Dodgers: The Dodgers Should Not Have Joined the Opener Revolution

The Dodgers are going to join the “opener” revolution on Friday as they will start reliever Scott Alexander against the Rockies on Friday.  A start is a bit misleading as Dennis Santana will pitch a majority of the innings.

The Dodgers are going to experiment with the opener strategy that was started by the Tampa Bay Rays on Friday.  Former Dodger and longtime Giant Sergio Romo was the first reliever used in this strategy, and Scott Alexander is going to be the latest reliever to be used as an opener.  Alexander has never started a game in his major league career, so this is the first time he will toe the rubber in the first inning of a big league game.

The Dodgers original idea was that the Rockies lineup would stack multiple lefties at the top of the order with Charlie Blackmon, David Dahl, and Gerardo Parra all batting first or second for most of the Rockies games lately.  The strategy may backfire as the Rockies lineup was announced and second baseman DJ Lemahieu is returning from the DL and hitting leadoff. That means two of the three hitters Scott Alexander will face beginning the game are going to be right-handed hitters.

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The whole idea behind starting a reliever is to skip one time that the starting pitcher or in this case the long reliever is going to have the face the top three or four hitters in a lineup.  The results are still to be determined if the strategy works, but it makes little sense since the long reliever, Dennis Santana in this instance, is going to have to face the middle of the Rockies lineup multiple times anyways.  While it is true that most starting pitchers do worse the third time through the order, in today’s game the starting pitcher doesn’t face the lineup a third time in most starts.

The other side to this is that the Dodgers are throwing Dennis Santana off his normal routine.  Since making your major league debut and pitching in Coors Field isn’t hard enough already, the Dodgers added another wrinkle by making Santana come out of the bullpen.  Baseball players, especially starting pitchers are creatures of habit, so altering Santana’s routine especially in his MLB debut is not the best idea by the Dodgers front office.  There is a chance Scott Alexander may not even make it through the first inning, but if he doesn’t, it would make even less sense to have started him.

Next: Dodgers get a peak at the future this weekend in Colorado

This may all be for not, maybe it works, and Scott Alexander finishes the first inning followed by five strong innings from Dennis Santana.  There is also a chance it backfires and Santana is knocked around in his debut due to his normal routine being thrown on its side.  We’ll see this evening, but I hope that this is the only game the Dodgers experiment with this strategy because it isn’t necessary.