And don’t answer “because that’s how they’re trained in the minors.” My question is more “Why aren’t they trained for endurance?”
With all the strength training techniques that are available nowadays, I’d think the opportunity would be greater today to develop complete-game pitchers than there was in the past. Granted, the closer has become de rigeur in ninth innings these days, but even seven or eight innings is a push for starting pitchers today. And on top of that, every big league team has a five-man rotation, while once upon a time, four-man rotations were common. Logically, a major league manager should want to keep middle relievers fresh for when they’re needed rather than develop six-inning starters and make the long bullpen a part of his general game strategy.
I’m not talking about Old Hoss Radbourne-Cy Young-Christy Mathewson-Walter Johnson type endurance, which was obviously a relic of the dead ball era. But what stops coaches from thinking today’s top pitchers can pitch Bob Feller-Warren Spahn-Sandy Koufax-Catfish Hunter-Steve Carlton-Tom Seaver type innings?
And is the increased reliance on long relief a good thing for major league teams? I can’t see how. Especially when a roster spot is taken up with a fifth regular starter.
Because those guys were freaks of nature even during their own time. The rate of arm injuries back in the 60s and 70s was absolutely astronomical. So what you had were teams putting pitchers through the grinder and the ones that could hack it were the ones like Tom Seaver, etc. You don’t hear about the ones that burnt out early in the careers and were never heard from again. With so much money invested in pitchers nowadays, it becomes a lot more difficult for teams to justify a “toss 'em in to the water and see who survives” approach to handling pitchers.
The other one I’ve heard, and I think is a reason, is that baseball just isn’t as popular among kids anymore. Long toss is an excellent tool to build arm strength at a young age. Possibly the best. Kids used to do a lot of long toss, but now they’re more likely to be kicking a soccer ball around instead of playing ball in their free time so you lose that development at a young age.
My guess (and that’s all that it is) is that back in the olden days, players used to play through minor injuries. Nowadays, however, teams have a lot more invested in maintaining the health of their players. In addition, the players themselves, being able to make a lot more than their predecessors did (and having more clout than their predecessors) are a lot more averse to risking their careers by playing through minor injuries or fatigue.
Here’s a cool site that gives year by year stats for everything. The one I’m linking to is the yearly IP leader http://www.baseball-reference.com/leaders/IP_leagues.shtml
I did some really lame trending on that data (I used Excel’s LINEST function if anyone is curious), and if I did it right, I think it shows that the number of innings pitched in a year by the innings leader has dropped something like 40 - 50 innings since the 1960s-1970s. Which we already knew. So thanks to me for that.
Maybe more interesting, there was a recent article in Slate discussing the limits of baseball pitching: http://www.slate.com/id/2116402/. The article indicates that pitchers are, and have been, throwing at the mechanical limits of their elbows. The article also indicates that training to strengthen these joints is difficult. You can strengthen the muscles, but that only goes so far. It’s the tendons and ligaments that fail, and those are difficult to improve. Also, look at Greg Maddux, one of the most consistent high innings pitched guys lately. He doesn’t strike me as particularly muscled.
So why did the guys in the 70s pitch so many more innings? I think the genetic freaks argument is right on. But it seems to me that the rate of genetic freaks should be about constant. In other words, why don’t today’s genetic freaks pitch as many innings as their predecessors? I think the reason is an increased awareness of pitch counts. Rob Neyer at ESPN.com used to write incessantly about pitch counts, and how, in his opinion, managers who ignored them were idiots. I say “used to” because Neyer has gone to the dark side of the for-pay ESPN InSider so I don’t read his articles anymore.
One last thought before I hit submit: are off-speed pitches more prevalent than they were in the days of the pitchers mentioned by cmkeller? I understand that the curve is much harder on the elbow than a fastball or change-up. Could this be leading to faster decline?
