Chris Young's Suspension not really a Suspension

[Skillz168]

Chris Young, pitcher for the Padres began surving his 5 game suspension for his part in the brawl he started by hitting Derek Lee. He will be suspended for the last four games before the all-star break and the first game after it. With his selection as the 32nd man for the all-star game, he will be available and will most likely pitch for the NL team, thus he would most likely not be penciled in to start the Padres first game back after the break. Thus, as a result of this 5 game suspension, Chris Young will not miss a scheduled start. So his 5 game suspension is not really a suspension at all, the Padres will not be effeected by this at all.

 

Wouldn?t a 9 game suspension for starting pitchers be a better way to enforce a penalty or suspension against a starting pitcher? By giving a 9 game suspension a team would truly have to skip the suspended player?s start rather then just pushing it back a day or two and a 9 game suspension would still only cause the suspended player to miss one start which would truely enforce the penelty.

[patrickgpe]

never understood it either, when you give a starter a 5 day suspension, you really only let him work on 5 days rest instead of 4. Especially with the dumb rule that you can appeal a suspension and then drop it whenever. It makes it easy to appeal until you make a start, then drop it, and pitch 6 days later. That rule i always felt should be changed.

[hawing]

Technically, I suppose the suspension still leaves SD short-handed - hoping, for example, that they don't reach the 21st inning in any of those games.

 

But some fairly uncommon stuff has to happen in order for it to become a practical hardship - so, yeah, I wouldn't mind if the suspension were longer for starting pitchers, or start-related (have to miss X starts).

[RightFieldCoder]

They also loose pro-rated pay for serving a suspension. Therefore, it's not right to suspend a pitcher more than a position player since it will cost the pitcher more money. At least, that's the stance of the MLBPA.

[endaround]

Think of it this way-in a given start a pitcher faces about 30 hitters. In a 6 game period a position player will have about 30 PAs.

[jazzytrav]

The idea behind the suspension almost seems like it has to be more about pay than performance. There's just too much gray area with pitchers.

 

What would happen if the player involved were a spot starter or something of the like? For instance, in the early season the Brewers chose to give their rotation 5 games of rest (which sometimes meant 6 days), but if you don't have the luxury of having 5 starters that you can trust, you would skip that 5th starter and go right back to the top of the rotation. So if that 5th starter were to get suspended, the team probably wouldn't miss anything at all...other than possibly an extra long man out of the pen.