What's up with pitchers of old times and complete games?

Question

I was just checking historical stats at mlb.com and I saw that old pitchers such as Cy Young, Walter Johnson, etc have more than 700 and 500 complete games... some of the people have complete games over games started ratio is 97 or 96... out of 100 games started, 97 were complete games... honestly wins or losses do matter, but what did these guys use to eat... what do you think is the possible reason for this?

Answer 1

Most pitchers in that era only had 3 pitches. A fastball, change up and an occasional curve ball. Nobody threw a slider, or split finger. Due to this their arms were able to withstand many more pitches and innings than modern day pitchers.
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Answer 2

Back then, if a pitcher was effective, he stayed in the game. Not true any more. Nowadays, as soon as a pitcher reaches a pre-determined number of pitches, he's usually gone no matter how well he's performing.

I think it's ridiculous. If a pitcher is effective and still has his stuff, there's absolutely no reason to pull him from the game and bring in someone cold. The game situation should dictate if and when a starting pitcher is removed, not some meaningless number.

If it continues the way it's going, complete games are always going to be a rarity.

Answer 3

Cy Young was a freak of nature. If you look closer you realize that many of those pitchers arm burnt out after 12 or 13 seasons.

Answer 4

nowadays all teams have many different pitchers on their rosters ..such as relief, closers, set-up, they don't pitch sometimes beyond the 6th inning and thus their complete games started may be high but their completed games are low..so you can say its been watered down abit as far as durable pitchers..

Answer 5

new pitchers tend to throw more pitches and managers care more about their health, in the past no one cared about the pitchers health.

Answer 6

I think they were all on GHB. That is before we had proper testing methods in place. :)