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Of the 17 pitchers in baseball history who have struck out 3,000 batters in their careers, only four have also walked fewer than 1,000. Three of them -- Curt Schilling, Greg Maddux, and Pedro Martinez -- are of recent vintage. They pitched in a new game when hitters struck...
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This column seems to belong in a universe where pitchers throw a maximum of 170 innings per season and never get hurt, never have arm problems, never “burn out.”
“Pitchers today would not be able to suddenly throw 300 innings in a year if they long-tossed daily or simply ignored the twinges in their elbows and shoulders.” Why not? The column doesn’t say.
Because pitchers are throwing max effort for 5-6 innings now, in order to get out lineups built for slugging. Plus, bullpens are build to enable this style of play. Could a pitcher some day come out and throw 300 innings? Not really. First of all, with 5 man rotations, you get 32 starts. Even averaging 8 innings, you come in just under 250 innings. Also pitchers would never get the chance. If he got hurt, especially if he had a long term contract, the Manager would be shamed and probably fired. Heck, they get shamed today for leaving a guy out there throwing 110 pitches. It’s a combination of pitching style, culture, money and fear.
Who knows, maybe there’s a modern day Chuck Tanner coming around the pike who will go back to 4 man rotations. Doubt it, but it could happen. When Tanner went to the 3 man rotation, everyone said he was crazy. And he was. It worked for a short time (basically during 1972, and his main innings guy was a knuckleballer). But all those innings added up & it was destined to be a very short term strategy. I think the same would be true if someone went to a 4 man rotation. With off days, it could be pulled off for a period of time, with some spot starters. But, if it happened at all, it would be with a team that didn’t really have a 5th starter and was trying to go all in during a stretch run. And still, pitchers would likely be throwing 5-7 innings. So 300 innings will never happen again. 250 is about the max you could expect to see. Note, Verlander threw 251 innings in 2011. Halladay had 250 innings the year before. Those are the most IP in the last 10 years. Scherzer had 220 innings pitched last year, which was the top. There were several around 200 innings. That’s where we are.
So I think Joe does answer the question about why no one can throw 300 innings, just not in so many words. It is pretty simple, in the 60s/70s teams relied on Darwinism to find pitchers who could throw 300 innings+. They sent guys out there as 4 man rotations for 20 complete games or more and some guys who were lucky with their body type (especially the all important shape of their acromion) could do it indefinitely (Jenkins, Ryan, Seaver) and some guys could do it for a couple years and then got hurt and were never the same.
Today teams would never do that, because when you are paying a guy $10 million or more a year, you are more careful with your commodity. When you are paying him $60K, you figure you can just replace him with some other 22 year old kid who throws hard.
I would note that I think Joe misses a probable additional reason that Jenkins didn’t get hurt, and that is that fastballs, no matter how hard they are thrown, are easier on your arm than breaking pitches.
The more things change the more they stay the same department:
I forget where I read this (I think it was a Bill James Abstract from the early 80’s) but an article talked about how Christy Mathewson, in his book “Pitching in a Pinch” said he took it easy at times (what Joe calls modulation) and bore down when he had to. Bill said that this couldn’t work in the contemporary era (circa 1980) because everyone is a home run threat. The current era has turned it up to 11, but the trend was becoming obvious almost 40 years ago.
And I think Brent’s comment on the Darwinian methods of MLB management of the time is right on the nose.
So 1980 Oakland A’s baseball is sort of my favorite baseball and is sort of the answer to why we can’t have pitchers throw 300 innings anymore. Rick Langford, Mike Norris, Matt Keough, Steve McCatty, and Brian Kingman. All threw 200+ innings, led by Langford, who threw 28 complete games, including 22 in a row. In pursuit of a 20th win Langford pitched a 10 inning loss in the last game of the season… on two days rest. He finished the year with 290 innings in 35 games/33 starts. Norris also started 33 games and finished with 284 innings; he maybe should have won the Cy Young that year. All these guys were in their 20s, and none of them was able to sustain much of a career after this. Billy Martin used them up, and if they couldn’t get 300 in a season, no one will.
