With all of the talk about limiting innings for starters after a shortened season where no pitcher threw more than 84, I think we should look at how managers have handled it so far. After April 5th, the fifth day of the season, there were 118 games and starters have contributed a feebly 569.2 IP. This comes out to around 4.83 innings per start. Ignoring 2020, in 2019 after five days of the season there were 130 games around the league. And in those games, starters combined for 680.1 innings. After doing the math, this means they threw about 5.23 innings every start, which means that starters accounted for 0.41 more innings in ‘19 compared to ‘21. It’s hard to conclude anything from this but there is definitely a significant difference. However, one factor could be the ERA. After five games of ‘19, starters’ ERA was a low 4.03. This year though, that has risen quite a bit, at 4.38. So it is possible that so far it has been less about pitch counts and more about performance. We can also investigate performances. This year there have been 22 scoreless starts and 28 in ‘19. I looked at the innings per start in these games and found that this year, they have actually pitched a bit more, about 5.62 to 5.6 in 2021 and 2019 respectively. Obviously, it’s way too early to deduce anything from what we’ve seen. But even if we take all of it into account, there is no evidence so far that shows managers are going easier on the innings. I do know that some teams are going to be utilizing a six man rotation which will limit individual innings. And if I had to guess, I would say that there won’t be a huge change in the innings for experienced starters. Where we will see a change is in the younger pitchers and how they could get maxed out at around 120 innings which isn’t present in the data so far.