Los Angeles: How many of the top starting pitchers in baseball today, who are not on the team you root for, can you name at a moments notice? I believe the answer is, not that many. That doesn’t mean there are only a handful of top of the line starting pitchers out there today. But how many can you name?
Today I can only name a few and I see starting pitchers up close and personal every day. I will tell you this, I was always able to name more before the nerds who have ruined this game took over calling the shots in baseball.
The people who decided that starting pitchers should be on a pitch count, never see a batter more that twice in a game and limit their innings to 5 or 6 per game, have made it hard to follow who the really good starting pitchers are. The top 10 pitchers in baseball today only average 6.2 innings. That means a team will need at least 3 more arms out of the chocolate factory to finish the game. What is the chocolate factory in baseball? It is that line from the movie Forrest Gump where he says: “Momma always said life is like a box of chocolates, You don’t know what you’re gonna get.” If your starter is keeping the other team from scoring for 6.2 innings what makes you think he can’t continue to do that for 2.1 more innings?
Bullpens are not always reliable. You may have a lights out closer but the two guys in front of him may have had a bellyache after eating burgers for lunch and so, you don’t know what you’re gonna get. Years ago the guys in the bullpen were marginal pitchers or former starters who were winding down their careers. Today they are specialist from when they played in amateur baseball. I once went to see a high school playoff game and saw a kid warming up on the sideline and asked him if he was the starting pitcher today. He told me,”I’m a closer.” I asked him if he had a plan “B” for his pitching career and he gave me that tilted head stare a puppy gives when he realizes that you don’t speak DOG.
Who was the medical genius who said pitchers can’t throw more than 88 pitches on any one day? Before the nerds took over we knew Bob Gibson, Camilo Pascual La Habana, Cuba who was called Patato Pequeño, (Little potato), Sandy Koufax, Don Drysdale, Tom Seaver, Doc Gooden, Catfish Hunter (30 complete games and 328 innings as a 29 yr old), Steve Carlton and the high-kicking Juan Marichal, Laguna Verde, Dominican Republic, who pitched in one amazing 16 inning 1 run game against the Braves Warren Spahn, 363 wins and 382 complete games who also pitched until age 44. In that game for the Giants, Marichal threw 227 pitches and 42-year-old Spahn threw 201. Imagine them only being allowed to throw 90 pitches that day? Marichal didn’t miss a start following that and usually pitched on 3 or 4 days rest.
These guys pitched complete games. Other than Koufax who only pitched 12 years and retired because of an arthritic elbow, none of them had career ending injuries. Gibson had 255 complete games, Seaver had 231. Max Scherzer in 15 years has 12. He is a HOF pitcher that is only seen for part of every game he pitches. And he goes longer into games than most pitchers today. We know his name because he has won Cy Young awards. Nolan Ryan, 222 complete games and numbers that are off the charts, pitched for 27 years until age 46 and never won a Cy Young award but we remember his name.
The fact that they went the distance made them heroes, legends and we knew their names. How about kids specializing in learning the game, developing baseball instinct and strengthening their arms, without using weights or PED’s so they can throw 140 pitches in a game like Jim Palmer did in his first start in the big leagues?
Then maybe just maybe people will remember their names because they accomplished something, like a complete game pitched.
