Pitchers durability Answer this baseball buffs?

Question

How could the pitchers in the 70's and early 80' starts over 40 games for over 20 years, and hardly ever tail off. Where as today's pitchers pitch around 30 to 33, are very lucky to pitch 20 seasons, and always tail off, as well as have a few ijury plauged seasons. The exception being Roger Clemens. There are always exeptions but the difference is pretty drastic when you think about it. The old school guys also completed over 20 games no problem...today we are lucky if they finish 5! Don't just tell me the game is played differently. These old guys that pitched all these games hardly got injured. Phil Niekro, Gaylord Perry ect. Mabye that's just what it takes to be a Hall of Fame pitcher and there is an absence of pitching talent nowdays. Most wins in National Leauge last year: 16
What do you think?

Answer 1

There isn't an absence of pitching talent, in fact there are quite a few good ones. What happened to today's pitchers can be summed up in two words; weight training. When Ron Darling, who pitched on the Mets 1986 World Series championship team, was in college, Sports Illustrated did an article on him where he talked about how certain pitches that appear to be hittable are in fact "out pitches" that would stay in the park so the Outfielders could catch them. It worked because very few players trained with weights during the off season. But when players who had weight trained regularly, like Bo Jackson, Frank Thomas, Jose Canseco, Mark McGwire came along, a lot of those "out pitches" traveled at least 5 to 10 feet farther and sometimes as much as 50 feet farther. As a result, instead of being catch-able fly outs on or just in front of the warning track, they went over the fence for home runs. Baseball is a zero-sum game in the battle of pitcher vs hitter, and if the hitters are hitting more balls into the seats, pitcher's stats will be higher as a result. I think that if either Willie Mays or Henry Aaron had been on the kind of weight training program the NFL players of that era used, both players would have hit more home runs than Sadaharu Oh's 868 and both may have exceeded 1000, which would have made the current Barry Bonds chase a moot point

Answer 2

You make some good points but there are some explanations for some of your statements. First of all, in the 1970's there were only 24 teams that made up MLB and baseball was not starving for better pitching, most every team had solid pitching. In those days a starting pitcher would go 7 to 9 innings and usually would wind up with a win or a loss, while today's pitchers go 5 to 7 innings and have many more no decisions. Today's game is much more specialized when compared to the game in the 1970's. In the 1970's you very seldom saw any team use more than two or three pitchers a game while today it is not uncommon to see four, five, or even more in a game. Your durability issues are somewhat off base. While there were many pitchers that would throw 300 innings in a year there were many problems that came from that and careers were shortened. Koufax done at age 32 with arm problems, Tommy John and others. The major problem today is that too many 19, 20, and 21 year old pitchers are coming to MLB and their arms are not ready. Players like Felix Hernandez, Prior, Wood and others all went down at a young age. In the 1970's there were very few pitchers in MLB under the age of 23. Also, a Long fly ball out in the 1970's are flying over the fence today and this is driving up the ERA for all pitchers. You don't want to hear this but the game today is different than it was in the 1970's.

Answer 3

First off all, it is hard to compare the players of old to todays game. Any player in any sport today runs far deeper than just getting a talented player. Sports is a business now, the player is an investment.

Teams won't throw a starter for a full 9 innings because it's a great risk and that's why pitchers don't usually go for entire games to protect them from injury. Now days you have solid closers so you can save your starter from overthrowing. So yeah, you won't see much pitchers throwing complete games. The only guarenteed way a pitcher will keep throwing the entire game is if he's pitching a "no hitter". Which will give the ball club more publicity on ESPN which equals more advertisement which brings us back to money.

When you as a player make your millions, you can retire early, thus taking away the 20+ years of playing. There are so many farm clubs and so many minor league players, it's easier to replace players that are going downhill. Today to become a major league pitcher, you need to throw in the 90mph range unless you have great junk ball and throw in the 80's. With the exception of some guys like Wakefield. So taking this power pitching, you have a much greater chance of blowing out your elbow or shoulder. Back in the old days, there weren't many pitchers throwing in the 90mph, thus the long span of pitchers.

As far as "an absence of pitching talent nowdays". That's not true. The level of talent with players today is incredible. Today's pro pitchers have to face superb batters like Ichiro, Ordonez, A-rod, Chipper, Jeter.... etc. The pool which teams can get players is worldwide. You're not getting talent from just USA anymore, there's just more talent to choose from now.

It's a lot of factors, but today's pitching is managed a lot different than before. The last retired pitcher to be in the big leagues that was successful for years is Nolan Ryan.

Answer 4

I'm by far an expert on pitching mechanics and I've often wondered the same question.

I think it has to do with the types of pitchesthat are being thrown and the stress they put on the shoulder, elbow and arm, in particular the spltter.

Also, back then, there were fewer teams, fewer pitchers -4 man rotations, so I think there were a lot of pitchers who were only around for a couple years and then gone because they injured their arms. Tommy John would have only pitched until he got hurt and you never would here from him again and he would have been the answer to some trivia question.

The lack of CG comes from all the relief pitching. Back then, they didn't have pitch counts, so a starter would throw 130+ pitches

In conclusion, I don't know.

Answer 5

The difference in the number of starts is due to 5-man rotations today vs 4-man of yesteryear. Also, managers now look at pitch count more than they used to and we have the 8th and 9th inning specialists. All these factors cut into a pitchers IP total and especially the number of complete games.

Fewer starts is the main reason for fewer wins.

The pitching and hitting talent pool is diluted too since there are more teams now. Maddux has been the most durable guy in quite some time. He has missed fewer games and pitched deeper into each game than even Clemens.

Answer 6

the answer is easy. we dont practice throwing enough. the players from the teens to Nolan Ryan were throwing every single day. now its you threw two days ago u just sit ur butt on the bench and dont throw at all. back then they were throwing every day so they couldnt feel the pain. which after a while just went away and they became accustomed to it. they also didnt play 162 games in 180 days. so there were a few extra days off that they didnt have to pitch every single day at full speed.

Answer 7

Picthers need to throw it so much harder and put more curve on the ball. These hitters are much harder to get out. It is so much harder to get batters out. It is not even funny.