Then, for months, we just get baseball -- no politics, no manipulation, no worries. Every team is just grinding, trying to win as many games as possible with the best lineup it can produce on a given day.
But as we transition to the stretch run, outside concerns creep back in. Namely: innings limits. The bright, young pitchers or brilliant veterans coming off serious injury have now logged a lot of innings, perhaps even more at this point than they did in all of 2018.
We as a baseball community have moved past the belief in things like the Verducci Effect, so surely the men and women running Major League Baseball organizations have as well, but that doesn't mean there still isn't a concern for a pitcher's future. That's doubly true for teams with little left to play for 2019.
So who's at risk of being shut down? Let's try to identify some candidates.
Chris Paddack
Paddack is the poster boy for the innings limit, not only because he's already logged 117 1/3 innings (at the highest level) after throwing 90 innings last year while coming off Tommy John surgery, but also because he's shown a clear decline in the season's second half. Since the All-Star break, the 23-year-old has a 6.17 ERA and 1.28 WHIP in seven starts, and he's been even worse if we narrow that sample size to August only. Paddack's talent is unquestionable, but he sure looks like a guy nearing the end of his time on the mound in 2019. The Padres' position in the standings helps, as they've all but been ruled out of making the postseason this year. Their future is brighter, though, as is that of Paddack, so it makes sense to ensure your best young starter lives to fight another day. Unlike some other players on this list, a shutdown might actually be a blessing in disguise for fantasy players, many of whom likely feel obligated to start a guy with a 3.84 ERA, 1.03 WHIP and 121 strikeouts in those 117 1/3 innings to date. The reality is that he hasn't been that guy in a few weeks, and if the decision is made for fantasy players it may be for the best. Keep an eye on his usage as early as next week.
In spring, German was in a fight for a rotation spot with the Yankees and was arguably not even the preferred choice to win a job (depending on your feelings about top prospect Jonathan Loaisiga) out of spring. Thank goodness he did earn a spot, though, as German has been one of the season's biggest revelations at the position, regardless of team. The 27-year-old has posted a 4.15 ERA, 1.14 WHIP and 131 strikeouts in 121 1/3 innings to date, and his 16 wins lead the majors. The concern, at least from the outside, would be that he's at 121 1/3 innings -- add in four innings in a minor league start and it's 152 1/3 innings -- after throwing a combined 94 innings in 2018. The good news is that the Yankees don't share that concern for the right-hander. "He already has had a timeout," Yankees general manager Brian Cashman said earlier this month, likely referring to the month he missed in June. "I am not going to say what the level of his limitations were or are, but it would be more of a fair assessment issue to be dealt with if he didn’t have that timeout that he has already taken." That explanation surely factors in the fact that the Yanks are in a playoff push, so not only will German keep pitching, he'll probably keep pitching every fifth day for as long as the Yankees have meaningful games left to play. Feel confident rolling German out there until season's end.
Soroka is like the racehorse that starts slow but that turns on the jets down the stretch, catching and surpassing most of the horses as they approach the finish line. The 22-year-old was on plenty of fantasy radars this winter as a top prospect with a shot at cracking the Braves' rotation in spring, but then spring came and Soroka didn't pitch one inning in a spring game due to right shoulder issues. That tanked his fantasy value, but Soroka rounded into form and was pitching for the Braves by mid-April. (He's a great cautionary tale for caring too much about opportunity -- talent almost always finds a way to prevail.) Since then, he's raced to the head of the National League Rookie of the Year conversation, especially with Paddack now struggling and phenom Fernando Tatis Jr. done for the season. In 23 starts, Soroka is 10-2 with a 2.41 ERA and 1.08 WHIP, earning an All-Star bid along the way. Like German, Braves general manager Alex Anthopoulos has thought about the issue of innings, but unlike Cashman, Anthopoulos wasn't ready to commit either way. "We're going to put their careers first," Anthopoulos said of Soroka and Max Fried. "If we think the appropriate thing is to scale back or to shut them down, we'll do it. But as we sit here today, we haven't made arrangements to do that. We're just going to play it by ear." The Braves lead the Nationals in the NL East by six games and may actually have the luxury of coasting into the postseason since they're well ahead of the NL Central-leading Cardinals but far enough behind the NL West-best Dodgers that they're likely not going to catch them for the top spot. If that scenario plays out they may try to save a few innings for Soroka by skipping a start or two down the stretch, but it doesn't sound like the club has any plans of doing a hard shutdown. Monitor the situation, but keep him in your fantasy rotation for now.
