28 replies to this topic

[SportsGuy]

I always point to the 1980 Oakland A's lead by Billy Martin. He did everything he could to win and it cost the starting pitchers, cost them in terms of short careers. Rick Langford (age 28) , Mike Norris (age 25) , Matt Keough (age 24) , Steve McCatty (age 26) and Brian Kingman (age 25) had 93 complete games in 159 starts. Follow their careers and 4 are effectively done within 3 years and Rick Langford was effectively done within 4 years.

Under Billy Martin, the 5 had -

1980 - 159 GS 93 CG
1981 - 109 GS 59 CG (note this was the strike shorten season and only played 109 games)
1982 - 133 GS 37 CG

With Billy Martin gone, the 5 had -

1983 - 51 GS 5 CG
1984 - 32 GS 4 CG

I would like to see what Leo Mazzone has to say with the way Billy Martin handled the early 1980 A's starting pitching. I'm not too sure that putting some barriers on pitchers is not a good thing.

http://www.baseball-.../OAK/1980.shtml

Did they have an organizational wide program where they were brought up pitching like this?

[Oriole85]

I always point to the 1980 Oakland A's lead by Billy Martin. He did everything he could to win and it cost the starting pitchers, cost them in terms of short careers. Rick Langford (age 28) , Mike Norris (age 25) , Matt Keough (age 24) , Steve McCatty (age 26) and Brian Kingman (age 25) had 93 complete games in 159 starts. Follow their careers and 4 are effectively done within 3 years and Rick Langford was effectively done within 4 years.

Under Billy Martin, the 5 had -

1980 - 159 GS 93 CG
1981 - 109 GS 59 CG (note this was the strike shorten season and only played 109 games)
1982 - 133 GS 37 CG

With Billy Martin gone, the 5 had -

1983 - 51 GS 5 CG
1984 - 32 GS 4 CG

I would like to see what Leo Mazzone has to say with the way Billy Martin handled the early 1980 A's starting pitching. I'm not too sure that putting some barriers on pitchers is not a good thing.

http://www.baseball-.../OAK/1980.shtml

That's an extreme, under-using is bad as well. And I do agree with your last statement about "some barriers." I would use more of an eye test than specific numbers and see how things play out to extent.

[RShack]

I've been saying this for sometime, but I feel like we are babying the young pitchers with pitch counts, innings limits, etc. I've mentioned Bob Gibson, Nolan Ryan, Jim Palmer, etc didn't have pitch counts and all had long and productive careers...

Nah, you can't do that... I'm not saying your conclusion is wrong, it might be right or wrong. I tend to agree that Mazzone was right about keeping them healthy... but you can't reach a good conclusion by counting survivors. Doing that is goofy. Hell, people survived Dresden and Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Ryan is a freak of nature. Palmer damn near got ruined, by 22 his career was *over*, it's a miracle he ever came back. You might be better off counting Chuck Estrada and Steve Barber and Wally Bunker and all the great young O's SP's who got ruined. You do know how the '66 WS Game 3 starter got picked, don't you? Both Barber and Bunker had sore arms, Bunker started because he could lift his arm higher than Barber could life his. Doing things the old way is nuts. Whether the new way is also nuts, I don't know. It might well go to far. But doing things the old way is downright crazy.

[JeremyStrain]

Keep in mind when comparing pitchers of yester-year. A) There are guys that are going to be exceptions. B) AVG Velocity is much higher these days than it was years ago. With that increased velocity is going to come more injuries. Harder thrown or highly repeated secondaries like curves and sliders are going to cause more elbow injuries. Higher pitch counts at higher velocities are going to cause more shoulder injuries.

[DJ MC]

Keep in mind when comparing pitchers of yester-year. A) There are guys that are going to be exceptions. B) AVG Velocity is much higher these days than it was years ago. With that increased velocity is going to come more injuries. Harder thrown or highly repeated secondaries like curves and sliders are going to cause more elbow injuries. Higher pitch counts at higher velocities are going to cause more shoulder injuries.

Plus batters tended to swing for more contact historically, and the overall level of talent is on a constant rise over time.

There are far, far too many differences between 2012 and 1992, let alone 1972 or 1952, to simply say that pitchers now are "babied" compared to back then,

[Mark Carver]

On Mike & Mike interviewing Scott Boras, Strasburg's agent. Mentioned Atlanta Braves great pitchers. Tom Glavin threw 450 innings and John Smoltz threw 500 innnings between the ages 21-23. Steve Avery had thrown 729 innings between ages 21-23. And we all know that Steve Avery never became one of the great Braves or MLB pitchers. An interesting take still. Even if he is a players agent.

http://espn.go.com/e...play?id=8274342

[SportsGuy]

On Mike & Mike interviewing Scott Boras, Strasburg's agent. Mentioned Atlanta Braves great pitchers. Tom Glavin threw 450 innings and John Smoltz threw 500 innnings between the ages 21-23. Steve Avery had thrown 729 innings between ages 21-23. And we all know that Steve Avery never became one of the great Braves or MLB pitchers. An interesting take still. Even if he is a players agent.

http://espn.go.com/e...play?id=8274342

I heard the interview...It was pretty good.

I just don't like drawing conclusions based off of one pitcher.

Now, Boras did say that they have data on more pitchers but he only talked about Avery..so we really don't know what else he had.

[Oriole85]

I heard the interview...It was pretty good.

I just don't like drawing conclusions based off of one pitcher.

Now, Boras did say that they have data on more pitchers but he only talked about Avery..so we really don't know what else he had.

Agree it's bad to make conclusions off of one pitcher. Even though I didn't entirely agree with every Mazzone had to take I say, I was pretty impressed assuming it's true with the low rate of injuries. The results are what they are with the Braves, it's pretty good. How much of it was Mazzone, I don't know? If were going to blame pitching coaches/managers when arms are overused and things go wrong, i'll give him credit for the general success he had there.

[JeremyStrain]

Very interesting that no one mentions Smoltz in that whole ordeal, since he did have some injury issues and bounced back and forth as a RP. It's interesting because he's the only one from that ATL group that threw with any real velocity.

Goes back to what I was saying about the increased velo being responsible for more injuries.