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An interesting piece in today's SF Chronicle:
Here's a remedy you might not have heard for the pitch-count madness: Start the closer. Let him work an inning or two. Then bring in the starter, the better to let him finish.
Doug Melvin, the Milwaukee general manager, swears he'd be conducting that experiment if the Brewers weren't such viable contenders. "I'm talking specifically about starters who consistently pitch six or seven innings," Melvin said. "It just makes sense to have your best pitchers, the ones you're paying the most money, working those pressure innings."
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That's a radical approach, but it reflects widespread disgust among those from past eras. "Pitch counts are absurd," said Ron Darling, who spent five of his 13 seasons with the A's. "Mentally, you're training pitchers to look over their shoulder for the next guy to bail them out, and then you have the 12th- or 13th-best pitcher on your team coming in for important outs. That doesn't make sense."
One of the most respected pitchers of the 1980s, Jack Morris, said, "I'm not even sure I could pitch today. I'd probably want to be a reliever. As a starter, you have no chance of controlling your destiny. You can have a great game and not be able to finish it. I trust me more than I trust a reliever."
As for Jim Kaat, who had 180 complete games in a 25-year career, "We were on a performance count, not a pitch count," he said. "A pitch count would have hurt my development."
How did it come to this? It's wise not to dwell on those early-century iron men. In the days before Babe Ruth ushered in the lively-ball era (1920), the "spitball" and other ball-scuffing methods were legal. Pitchers tended to use the same ball - brown-colored, difficult to see, heavily doctored and thoroughly dead - inning after inning. A typical home run king in those days was Frank "Home Run" Baker, who slugged nine in 1914 - and led the American League.
More relevant are comparisons to the '50s, '60s and '70s, when pitchers' endurance matched the game's ever-growing emphasis on scoring. There was no better example than the classic 1963 matchup between the Giants' Juan Marichal and the Braves' Warren Spahn, each going the distance in a 16-inning game that ended on Willie Mays' homer. Marichal threw 227 pitches that night, and there was a point when his catcher, Ed Bailey, told him, "Don't let them take you out. Win or lose, this is great."
Exactly. It was great. Back then, pitchers were conditioned to finish games. It was the hallmark of their upbringing, their time in the minor leagues and every big-league start they made. Nobody had an eye on the bullpen, because chances are, nobody was warming up. Marichal made his next start on time (he wound up leading the league with 3211/3 innings that year), and as Steve Hirdt noted at the Elias Sports Bureau, "Pitchers of the generations up to Marichal's had a belief that 'This game is mine.' The idea of doing permanent harm to a pitcher's arm didn't come into anyone's mind."
Defenders of the pitch count point to how drastically the game has changed over the years, and that is undeniably true. Shrinking strike zones have removed the high strike from a pitcher's repertoire. Most new ballparks are a hitter's dream, and despite all denials from Major League Baseball, the balls have been "juiced" for years. Lineups are more loaded with power hitters, particularly in the American League, with the DH. Teams are highly sensitive to their financial investments, and the players' union encourages the idea of two or three vitally important relief specialists per team.
As much as anything, though, the pace of the game has changed. I once asked Leonard Koppett (the sage historian who passed away in 2003) why games of the past were so routinely played in two hours. "They didn't have lights," he said. Pitchers worked quickly, batters went up there hacking, only a minute or so passed between half-innings, and it was all very tidy. Pitchers are infinitely more deliberate today. They require more pitches to get through an inning and the hitters, as a whole, aren't nearly as aggressive. In the era of on-base percentage, it's downright heroic for a batter to be up there taking pitches for a 3-and-1 count.
One thing hasn't changed at all: the simple act of a man throwing a baseball as hard as he can. Watching 60-year-old films of the NFL or college basketball, you wonder if it's even the same sport. There is no difference whatsoever between Matt Cain unloading a fastball to Ryan Howard and Bob Feller doing the same to Ted Williams.
