I have followed MLB since about 1956 by buying baseball cards, by listening to baseball games on the radio, by subscribing to The Sporting News and reading whatever box scores I could find. But how things have changed over the years, including pitching. One of the biggest changes has to do with starting pitching.
Starting pitchers used to pitch and hit back in the day. They would start every fourth day but over time the starting rotation changed to four to five. Recently some teams have gone to six day rotations and it is not that uncommon nowadays for games to be pitched totally by relief pitchers. Relief pitchers back then were “injured” starters or starters that for one reason or another had become ineffective.
Complete games by starters were expected back then and when the starter was removed from a game it was considered a bad start or the pitcher had suffered an injury. Today, if you go six innings and allow three runs or less it is a quality start. The statistic was created in 1985 by sportswriter John Lowe to measure a pitcher’s effectiveness at keeping their team in the game.
Back then the players had to have jobs during the off-season and did little or nothing to stay in shape but yet when spring training started they worked their butts off to be ready to go. The entire team went to visiting away spring training games unlike today when veterans get to stay back and let the youngsters ride the busses to the away games. Yet MLB continues to charge high ticket prices to attend these games but that is a whole different story. Starting pitchers cranked it up and by the time spring training was nearing its end, the starting pitchers were throwing complete games.
Starting pitchers, particularly those that are perceived as “Aces” get paid big bucks but even they seldom pitch a complete game. Complete games are becoming a lost art in MLB due to pitch counts and analytic data that seems to indicate that pitching to a batting order 2 or 3 three times improves the odds so dramatically for hitters that relief pitchers are brought in to give batters a different look. Then there is the point that relief pitchers are basically “failed starters”, so why turn the game over to them, but, that too is whole other rabbit hole that we won’t go down today. So I gotta ask, why pay these starters such big bucks if they are pitching fewer innings now days. Yet with all the precautions, starting pitchers seem to be getting injured at a higher rate than years ago when they were not in as good a shape and the facilities weren’t as good.
Looking at the Minnesota Twins and how their starting pitchers have fared over the years points out some interesting facts. The report will show the Twins starters with 30 or more starts in a season and it has been done 127 times and continues to be done on a semi-regular basis. That said the most recent Twins lefty to get 30 or more starts was Francisco Liriano back in 2010. It’s hard for me to fathom that the Twins had not had a starting pitcher with 35 or more starts in the last 27 seasons, the last to do it was Brad Radke when he did it in back-to-backs seasons in 1996-1997.
The most starts in franchise history in one season is shared by MLB Hall of Famers Walter Johnson with 42 starts and 38 complete games while throwing 307 innings in 1910. The other is Jim Kaat with 42 starts and 7 complete games while pitching 264.1 innings in 1965. Kaat also had 41 starts in 1966. Note that HOF Bert Blyleven has 35 or more starts 7 times for the Twins between 1971-1975 and 1986-1987. Incredible numbers for these work-horse pitchers to be sure. Just as an FYI, there have been just three major league pitchers with 35 or more starts since 2010, they are Miles Mikolas for the Cardinals in 2023, Jhoulys Chacin for the Brewers in 2018, and David Price for the Red Sox in 2016. You can see this report here.
Looking at the teams in both leagues to see how many times their pitchers have had 35 or more starts in a season between 1961-2024 shows some interesting results too. I am not at all surprised that the Dodgers would have the most but I am surprised at the teams in the 16 thru 22 range which is the lowest ranked teams that have been around since 1961, the other eight teams are new since 1969 or later. I was surprised to see teams like the Braves, Yankees, and Indians/Guardians in this range. You can check it out for yourself by going here.
John,
Love the stats on Jim Kaat. His durability was both a plus and a minus for his entrance into the HOF. Never should have taken as long for his recognition. The minus part was that his durability somewhat dragged his stats in his waning years. Great guy. It’s too bad we don’t get to hear his analysis on a regular basis anymore.
BTW, your first paragraph describes exactly how I became a baseball fan as a kid including TSN!