But look at ’85-’88 in B-Ref and one interesting thing pops out. The entire top-ten innings leader-board for each of those years bests 250 innings.
Augh! Of course 1980 included Steve Carlton — 304 innings in 38 starts with only 13 complete games. Maybe it is possible. We just need a late/mid career Hall of Fame pitcher (he’s in it to win it now and isn’t worried about surviving for future seasons) working for a contender without other positive options. Justin Verlander? Nah! Not gonna happen again.
And if you add postseason innings in (and why wouldn’t you, they certainly add to your arm’s burden), Carlton pitched another 20+ innings in 1980 and 1983 (which pushed him over the 300 innings for a year. again some guys just had arms that let them do it, most don’t).
1985, adding in the postseason innings, Saberhagen pitched 260 innings, Leibrandt 270 innings, Jackson 234, and Black 220 innings. In a 5 man rotation, that seems about as much as one could probably pitch. And even with the extra round of the playoffs, I can’t see even a innings bulldog getting to that now. In 2016, Lester threw 240 innings total and Arrieta threw 220 innings total. That is about the max for a modern pitcher, and that is only if they reach the WS.
“Ferguson Jenkins hit more corners than sunlight” That is a great line.
Agreed. Brilliant.
“I’ve spoken with all of them at one point or another (with the obvious exception of Carlton)”
Longtime reader, and forgive me if I’ve missed something, but why is this obvious? He’s still alive so I’m actually quite surprised you haven’t spoken with him. Is there a story there?
Carlton was notorious for not speaking to the press.
I have noticed that the last few Baseball 100 entries have not had pictures (love the series – pictures or not).
The term for it is Survivorship Bias. When you ask everyone to pitch 300 innings per season, those who can’t don’t, and you are left with those who can. Then you can draw some nice conclusions about how they were Real Men or whatever. Really, they are the 15% whose arms didn’t explode from the expectations.
I’ve been a little surprised that some enterprising yet cold-blooded franchise hasn’t tried this as a strategy by now. Draft pitchers and have them throw and throw and throw. Those who can’t pitch 250 innings and/or 140 pitches in a game will get injured or have Dead Arm a la Felix Hernandez. But if you end up with three or four who can? Might be a pretty nice advantage to have. And you can burn through those who can’t to log those spare innings. Not saying it’s a nice strategy on a population level, but I’d be surprised if a lot of competitive people/pitchers would not bet on themselves to be able to pull it off at an individual level. Maybe some Self-Serving Attribution Bias will help with that 😛
I’d be curious to see the attrition rate of pitchers in that era compared to the current decade.
It sure seems like today that there are a lot of injuries, a lot of Tommy John surgeries, and so on, and while I’ve been watching baseball since the late 70s, I don’t personally notice pitchers being more durable now than they were back then.
I’m sure someone has studied this. I know the injury nexus theory posed that an innings jump from one year to the next foretold a major injury, and that throwing a lot of innings prior to age 22 or 24 (?) was bad.
I’m not sure there is enough evidence to say that organizations or managers were just purposely burning through pitchers knowing that some would excel and the rest would have their careers destroyed. Maybe there is evidence, but I can’t seem to find any.
Thanks for the Post Joe. I was 15 years old when I met Fergie. He was the guest of honour at a Baseball Banquet honouring my Midget Aged (14-15 aged) Ontario Championship Team in 1984. My team North Bay beat his hometown team Chatham in the Championships. It was the lowest level of ball by city size in the Province. My trophy with his signature still adorns my Man Cave. My wife still is unsure why the puny thing remains …. but for that day, Jenkins made us feel like we were real MLBers who had just won the World Series. It’s a great memory and I’ll always be proud of our line Canadian HOF till Walker joins him. Thanks again. Ps I was a Nolan Ryan fan