John Smoltz 'guarantees' MLB will change one rule
John Smoltz has an idea to curb Major League Baseball's starting pitcher epidemic. It isn't a new idea, but it's one that has gained traction in some interesting corners of the baseball universe.
Fox Sports' lead analyst for the World Series is convinced that if MLB doesn't adopt it, the league will at least do something.
Jayson Stark of The Athletic, who popularized the idea, dubbed it the "double hook." The idea is fairly straightforward. When a manager removes his starting pitcher from the game, he loses his designated hitter, too. The manager is thus incentivized to keep his starting pitcher in the game as long as possible so he can keep his DH in the lineup, too.
Four years ago this would not have been practical. Now that the National League has adopted the DH rule, it is. Smoltz is a fan. So is current Texas Rangers pitcher Max Scherzer, a member of the MLB Players Association's bargaining committee.
MLB was intrigued enough to test the idea in the Atlantic League in 2023. Smoltz thinks it could potentially reach the major league level someday.
"Two, three years ago people lost their mind on the shift, the base-stealing, and the pitch clock (rules) and the game's better for it," he said in an interview with John Ourand on The Varsity podcast. "The game will be better for it once this comes into place. People will throw their arms up and complain but In six months to a year you'll never know the difference."
Smoltz fashioned a Hall of Fame career over 21 seasons (1988-2009) with the Atlanta Braves, Boston Red Sox and St. Louis Cardinals, primarily as a starter. When he returned from Tommy John surgery in 2001, he spent four seasons as the Braves' closer before transitioning back to the rotation.
"I think (a rules change) is drastically important for a lot of reasons," Smoltz said. "I think the health of the player is impacted in such a negative way for what they're chasing. This is not a player's-fault issue, this is an industry issue and a philosophy that the industry has adopted on paper that sounds good, feels good, but doesn't work."
Smoltz compared the climate in baseball to that of the NFL. Protecting starting pitchers, he believes, is equivalent to the NFL's need to protect quarterbacks. Rules designed to free up passers were not universally popular, but they helped keep quarterbacks in their historic position of prominence.
Smoltz threw 16 complete-game shutouts in his career. The 30 major league teams threw 16 complete-game shutouts total in 2024. The reasons for teams de-emphasizing starting pitching are debatable, but it's undeniable that fewer starters occupy positions of stardom than ever.
The Los Angeles Dodgers have a chance to clinch the World Series Tuesday and will use a bullpen game — a series of relief pitchers — to try and defeat the New York Yankees.
Smoltz believes something needs to be done to reverse this trend.
"I think Rob Manfred knows that he'd hate to do this but must — and probably has to — do it," Smoltz said. "In a sport, if people are not cheating and they're really doing things within the rules, you can't blame them because they don't care about the long-term version of baseball. You must coerce them in rule changes to change their philosophy so the long-term viability of baseball will be better.
"So that's where pitching rules will come into effect, guaranteed. Just don't know when."
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