NL East rival is getting creative with its pitching, why the NY Mets may follow suit

The Miami Marlins will not be playoff-bound this season, but you wouldn't know that by the way they're handling their pitching staff these days. The New York Mets are looking up at the Marlins in the standings, and it might be worth a prolonged gaze in order to steal an out-of-the-box strategy for 2027.

Throughout the years, many teams have tried tweaking the tried-and-true conventional five-man rotation game plan. The most common deviation is moving to a six-man rotation, something the Mets have toyed with in the past for a variety of reasons. The issue with a six-man rotation is that you're still only allowed to carry 13 pitches, meaning that if everything doesn't go perfectly, the bullpen can wear down quickly from being a man short.

Then, there's the piggyback strategy that the Seattle Mariners used at points this season. Pulling this off takes very specific conditions, as you also need an abundance of starters and the willingness to let one follow another out of the bullpen. For most clubs with a functional bullpen, this is more trouble than it's worth.

Openers are another common variation from the standard rotation alignment, though it's not something that can be done every game. Normally, this is only used to give a struggling starter a few key advantages. Using an opener of opposite handedness means that the opposition has to run out a less-than-ideal lineup. It also gives the bulk man behind the opener an advantage, as he doesn't have to face the top of the order to begin the game.

What Miami is doing is something very different. The team isn't playing around with adding extra starters or piggybacking guys off each other. Instead, they're doing something much simpler. The Marlins are taking the bullpen day that all starters throw in between starts and making it part of live game action.

It's a tactic that has allowed long-time Mets' trade target, Sandy Alcantara, to enter the record books as the first pitcher since saves became an official stat in 1969 to alternate between five-plus-inning starts and saves over four consecutive outings.

Alcantara isn't the only pitcher that the Marlins are doing this with. Rising star Eury Perez has gotten the same treatment, and the early returns have been positive as well.

The pros of the Mets stealing the Marlins' pitching strategy outweigh the cons

What the Marlins are doing is taking the 30 or so pitches that a starter throws between starts and changing the venue. The key point here is that they're not adding any more work onto their starter, but instead are getting something of tangible value out of that side work.

There are some pros and cons to this approach. For one thing, it might be hard to ensure that the starting pitcher gets enough work in game action as he would in a bullpen session. Without the pressure of facing live hitters, a hurler can get through however many pitches he needs to keep his arm strong.

In an actual game where the results matter, he could be pulled for poor performance before he gets to that point. Or, a matchup could dictate that bringing in a different reliever, a lefty specialist, for example, is the better strategic move.

On top of that, these bullpen sessions are typically designed for the pitcher to work on different things. Whether it's a mechanical tweak, honing a secondary pitch, or developing a new one, this is the time that they have to work through this stuff. It was during a bullpen session that legendary Yankees closer Mariano Rivera discovered the cutter that defined his career, for example.

However, the advantage might be great enough that these benefits can be overlooked. For one thing, this would give New York a roster advantage. Essentially, you'd have an extra reliever in the bullpen by using the starter's side session in game action. That's huge during a 162-game war of attrition.

On top of that, the vast majority of relievers are failed starters. They end up in the bullpen because they either didn't have the either didn't have a repertoire deep enough to turn the lineup over, or because their command was lacking. By that logic, a starter would have an advantage pitching out of the 'pen, too.

The bottom line is that even if this doesn't work out, it costs nothing to try. Unlike other strategies, this doesn't require shuffling the entire pitching staff. Instead, the Mets would simply be asking their starters to do what they do anyway. If it doesn't yield results, they can scrap it and make those bullpen sessions simply for training purposes again. But if it does work, it could be a game-changer for the club's 2027 fortunes.

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