innings, leaving the remaining inning for a closer or one of the two pitchers if they are pitching well. The pitchers for a Mets game may be announced as Johan Santana and Tim Redding. Santana will pitch innings 1-4 (maybe 5) and Redding pitches the next 4 innings. Bullpens will still be needed to close games and in case one of the two pitchers can't even get through 4 innings.
The roster issues will work themselves out, either by expanding or simply rotating the second pitchers to the minors on the days they are not pitching (they wouldn't actually go to the minors, it would just be a technicality to fit 5 extra pitchers on the rosters).
There are numerous reasons why this type of 10 man rotation seems more and more like a real possibility, and I neither attempt to list or explain the reasons here. Rather I simply mean to observe and speculate about the direction the game of baseball is headed.
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Good point, Bob.
It also may have something to do with over analayzing statistics and over managing.
Obviously manager don't want their pitchers to develop injuries or burn out down the stretch but a lot of managers like Manny Acta believe in taking pitchers out with a chance to win the game even if it means the 5th inning at the first sign of trouble.
This type of behaviour can ruin bullpens but even more so doesn't allow young pitchers to manage their own pitch count, learn how to get out of trouble with or without their best stuff, or adjust to hitters the third and fourth time through the order.
Someone should explain that in tougher times then today older and better pitchers fifty to a hundred years ago pitched over 100 pitches per game and there wasn't the medical staff or training to help them and they did just fine.