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The Padres are making starting pitching cool again.

After the series opener against the Dodgers on Thursday, Padres starters have pitched at least six innings on 46 occasions this season, easily the most in baseball. They've completed seven innings 18 times -- one off the Major League lead. In total, San Diego starters have thrown 443 innings. No team in baseball has more.

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I've got to say, it's been fun to watch. Sure, different teams employ different strategies -- and I wholly understand why some teams might not rely so heavily on their starters to work deep into games. This is the era of bullpen optimization, after all. But from a purely aesthetic standpoint, a baseball game just feels cooler when a starting pitcher is working into the sixth, seventh, eighth inning.

Padres manager Bob Melvin agrees.

"Oh, yeah, I love it," he said Thursday. "But you have to have the guys to be able to do it."

That's the biggest key, of course. The Padres’ decision to ride their starters so heavily is based more on personnel than philosophy. The Padres have a seven-deep group of starting pitchers counting Nick Martinez, who has served admirably in the swingman role. They also have an ailing bullpen and a handful of important relievers on the injured list.

With that context, the Padres have turned to a six-man rotation, which in turn, has given their starting pitchers more rest between starts. In the process, they’ve shortened their bullpen a bit. But if their starters are covering six or seven innings, well, the bullpen’s workload is generally going to be just fine.

"I've really enjoyed the six-man rotation," said right-hander Mike Clevinger. "I've really felt like that extra day between starts has been huge. Just getting in my bullpen work, you're not so much monitoring your pitch count and your intensity. You can really step on it."

Added lefty Sean Manaea: "I always want to go as deep as I can. Having the six-man just makes it a little bit easier to do it, just from a rest perspective."

How so, exactly? According to Clevinger and Manaea, it’s all about the time between starts. There’s flexibility. If you just pitched seven innings and 100-plus pitches, you don’t necessarily have to begin your between-starts routine the very next day. Or, if you’re feeling particularly fresh, there’s room for experimentation during your bullpen session.

"With the amount of innings they pitched, it's a day where they can build back up and then get into their five-day routine of their next start,” Melvin said. “I'm not even sure they even knew how they would feel going with a six-man this year, but they all like it."

That doesn't mean the six-man strategy is here to stay. Attrition will hit the San Diego rotation at some point. Plus, as the games get more important down the stretch, the Padres might look to consolidate. But, for now at least, it’s working exactly the way they hoped it would. 

"At some point in time during the season, you're going to want to get the five best guys you can out there," Melvin said. "But this allows all of them to build up a little bit differently over the course of the season.

"It's like a position player getting time off from time to time and not being out there 30 games in a row. I think it benefits them now and gives us some options as we go along later in the season."