Pitch 300 Innings? What a Joke
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by user Harold Friend
There is an unknown factor that everyone knows. That is not a contradiction. It is an unwillingness on the part of baseball fans to consciously acknowledge the fact that baseball in the twenty first century is not the game played by Babe Ruth, Walter Johnson, Lefty Grove, Bob Feller, Warren Spahn, Sandy Koufax, Nolan Ryan, and hundreds of others in the twentieth century. Today's game is as offensive as possible for many reasons. The height of the pitching mound was decreased by 33 1/3% after the 1968 season. The strike zone has decreased, the ball parks are smaller, and the ball is livelier. Improved training methods, innovative medical procedures, and nutritional supplements have produced individuals who are bigger and stronger than ever in the history of the game. And one league does not allow the pitcher to bat. A significant result is that conditions no longer allow starting pitchers to pitch more than six or seven innings most of the time.
There was a time when the best pitchers on a team were the starters. They worked the most innings because logic dictates that a team has a better chance of winning when it uses its best players rather than its lesser players. That is not true today. There is so much strain on pitchers not to make a mistake that managers tend to remove pitchers faster than ever in baseball history, which has led to middle relief men, set up men, and closers. No one will ever again pitch 300 innings in a season, yet until 1980, pitching at least 300 innings was not too unusual. It was in 1980 that Steve Carlton pitched 304 innings for the World Champion Philadelphia Phillies. No one has done it since.
Let us take Babe Ruth, since all the Babe can be accused of by some apologists for Jason Giambi, Barry Bonds, Gary Sheffield, and quite a few other sluggers is that using alcohol, a legal substance more dangerous than many illegal substances, helped Babe bring his game up to the "next level." Right. Imbibing alcohol enhances athletic performance and eating ice cream helps people lose weight. Now, as we all know, Babe Ruth was a pretty good hitter, but we are not talking about Babe Ruth the hitter. We are talking about a young Boston Red Sox southpaw pitcher named Babe Ruth. At the age of 21, pitcher Babe Ruth hurled 323 2/3 innings. At age 22, he worked 326 1/3 innings. Then because he was better as a hitter than he was as a pitcher, Ruth cut down on his pitching and went to play the outfield.
Granted, that was a long time ago, so let's jump to another pretty good left handed pitcher, one whom many consider the greatest lefty, if not the greatest pitcher, of all, Robert Moses "Lefty" Grove. While Grove NEVER pitched 300 innings in a season, he AVERAGED almost 250 innings a season. Still too long ago? Okay, how about the 1960s? Many consider Sandy Koufax to have been the greatest pitcher of all time, but his critics claim that he wasn't around long enough to merit that appellation. You make your choice, but from 1963-1966, Koufax AVERAGED 298 innings a season, surpassing the 300 inning mark in three of those four years. In 1963 Koufax started 40 games (no kidding, he really started 40 games), completed 20, pitched 11 shutout, and hurled 311 innings. In 1965 he started 41 games, completed 27 of them, and pitched 335 innings. In 1966, his last season, he again started 41 games, again completed 27 of them, and pitched 323 innings.
Fine, you say. Koufax, Carlton, and Ruth were among the greats. What about some of the lesser pitchers? Okay, let's take some pitchers who were their team's ace but who were not all time greats. Jim Kaat was a fine pitcher who might be a Hall of Famer some day, but he was not in the same category as Koufax and Carlton (let's not get involved with Ruth, although he probably would have been a Hall of Famer if he remained an injury-free pitcher). Kaat exceeded 300 innings pitched in 1966 and again in 1975. Had enough of lefties? Andy Messersmith, Bob Friend, Dizzy Trout, Bill Voiselle, Johnny Sain, Vern Bickford, and Bobo Newsome were fine pitchers who all had an least one season in which they pitched at least 300 innings. There are many, many more, but the most amazing example was Robin Roberts. From 1950 through and including 1955, Roberts pitched at least 300 innings for six consecutive seasons. And in 1956, he pitched 297 1/3 innings.
Logic indicates that today's pitchers should be the greatest ever, and maybe that is true. Nutritional knowledge, training methods, technology, and medicine are vastly superior than in the past. Pitchers who throw in the low 90s are nothing special. Many hit the mid to high 90s on the radar gun. But the unknown factor prevents most of them from dominating. That factor is that there is direct correlation between attendance, revenue, and offense, a fact that has resulted in creating conditions that will produce more runs. Shutouts don’t bring fans to the ball park. Home runs and offense bring fans to the ball park. Would you rather see Greg Maddux pitch 9 innings of 6 hit ball and allow one or two runs or see Mark McGwire hit three home runs off Greg Maddux? I thought so. Isn't arena baseball great?
References:
http://www.baseball-reference.com/leaders/IP_leagues.shtml http://www.baseball-reference.com/
