It’s funny, because it wasn’t that long ago (maybe 10 years, or a bit more) when people were talking about how there would never be another 300 win pitcher because no one threw complete games any more.
It took me a few days but I think I know who this Randy Johnson fella is now. He’s a pitcher right?
It makes a little more sense than having a thread about a runner (Michael Johnson?).
Or about a guy who’s just really horny.
Five-man rotations, and a tendency to save a bajillion dollar pitcher, rather than overpitching them, also contributes.
No, no, Michael Johnson is a rookie DE for the Bengals out of Georgia Tech!
I remember how angry I was when the Mariners refused to give RJ a long-term contract because they thought he had a bad back. They ended up trading him for Carlos Guillen, Freddy Garcia, and John Halama. Garcia and Guillen ended up being good players, but at the time it seemed like such a trainwreck of a trade (along the lines w/ Jason Veritek and Derek Lowe for Heathcliff Slocumb).
11 seasons, four straight Cy Youngs, and a World Series title later…
Well, you should have been a LITTLE mad at Randy for whining, sulking and quitting on his team in that last season.
As a professional under contract, he owed it to his teammates and fans to pitch his best to the end. Instead, he went in the tank until they traded him to Houston…. where he suddenly and conveniently remembered how to pitch again.
Eddie Ciccotte would’ve been proud.
Of course, I’m just a TAD prejudiced against him becaue he was such a dick to teammates, fans and media alike, in his too-long stint as a Yankee.
As others have pointed out, 5-man rotations and pitch counts undoubtedly did factor in, but so, too, did the fact that Johnson simply wasn’t a great pitcher as a young player.
- He led the American League in walks in his first three full years in Seattle ('90-'92).
- Through the 1992 season, his career record was only 49-48.
- At the conclusion of the season in which he turned 30 (1994), he only had 81 wins.
A design engineer? I thought we were talking about sports here!