I think there are just as many genetic freaks, but we jus don’t know who they are. The only way we used to find them was to abuse legions of young arms and see who could still pitch when they were 30. Since you can’t tell who’s going to keep strong and who’s going to crack until the pitcher shows up with a debilitating injury, everyone is treated more gingerly nowadays since people have more invested.
Well, more importantly is the idea of coasting. Coasting meant that a pitcher is only pitching at 70-80% effort and is easier on the arm. The problem is that nowadays it’s harder to coast.
Think about this. It’s recognized that it’s easier to pitch in the NL and a pitchers are less stressed in that league because you’ve got pitchers batting and it’s an easy out.
But back in the 70s, most shortstops and second basemen couldn’t hit worth a damn either. So that’s two more easy outs and it’s that much easier on the pitcher. But now, you’ve got a ton of shortstops and two-baggers that can pop 20-25 homeruns as there’s no longer a bias against bigger middle infielders.
Also, watch some footage of a game back in the 70s. Guys are up there hacking at the first or second pitch. Plate discipline, the importance of walks and OBP, etc. were practically unheard of, much less of the modern strategy of deliberately running up a pitcher’s pitch count to get him out of the game faster.
Add all that up, and you’ve got a bunch of pitchers, especially in the AL, with practically no easy outs in the lineup, with somewhat smaller ballparks, against teams that make it a policy to run up his pitch count and you’ve got a guy who has to pitch far more pitches in the inning at near 100% effort. That makes for someone who’s going to tire faster.
Used to be a pitcher had a fast ball, a change-up, a curve and a “dinky curve” (now known as a slider). The curve put the most stress on an arm, but it was primarily used as a set-up pitch to get the batter off balance.
Then pitchers started coming up with fork balls, split finger fast balls, two finger curves, three finger curves, etc. The interesting thing is, almost all these pitches are thrown with either the fast ball, or the curve ball, arm and wrist motion.
So, in addition to a pitcher throwing any variety of fast balls, he is now also probably throwing 50% breaking balls, instead of just one or two per batter. No wonder they all have arm trouble.
And let’s not forget, the pitcher for whom Tommy John surgery was named pitched in the majors in the 1960s and 70s.
In googling for historic pitch count information, I came across this article at hardballtimes.com by Steve Treder. The point of the article is that using pitch counts is not a good thing, but he does say this about our topic here:
The article includes pitch count estimates from many years past which many of you may find interesting.
You’ll get a host of explanations for this, but it seems to me that there’s a whole complex of factors involved:
[ul]
[li]Young players throw a lot less than many of their counterparts in previous generations, building up less arm strength. When I was kid 30 years ago, we played baseball pretty much all day every day during the warmer months of the year. I never see kids playing pickup games any more – a couple of hours a week of practice and games in organized leagues is about all they do.[/li][li]Amateur players use aluminum bats almost exclusively, making it more difficult for pirchers to be successful at the amateur level throwing inside and challenging hitters, causing them to nibble more and throw more balls and hence more pitches per plate appearance.[/li][li]There are fewer easy outs at the major league level. A variety of analysts have pretty convincingly established that the average level of ability in the majors has risen over the course of the last century; that doesn’t mean that the best players now are necessarily better than the best players of a century ago, but it does mean that the gap between the best and the average and between the best and the worst is much narrower than it once was. This means pitchers are having to work harder and pitch more carefully to every batter instead of being able to let up somewhat against relatively weak batters.[/li][li]The conventional wisdom regarding pitcher usage has changed significantly in the last 25 years, leading managers to be quicker to go to the bullpen. Forty years ago, a tired starter was often still a better option than anybody in the bullpen, since most of those guys were in the bullpen in the first place because they weren’t as good as the starters. These days, many relievers specialize in that role and are able to pitch as well, or nearly so, as the starters, just not for as long. [/li][li]The knowledge that they likely won’t be expected to go nine innings may lead starters to throw harder/exert themselves more in the early innings instead of attempting to hold something back for the late innings.[/li]
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