Just as how the Dodgers have taken a shotgun approach to finding pitching in recent years, so will this author approach the handful of Dodgers pitchers with at least some concern about their workload. The big one is Hyun-Jin Ryu, who's been a Cy Young candidate in 24 starts this year. Ryu has posted a 2.00 ERA while going 12-4; his brilliance was punctuated by receiving the honor of starting the All-Star Game for the National League. The issue, then is that he's now thrown 152 2/3 innings after doing roughly half that number in 2018. Fellow All-Star Walker Buehler could be in a similar boat, having pitched 148 1/3 innings to date after throwing 153 1/3 innings last year -- also a big step up from his prior year -- and Kenta Maeda is at 133 innings, a number around which he's hovered for a few years now. The problem for fantasy players is that the Dodgers are the unchallenged class of the National League, a position they're almost certain to hold down the stretch. That means they'll have the luxury of being selective with when, and if, they deploy their starters. It's highly unlikely any of the three are shut down in any meaningful way, but the odds are good that they'll call on their pitching depth to spell guys they view as possibly being taxed. It's mostly an inconvenience, as fantasy players, especially those in weekly leagues, will have to be vigilant about checking to make sure their Dodgers starters are on schedule and won't be skipped or pushed back. It shouldn't present too much of an issue on the whole, though.
If we're mildly surprised to be tracking Soroka's innings in late August, we're shocked to be caring about Gallen's. The young right-hander wasn't on many radars outside of dynasty leagues at the season's outset, a promising pitcher but one who didn't appear on any top prospect lists and who wasn't even able to break into the rotation of a team as bad as the Marlins out of camp. Gallen forced his way to the majors by late June, though, and he showed so well that the Diamondbacks traded top prospect Jazz Chisholm for him at the trade deadline. The 24-year-old has logged 147 2/3 innings between Triple-A, the Marlins and the D'backs, and in the bigs he owns a 2.56 ERA through 11 starts. He's already exceeded his 133 1/3 innings of work in 2018 -- all of which came in the minors, too -- and although the Diamondbacks are 5.5 games out of a Wild Card spot, they're also behind a handful of teams that they'd have to leapfrog to sneak into October. The odds of that are long, and their trade of a prospect like Chisholm speaks to how they view the Gallen acquisition -- one that, while it may provide immediate returns in 2019, is primarily for the long term. With that in mind and with this being Gallen's first go-round in the majors, it wouldn't be surprising to see the D'backs shut him down with a few weeks remaining in the season. Fantasy players should ride Gallen hard until that day comes.
Another Anthopoulos excerpt from the Soroka conversation: "I've said this before, as a young GM, I was pretty militant with innings and things like that, and it didn't work. Even when I was in L.A., and obviously there's as good an organization as you can find, [I was] very cautious with Julio Urias and he still got hurt. You can go through a lot of examples. I think we are very much on top of it." That quote holds interest for both Soroka and Fried, who's been overshadowed by his teammate but who has also been vital in the Braves' NL East contention. Through 136 1/3 innings this year, the southpaw is 14-4 with a 4.03 ERA and 139 strikeouts. He threw 111 1/3 innings in 2018 and has a long history of injury, including Tommy John surgery, so the worry about his workload is real. Anthopoulos is right that it's hard to predict injury and thus an exercise in futility to fret too much about it, but Fried seems like an obvious case where caution might be recommended. As noted, the Braves are in an enviable spot as we approach September, so they will have the opportunity to rest Fried and others without having to shut them down entirely. It's just hard to imagine Fried's usage won't be a guessing game down the stretch.
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