The way pitching staffs are used in the major leagues has changed drastically over time. Not only do teams carry more pitchers, and groom pitchers to fill specific reliever roles, but we’ve seen a constant downward shift in the amount of innings starting pitchers are allowed to throw.
I enjoyed this a lot. I think the starkest decline is from 2013 to 2023 and it illustrates, for me, the problem with baseball today: the lack of opportunities for starting pitchers to rack up innings and the sheer lack of great, durable starting pitchers. Pitchers today are undoubtedly more talented than ever before. But MLB has a problem as the starting pitcher, part of the romance of baseball for 100 years, degrades before our eyes. It is the optimal strategy to carry 14 pitchers, build a super-pen, have a succession of anonymous guys throwing 100 mph with insane off-speed stuff who are all under 26. Ted Williams can't bat .400 against that. But what is, analytically, the correct thing to do is plainly bad for the entertainment product.
I grew up in the 90s and 00s and it's insane to think how many great workhorse starting pitchers I can think of off the top of my head from that era - Halladay, Schilling, Johnson, Maddux, Clemens, plus guys who would be workhorses by today's standards like Pedro, Cone, and Mussina - and how virtually none exist in 2024. There aren't even pitchers like David Wells or Charles Nagy or Chuck Finley in the league, guy who could throw 200+ innings with relative ease, make an ASG here or there, and fill out a rotation. Ironically, the *only* workhorse left in MLB today is Gerrit Cole, and he's probably not getting into a big league game until June. All of it is downright bizarre if you think about it. And it gets to the incentives and training: young pitchers today are trained from childhood to throw as hard as possible in short spurts. They don't play other sports. They get their first TJ surgeries as a teen. The current regimen does not safeguard the durability of pitchers. For every Denny McClain and Koufax someone throws up - look at the Old Dudes who burned out, har har - there's a Mickey Lolich, a Nolan Ryan, a Don Sutton, a Jim Palmer. Of course, pitching in the 70s was far easier than today, no argument. But it does hit you how radically different baseball got in the 2020s. There will have to be rule changes to save the starting pitcher.
I enjoyed this a lot. I think the starkest decline is from 2013 to 2023 and it illustrates, for me, the problem with baseball today: the lack of opportunities for starting pitchers to rack up innings and the sheer lack of great, durable starting pitchers. Pitchers today are undoubtedly more talented than ever before. But MLB has a problem as the starting pitcher, part of the romance of baseball for 100 years, degrades before our eyes. It is the optimal strategy to carry 14 pitchers, build a super-pen, have a succession of anonymous guys throwing 100 mph with insane off-speed stuff who are all under 26. Ted Williams can't bat .400 against that. But what is, analytically, the correct thing to do is plainly bad for the entertainment product.
I grew up in the 90s and 00s and it's insane to think how many great workhorse starting pitchers I can think of off the top of my head from that era - Halladay, Schilling, Johnson, Maddux, Clemens, plus guys who would be workhorses by today's standards like Pedro, Cone, and Mussina - and how virtually none exist in 2024. There aren't even pitchers like David Wells or Charles Nagy or Chuck Finley in the league, guy who could throw 200+ innings with relative ease, make an ASG here or there, and fill out a rotation. Ironically, the *only* workhorse left in MLB today is Gerrit Cole, and he's probably not getting into a big league game until June. All of it is downright bizarre if you think about it. And it gets to the incentives and training: young pitchers today are trained from childhood to throw as hard as possible in short spurts. They don't play other sports. They get their first TJ surgeries as a teen. The current regimen does not safeguard the durability of pitchers. For every Denny McClain and Koufax someone throws up - look at the Old Dudes who burned out, har har - there's a Mickey Lolich, a Nolan Ryan, a Don Sutton, a Jim Palmer. Of course, pitching in the 70s was far easier than today, no argument. But it does hit you how radically different baseball got in the 2020s. There will have to be rule changes to save the starting pitcher.