Six Days of Rest Is Becoming the New Normal for MLB Starting Pitchers Like Max Scherzer and Gerrit Cole

SI's Tom Verducci shares a few interesting stats showing that starting pitchers are being used more and more

Baseball has changed a lot in the last fifteen years, but perhaps most when it comes to starting pitching. 

If you still believe that pitching on the fifth day means regular rest for a starting pitcher, you're not only wrong when you've been wrong for a lot of years. 

Not since 2014, have the majority of major league starts been made on the fifth day. Go back 15 years and the percentage of starts made on so-called "regular rest" has dropped from 56 percent, to last year where it was forty four percent. 

Now back in 2005, fifteen seasons ago, there were 14 starting pitchers who made a start on so-called regular rest at least twenty four times. 

Last year, that number was zero. The so-called workhorses who pitched the most on the fifth day, Eddie Rodriguez of the Boston Red Sox with twenty three such starts and Shane Bieber of the Cleveland Indians with twenty two. Now, when it comes to regular rest, it's the sixth day, not the fifth. 

MORE SI Insider From Tom Verducci:

SI Insider: Two MLB Pitchers That Could Be In For Bounce-Back Seasons

SI Insider: Four Players Who Would've Missed Opening Day Are Now Ready - If and When MLB Begins Its Season

SI Insider: Anthony Rendon Has the Heart of a Champion