I apologize in advance if I am misinterpreting what you are saying, but when managers refer to shortening the game they are usually talking about having a dominant closer and/or set up man who makes the game 7-8 innings instead of 9. They are not talking about removing starters early. Again, I apologize if I misinterpreted what you wrote. Looking at just the months of May - June(47-33 record), the starts break down like this <5 innings 9 5 innings 20 6 innings 31 7+ innings 20 Going through there were 13 starts where the pitcher did not reach either a minimum 7 innings or 90 pitches. Of those, 3 were starts where Sheets or Capuano had to be removed because of injury. One was a spot start where Villanueva, who was not stretched out to start, had to replace Capuano at the last minute. That leaves the following starts, 4/23, 4/27, 5/11, 5/13, 5/14, 5/18, 5/23, 6/8, and 6/10. Looking at game logs only a couple of those were a case where the starter might have been removed too soon. Looking through the games it was alarming to see how many 6 inning, 95+ pitch games there were.