In case you've been on the moon or busy watching soccer there has been some discussion in Dodgers-Land about whether or not to skip Ricky Nolasco in Game #4 of the NLCS or bring back Zack Greinke to pitch on short rest. I decided to take a back of the envelope look at which decision is the correct way to go. My exercise won't go into the nitty-gritty details which would add a little more precision to the numbers but it will provide a good framework and maybe some guidance into what the best decision is.
In general there is a 0.5 RA/9ip penalty for pitching on three days rest and there is probably a little penalty for pitching on too many days rest but let's leave that number unknown for now. What I did is made a table with the RA/9 expectancies for each of the Dodgers four starting pitchers. Then output tables showing which starting pitching arrangement looks best. The RA/9ip estimates can be changed if you don't agree with them, this is just the framework and with the framework you can tell how bad of a pitcher Nolasco must be to make skipping him and starting Greinke (and even perhaps Kershaw and Ryu) on short rest.
Input Table
| Pitcher | RA/9IP |
|---|
| Kershaw | 2.25 |
| Greinke | 3 |
| Ryu | 3.5 |
| Nolasco | 4 |
Now let's come up with some rotation arrangements. Let's first start off with the one where Nolasco pitches Game #4 and Greinke, Kershaw and Ryu all pitch on regular rest.
| Game | Rest | LAD Starter | RA/9 |
|---|
| 4 | Normal | Nolasco | 4 |
| 5 | Normal | Greinke | 3 |
| 6 | Normal | Kershaw | 2.25 |
| 7 | Normal | Ryu | 3.5 |
| | Total | 12.75 |
Now let's see what happens if Nolasco is skipped and Greinke (G4, G7), Kershaw (G5) and Ryu (G6) all pitch on short rest. Notice the 0.5 RA/9ip penalty applied.
| Game | Rest | LAD Starter | RA/9 |
|---|
| 4 | Short | Greinke | 3.5 |
| 5 | Short | Kershaw | 2.75 |
| 6 | Short | Ryu | 4 |
| 7 | Short | Greinke | 3.5 |
| | Total | 13.75 |
This particular arrangement does not fair too well as you are applying four 0.5 RA/9ip penalties, adding up to 2.0 RA/9ip over four games. Nolasco's projection MUST be very very bad for this option to win out. How bad? I will visit that later.
Now onto the arrangement where Zack Greinke pitches Game #4 on short rest then Nolasco pitches Game #5 and Kershaw and Ryu pitch the last two games on full rest. I call this the "Rearranging The Deck Chairs" option.
| Game | Rest | LAD Starter | RA/9 |
|---|
| 4 | Short | Greinke | 3.5 |
| 5 | Normal | Nolasco | 4 |
| 6 | Normal | Kershaw | 2.25 |
| 7 | Normal | Ryu | 3.5 |
| | Total | 13.25 |
This option always loses out to the first option as you are just swapping Game #4 and Game #5 starters and adding a penalty to Greinke's start. This option is stupid.
So it comes down to the first two options and the first option will win out unless you think that Nolasco is a terrible pitcher. Just how terrible in terms of RA/9ip? And you can feel free to combine Nolasco's RA/9ip with that of Volquez if you think they will tag team their start. Only good thing about that is that you can get an early pinch hitter at-bat in the game. But let's get back to the question of how bad would Nolasco's RA/9ip projection have to be to make the second option a better one than the third. The break even point for Nolasco's RA/9ip projection is 5.0. If you think his RA/9ip projection is worse than 5.0 then the second option would be better and you would go with a three man rotation. Of course there are some other minor things to take into consideration, so you could add or subtract those in to the RA/9ip projections but this exercise gives you an idea for which rotation arrangement is best.
I think the Dodgers should start Nolasco and if he isn't terribly sharp or being hit hard to pinch hit for him in either his first or second at-bat and then to use Volquez until he bats and then to let the bullpen finish out the game. Hopefully, you won't go extra innings as you will be using a lot of your bullets early on in the game.
