I had a presentation to a prospective client yesterday in which we were one of five corporate banks bidding to finance a large project. Each bank was offering the same pricing and term, so the crux of the presentation was attempting to differentiate our deal from the others. After the presentation, it got me thinking about the Otani situation, and I came up with what my best shot would be. Aside from all the BS about the city and how its a nice place to live, the sports science department, and all that other fluffy stuff, the main selling point in my hypothetical situation would be a commitment by the franchise to employ a 6-man rotation with a "floating" #6 starter.
Using the Blue Jays (who adopted such a set-up in late 2016 for Aaron Sanchez) as the base team, it would work as follows:
For Otani: Start - (off) - DH - RF - DH - (off) Start
Rotation ('18 Blue Jays):
1) Stroman - (Otani - DH)
2) Sanchez - (Otani - off)
3)
Otani
4) Happ - (Otani - off)
5) Estrada - (Otani - DH)
6) Biagini - (Otani - RF)
The "floating" #6 (in this case Biagini) is skipped every few starts when days rest (according to the 2018 schedule) lines up for the other 4 starters not named Otani (i.e. on as close to regular rest as possible). The goal being to have the other starters reach roughly the 30 games started mark (120 games total), while Otani receives
27 starts, and the floater receives 15 (the hypothetical "floater" would likely function best as a quad-A guy, or long reliever type, or hybrid tweener; pre-arb would also function best as the pitcher would likely not get pissy about their lack of innings). This would likely not work out perfectly clean like this, but those are rough numbers in terms of scheduled starts. For a little info on pitcher health and results with a hypothetical six man rotation, this is a good article. (
Would a six-man rotation work?)
In terms of Batting (and Fielding), this proposed setup would allow Otani to play a hypothetical 81 games (27 in RF, 54 at DH), for a projected ~324 plate appearances. For reference, his career high in plate appearances in Japan was 382 (in 2016). He averaged ~80 games as a position player over his five seasons, with only 15% being played as a non-DH. Furthermore to help illustrate, the amount of plate appearances would be similar to the Justin Smoak\Chris Colabello platoon from 2015 (328 PA, 360 PA, respectively).
Roster construction would remain relatively unchanged. I would be inclined to maintain a four man bench (independent of Otani), and a six man bullpen. The GM employing the strategy would have to ensure the rest of their roster was very flexible, meaning the Morales' of the world would have to not exist. Hypothetically, a Steve Pearce would be your DH on the days Otani was off or starting.
That would be how I'd approach it.
