Updated Playing Time Rules - Pitchers

We've already seen the following changes to batter eligibility

1) For teams with less than 100 games in a season, a player from that team is only eligible if he has appeared in 95% of his teams games. For teams with more than 100 games, a player is only eligible if he has appeared in 85% of his teams games.

2) Catchers need only have 370 Plate Appearances, instead of the 450 currently required.

For pitchers we'll have a simpler go at it.

Today, any starter with 20 games is eligible to start. There is no need to change this rule, which leaves us with relievers with fewer than 50 IP to discuss. When teams had fewer than 100 games played, or fewer than 154 games played or that matter, relievers weren't widely used. And when they were, it was often at long clips at a time easily pushing them over the 50 IP mark on a season.

This leaves us a with a problem for only the strike shortened seasons. Scanning through the data, it seems a natural cutoff is 30% of games played. Our new pitcher rule

If a pitcher has less than 50 IP, he is eligible only if he has appeared in 30% of his teams games. to avoid a handful of quirks, they also must have at least 30 IP. Hello 1981 Goose Gossage.

To avoid similar quirks with batters, we'll amend that rule for a minimum AB clause. Some teams played 6 games in a season, and even if a batter appeared in all 6 games, we don't want him in the league.

The new rule is that the team must have had at least 70 games on the schedule for their players to be eligible. This is true for batters and pitchers.

These rules are complicated of course. But have no fear, all eligible batters and pitchers will be listed in the standard excel files. You won't have to "do the math" in order to figure out who's eligible, I'll do that for you. However, you need to know the rules in case you want to challenge my own math somehwere along the way.