When it comes to starting pitchers, do some teams prefer quantity over quality?

When it comes to starting pitchers, is more now better?

Sports Illustrated's Tom Verducci wrote about this recently in a season preview column. He sees a trend developing in the sport where there seem to be fewer workhorse pitchers. With fewer pitchers that can give you a lot of innings, teams are using more starting pitchers to cover those innings than ever before.

"Teams now want to divide the work among more and more arms," Verducci writes. "Only 78 pitchers last season worked enough to qualify for the ERA title (162 innings); the rate of 2.6 pitchers per team was the lowest in history. Over the past two years, 14 teams had four pitchers qualify, but more of those teams with stable rotations missed the playoffs (eight) than made it (six). Even the two richest teams in baseball, the Dodgers and Yankees, have embraced this Theory of Big Inventory - essentially using floating 25-man pitching staffs with a stockpile of major-league ready arms.

"It's a winning formula. The Royals won the title last year despite getting fewer innings from their starters than any team in the American League. Kansas City used more pitchers just to win Game 1 of the 2015 World Series (seven) than it did to win the entire seven-game 1985 World Series (six)."

The Orioles had three starters qualify for the ERA title last year, above that 2.6 average. Wei-Yin Chen led the staff with 191 1/3 innings with Ubaldo Jimenez pitching 184 innings and Chris Tillman 173 innings. The 2014 Orioles also had three pitchers do this, but Miguel Gonzalez missed by just three innings of becoming a fourth.

Here is a look at the 2015 AL playoff teams:

* Toronto had four pitchers over 162 innings and eight make five or more starts.
* New York had one starter pitch 162 innings and seven make five or more starts.
* Kansas City had two starters over 162 innings and eight make five or more starts.
* Texas had two throw 162 innings and nine pitchers make five or more starts.
* Houston had three pitchers over 162 innings and nine make five starts or more.

We have now reached the point where if a pitcher can throw 200 or more innings, he will be among the top 15-20 in the league in innings pitched each year.

Number of AL pitchers throwing 200 innings:

2011: 19
2012: 12
2013: 20
2014: 17
2015: 14

In that time, Tillman and Jeremy Guthrie are the only Orioles to do that. Guthrie threw 208 innings in 2011, and Tillman threw 207 1/3 innings in 2014 and 206 1/3 in 2013.

The Orioles rotation was both more stable and better in 2014. That season, O's starters pitched a total of 954 innings to rank 10th in the AL. Last season, O's starters combined to throw 916 innings to rank 13th in the league.

Are the 2016 Orioles gearing up for Verducci's "Theory of Big Inventory." In addition to Tillman, Gonzalez, Jimenez, Kevin Gausman and possibly Yovani Gallardo, they have several other rotation candidates. That list includes Vance Worley, Mike Wright, Tyler Wilson, Odrisamer Despaigne and T.J. McFarland. There is also the potential for Brian Matusz to come out of the bullpen and start, and even Jason Garcia is a possibility, along with minor league pitchers now on the 40-man, including Chris Lee, Chris Jones and Parker Bridwell.

The Orioles do not come up short in the inventory department and those are just pitchers that are already on the 40-man roster.

So has the sport changed as Verducci suggests? With fewer 200 inning pitchers and workhorses, are teams now more concerned with the quantity of their rotation candidates to spread the load as they try to cover as many innings as possible?

Is the day of counting on and/or hoping for five or six pitchers to make the starts all year over?