The crucial factor is that pitchers of past eras were groomed to pitch nine innings. Perhaps the most famous pitching coach of all time, Johnny Sain, spent decades encouraging his pitchers to throw every day - not hard, necessarily, simply to keep the arm loose. If your job security depends on finishing a game - with 160 pitches, if that's what it takes - then you don't think twice about it, nor does your manager, general manager or owner. The act becomes as mundane as covering first base or laying down a bunt.
Now that teams are deeply settled into the era of caution, it would be ridiculous for the Giants, or any other team, to suddenly scrap the "setup man" and demand excessive pitch counts of their starters. Restoring pitchers' dignity would require a long-term process, extending all the way to the lower minors, perhaps a three-year program designed to gradually build durability throughout the system. With a four-man rotation, fewer pitchers on the staff and devaluation of the setup man - pretty much a joke on many teams - teams could make infinitely better use of a 25-man roster.
Morris questions whether there's any value to contemporary thought, saying, "I think it's proving over time that they aren't really saving anybody. Guys are getting hurt just as much today as they were before, if not more. So this whole theory about saving their arms, I ain't buying it. I think kids have to throw more, and the more they throw, the stronger they'll get. In time, I think it will go back to what it was for 100 years of baseball."
Still, Kaat wonders, "What organization is going to have the guts to go down to the lower minors and have a four-man rotation and forget about counting pitches and let them figure out how to pitch? I think a lot of them want to. It's a combination of agents, the money in the game today, and fear."
I wouldn't put it past Tony La Russa to lead the way, with St. Louis or some other team. The most appropriate setting might be the American League, where the DH eliminates the necessity of pinch-hitting for the pitchers. Then again, it could happen right here in San Francisco.
When you think about it, the Giants are in ideal position. They have Lincecum and Cain in position to be complete-game mainstays within a year or two. They have Tim Alderson, Madison Bumgarner and at least a half-dozen other top prospects just beginning their professional careers. Perhaps it's the type of thinking that escapes the team's current management. Perhaps fear will continue its oppressive reign.
I'm betting a revolution will come, somewhere, and it will be beautiful.
A true workhorse
Robin Roberts was a workhorse starter who crystallized his reputation during the Philadelphia Phillies' stretch drive in 1950. In the season's final week, he started the first game of a doubleheader on Wednesday, lasting five innings, then came back the following day to pitch the full nine innings in the second game of another doubleheader, each against the New York Giants. With two days' rest, he was asked by manager Eddie Sawyer to pitch the do-or-die game against the Dodgers on Sunday. The 24-year-old right-hander went the distance, getting a single to open the pennant-clinching rally in the 10th. Three starts in five days, but Roberts' performance had no lasting effect on his arm. These were his innings-pitched totals over the next five years (each with at least 21 wins and 22 complete games):
Year IP
1951 315
1952 330
1953 3462/3
1954 3362/3
1955 305
Arms of iron
Most of this will shock today's pitchers, while sending their coaches into therapy, but here are some standard-setters in the realm of durability:
-- New York Giants pitcher Joe McGinnity, known as "Iron Man," didn't start pitching in the major leagues until he was 28. Five times, he pitched both ends of a doubleheader. He worked an astounding 434 innings in the 1903 season, and over his 10-year career racked up 247 wins and 314 complete games. Get this, though: Wandering through the minors until he was 52, McGinnity collected 204 more wins.
-- It's remarkable enough that on May 1, 1920, Brooklyn and Boston played a 1-1 tie that lasted 26 innings. Incredibly, pitchers Leon Cadore and Joe Oeschger each went the distance. Historians estimate that Cadore threw 345 pitches, Oeschger 319.
-- Allie Reynolds, a hardy starter throughout his career with the Yankees, pitched occasional relief in all of his 13 seasons. From 1947 through '53, Reynolds had seven wins and four saves in World Series play.
-- In a 16-inning, complete-game win against Baltimore in 1962, Washington's Tom Cheney threw 228 pitches.
{utriangle} Nolan Ryan (above), known as much for his walks as his strikeouts, routinely surpassed 150 pitches as his career progressed (27 years, 222 complete games and 5,386 innings pitched). In 1974, according to beat writers in attendance, Ryan threw 259 pitches in a 12-inning win over Kansas City.
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