The end of the 300-game winner?

Because, Herky, these guys are going to be making a lot money at a younger age the the current 40+ guys did. Therefore there will be less incentive to keep going into their 40s when it becomes harder work.

 

I know it's hard for cynical folks like us to believe, but some of these guys still play for the love of the game.

Why else would Clemens still be out there?

 

I hope you simply forgot the blue/sarcasm font on the Clemens comment.
There are only 18 million reasons Clemens is still pitching.

 

Too much is never enough. No one will ever make enough to quiet their desire for more.

Guys are going to pitch as long as they can because the money is insane.

 

BYH, did you check this post frolm Herky?

And NO sarcasm font?

 

Haha yeah but I just saw the Clemens thing and saw you took care of it!

 

Shit, I was counting on a Dickhead Clemens rant!

 

He has a ton of mileage on him.

 

And no history of ... never mind. You're not getting me to jinx it.

 

Let's get a parade down Clark, then talk about that.

 

And he's batshit crazy. But that's OK.

 

About 10 years ago, I was talking to a co-worker about Clemens' amazing 97 season and I said, looking at his career stats, "Wow, he's going to get 300 wins."

At which point he said, "Bullshit. He's not going to stick around long enough to do that." In fact, he told me that he had interviewed Greg Maddux and Tom Glavine for a story about the end of 300-game winners.

Early Wynn sputtered to the end to get his 300th, and he spent 20 years saying he was going to be the last 300-game winner, until, of course, the rash of them in the 1980s.

It is not true that baseball teams used a four-man rotation for a hundred years and only recently turned to the five-man rotation. For various reasons, most of baseball history featured teams using 3-4 primary starters and 2-4 spot starters. For instance, they used to play doubleheaders almost every Sunday, so teams would carry a "Sunday pitcher." Ted Lyons was a Sunday pitcher for the last 10 years of his career.

A real four-man rotation implies that each guy gets 38 or 39 starts. Lefty Grove basically pitched whenever the hell he felt like it, skipping starts against the Yankees if he was in a bad mood, and he made more than 33 starts in a season only once. Even Warren Spahn rarely reached 38 starts, and Early Wynn never did.

Now it is definitely true that top starters pitch fewer innings than ever before and win fewer games. That doesn't mean the trend will continue:

1. At some point, run-scoring will probably come down and revert to pre-1993 levels. This could lead to bigger workloads for starting pitchers.
2. There could be breakthroughs in biomechanics or sports medicine that allow pitchers to stay healthy.
3. Some team could decide to teach all of its young pitchers to throw knuckleballs and maybe one of them could make it to the majors at age 22, instead of 26 or later like most knuckleballers.
4. Some crazy, under-hand delivery could become wildly popular and prove to be less stressful on the arm. (There are more sidearmers now than ever before)
5. Managers could decide that, instead of being forced to get 300-400 innings out of their 8th, 9th, 10th, 11th, 12th, 13th pitchers, to give some work to their top starters. In 2017, maybe Justin Verlander will be utilized the way Lefty Grove was and win the Cy Young by making 32 starts, 15 relief appearances for 275 innings and 24 wins.