Yankees vs. Rays: What history says about pitchers on short rest as Gerrit Cole, Tyler Glasnow play Game 5 - CBS Sports

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Friday's ALDS Game 5 between the Yankees and Rays will decide who advances to face the Astros in the ALCS. Notably, the decisive tilt will also feature starting pitchers going on short rest. Ace Gerrit Cole goes for the Yankees on three days' rest, and fellow right-hander Tyler Glasnow takes the bump for Tampa Bay just two days after pitching five innings in Game 2. 

Neither has ever before made a start on short rest, which means we're flying without instruments to an extent. The only thing we can do is evaluate how starting pitchers have fared throughout recent history on short rest. This is discussion is germane only to Cole for a couple of reasons: 

• Glasnow will almost certainly not be making a traditional start and likely won't even make it one full time through the Yankees' order. Maybe he's not quite an "opener" in Game 5, but it's hard to imagine that manager Kevin Cash lets him go more than two innings. That's especially the case since fellow starter Blake Snell is also available to give Cash an inning or three. 
• Glasnow has on 10 occasions in his career made a relief appearance on two days' rest, and that's in essence what he'll be doing in Game 5. 

For those reasons, the historical models don't really apply to what's probably going to be asked of Glasnow on Friday night. Cole, however, figures to be asked to make a more traditional short-rest start, which likely means five innings or so. 

The good news for the Yankees is that Cole has been preparing for this possibility since his Game 1 start, so he didn't have to adjust his routine with little notice. That said, history suggests that Cole may be in for a significant decline in performance. Here's how starting pitchers have fared on the normal four days of rest versus three days of rest since the beginning of the wild-card era -- i.e., 1995 and onward. That starting point gives us a large data sample while also being sufficiently clear of the days of the four-man rotation. As well, the potency of modern offenses are for the most part baked into this range. Now here are the numbers for all such starts across MLB over the span in question: 

Rest between starts	Starts	ERA	K/BB ratio	Opponents' OPS
Three days (1995-2020)	1,984	4.92	1.85	.792
Four days (1995-2020)	61,037	4.39	2.24	.754

As you can see, that's broad-based decline in all phases. The ERA jumps by more than half a run, and in related matters pitchers on three days' rest have been worse at the command-and-control level and when it comes to limiting base runners and power off the bat. Also worth noting is that it's typically the best pitchers who are pressed into short-rest duty, which means the short-rest population in those numbers above is likely better overall then the normal-rest population. Still and yet, the performance decline is significant. 

Now let's see if anything changes when we confine the samples to just the last decade, or from 2011-20. 

Rest between starts	Starts	ERA	K/BB ratio	Opponents' OPS
Three days (2011-2020)	459	4.97	2.08	.797
Four days (2011-2020)	20,676	4.16	2.72	.735

Over the last decade, the decline from full rest to three days' rest has been even more precipitous. None of this is especially surprising. Contemporary starting pitchers are trained to pitch every fifth day at most, and pitchers are famously creatures of routine. Topple all of that stuff that's been hardwired over the years, and they're not likely be themselves on the mound. 

Maybe Cole as a truly elite starting pitcher has the stuff to resist these trends. Manager Aaron Boone can certainly help matters by allowing Cole at most two trips through the opposing batting order. Boone can get some length from Deivi Garcia and Luis Cessa if necessary, and Aroldis Chapman and Zach Britton will of course be available for high-leverage outs in the late frames. The question is whether Cole in his first taste of short rest can get the ball to them with minimal damage on the board. The past says it will be difficult. 

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