A year ago, at Spring Training’s starting gun, the two-way player debate made headlines, prompted by the emergence of pitcher/outfielder Shohei Ohtani of the Los Angeles Angels.

That experiment crossed the finish line with decidedly mixed, if not completely underwhelming reactions among most MLB front offices, many of whom were poised to nurture their own Ohtani if the numbers warranted.

They didn’t. He earned AL Rookie of the Year honors, but the talented right-hander’s Tommy John surgery probably put the kibosh on more two-way players sprouting from out of nowhere.

This year, for some reason, Houston Astros players are being hounded by reporters about their opinions on the pointless notion of baseball’s latest selfie stick or host-less award show, the “opener.”

This most recent fad apparently started with the Tampa Bay Rays, who began employing relievers to begin a ballgame and essentially turned several games a week into “bullpen games.” Is there a recorded Statcast measure for Tropicana Field yawns?

Picture a game, this season at Minute Maid Park, with a bullpen regular starting a game for the Astros instead of a starter. Sure, the ‘Stros are blessed with the golden starting rotation arms of Justin Verlander and Gerrit Cole, but there’s a deep-seated, old-school influence propelling Houston’s hard “no” on the opener debate:

None of the Astros’ front office staff or perfectly capable starters want to see Hall of Famer Nolan Ryan doubled over in laughter watching a reliever start a major league game for his hometown team!

Ryan is currently employed by Houston as the executive adviser to owner Jim Crane, and can be seen regularly occupying his regular seat behind home plate. Ryan, of course, is the epitome of the old-school grinding starting pitcher, to whom 300 innings on the year was a can of corn.

These days, parades are planned and statues are erected in local parks if a starter merely kisses 200 innings.

To Ryan, add these names to the list of starters who would have slammed their manager to the turf if they even dared eye the bullpen anytime before the ninth inning: Bob Gibson, Juan Marichal, Jim Palmer, Sam McDowell, Mickey Lolich. There were many more, of course.

But, like superstar free agents still unsigned well into Spring Training, the game has changed; so much so that now there are such things as middle relievers, set-up men, and closers, all of whom have added words like “hold” and “save” to the already stuffed diamond lexicon (looking at you, agents and MLB Player’s Association).

“Old-timers” remember well the days when a starter took the mound with nothing but the expectations that he was put there to finish the game, come hell or high scoring.

Players Close Slam Door on Opener Discussion

Verlander and Cole certainly aren’t old timers, but slap baggy woolen unis on ’em and they both would feel right at home tipping their caps to the well-suited fans at Crosley Field in the 1950s. They were two of the just 13 pitchers in all of baseball who pitched at least 200 innings in 2018.

In fact, Verlander, who finished second to the Rays’ Blake Snell for the AL Cy Young Award, has 24 complete games and 11 seasons of at least 200 innings in his career. Verlander has often said that teams that rely on openers will feel the repercussions in the playoffs.

Even third baseman Alex Bregman, who names Verlander as a key team mentor, echoed the ace right-hander’s opinion on playoff implications of the opener in a recent “Going Deep with Chad and JT” podcast:

“I don’t like it… I just think it is doing too much… Let your guys play. Trust your guys. I don’t think it plays in the postseason. You have to have dominant starting pitching in the postseason.”

“There’s a human element here you start to lose when you start rattling off the best mathematical equation to get the out,” Cole told MLB.com recently, citing the data leading to considering openers.

“I certainly wouldn’t pay for a ticket to watch a math equation. I kind of want to go watch a human interaction, a human competition. There are guys that are really good at this and have been doing this for a long time. I think they should be left alone.”

Giants’ Step

Earlier this week, the San Francisco Giants’ president of baseball operations, Farhan Zaidi, made it known that the team might toy with using an opener in 2019.

Manager Bruce Bochy then said he received a text from Giants’ ace, All-Star pitcher Madison Bumgarner, saying the lefty would walk “right out of the ballpark” if the team used an opener in one of his games.

“I would probably handle it with just as much passion, but I don’t know if I would just walk out,” Cole said, responding to MadBum’s statement.

“I would maybe do it a little bit differently. Madison is going to put his country boots on and go chop a tree down or something afterwards. I don’t know. I’m not Madison. I would not be OK with it, no.”

As far as the Astros adopting the opener as a viable option, the words of the multi-talented singer/actor/painter Martin Mull come to mind: “Remember the folk music scare of the 1960s? That crap almost caught on!”

A year from now, fans will look back at the spring of 2019 and the opener scare that almost caught on.

Mercifully, that scare is an open and shut case.

In Houston, anyway.