In 2017, 238 pitchers had 5 or more starts:
In 2016, 243 pitchers had 5 or more starts:
310 pitchers in total had a start in 2016 and 67 of them had less than 5 starts.
That puts us at… about 11-12 pitchers per team, just like @Leif predicted in his post I quoted earlier.
I’ll grant that it may be more fun if that number could be more like 8-9 while remaining competitive, but let’s at least be on the same page about this.
The goal of adding a 3rd slot is so that teams don’t have to leave pitchers on the bench as much - again, there are about 240 pitchers that start enough to be rostered, and adding a 3rd slot in Ottoneu is not going to increase that number in the MLB. However, adding a 3rd slot will help you not get jammed up on a day you have 3 starters going.
If the system did not allow auctions during the playoffs, how would this be true? Auctions shouldn’t be allowed during the playoffs regardless of an inning cap, now that I’m thinking of it, because that will definitely cause pitcher streaming to decimate the best teams, and that would really stink. I’ll make sure that is implemented and announced separately.
I think this is the fundamental problem. There are 40 roster spots, and carrying Jason Vargas (to pick a random example from this 2016 list) is a less exciting use of a roster spot than picking up Casey Mize. This is the most compelling argument for a rule change that helps reduce the number of pitchers a team has to carry.
I liked @Henry.Woodbury slash @astraea.m.k idea about a weekly starts cap:
I’m happy to spend some portion of November exploring how best to implement this on the lineup page and make it an option for H2H leagues to bring on next year. H2H leagues are naturally going to have a reduction in stashed players because of the urgency of any weekly matchup, but the number of players you are stashing should not have to be 0 in order to compete. That seems contrary to the ethos of Ottoneu Fantasy Baseball.