=p
Seriously, when a pitcher warms up, he has 2 to 2 and a half hours
until his arm tightens up (unless he's Curt Schilling, who is
apparently superman).
There are essentially 4 different divisions in baseball history for
pitcher stamina.
1870-1890 - pitchers often threw 80 games a year and completed all of
them. On the other hand, most of them burned out within 4-5 seasons.
A pretty scary era to be a pitcher.
1890-1950 - pre big TV - Pitchers threw about 40 games a year, and
completed a little over half of their starts. Games tended to be
about 2 hours long because a.) games had to be completed before
darkness, and it was an umpire's job to keep the game moving along
and b.) few if any commercial breaks
1960-1980 - baseball goes prime time - Umps still did a great job of
keeping the pace of the game going (probably out of tradition/habit),
and commercial breaks were on average a full minute shorter than they
are now. Games tended to be in the 2 to 2 and a half hour range.
Pitchers threw 30-40 games and completed about half of them, with the
exception of a 2 or 3 year period in the early 70's when a handful of
managers let their pitchers throw 300+ IP. You've got to love
managerial trends that make no sense (sort of like the "let's use 2-3
relievers in the same inning" trend in the AL now).
1980-present - Not so much a constant period as a gradual evolution.
It started with longer commercial breaks, then umpires losing control
of the pace of the game (people don't realize that an umpire has to
grant a player a timeout, it's not an automatic "step out of the
batter's box" thing, even though it might as well be now), and
currently is being taken even further by constant pitching changes
(which of course require full 3 minute commercial breaks in order to
let the pitcher warm up - makes you wonder he's been doing in the
bullpen for 15 minutes). Games in 2002 average over 3 hours in
length, and an average pitcher throws about 6 innings per start, or 2
hours of that, before his arm turns into jelly.
For further reference, read the "Jim Kaat" entry in the top-100
pitchers section in the New Historical Baseball Abstract. Good stuff.
The thing that pisses me off the most about the constant timeouts
bullshit, is not just that it constantly interrupts the action and
increases the length of the games, but that it defeats the entire idea
that hitting is timing and pitching is destroying a hitter's timing.
Now, a hitter can call time literally as a pitcher is starting his
windup, making it impossible for a pitcher to get into a rhythm. What
kind of ***is that?
Jason
>No I'm no rocket scientist there Jason but I do recall the games always
>being 9 innings :) So they stand around for an hr more. Compared to my 8+
>hrs on my feet a day I'd trade :)
>> > Just not cool for the fans regardless of *arm wear*. Hell it wasn't to
>> >long ago pitchers threw 300+ inning a year and it was quite common. No
>we
>> >have a bunch of primadonna millionaires that whine/cry about everything.
>> >Put the frreakin managers out there to pitch, but finish the game!!
>> The biggest reason pitchers throw fewer innings now is because of the
>> length of the games (which needs to be and can easily be fixed if
>> baseball had a commissioner who understood the game).
>> If you go back through history, you'll see that pitchers as a whole
>> throw just as long, time-wise, as they did 20 years ago when a typical
>> game was 2/3 as long. The problem is that an average pitcher's arm
>> tightens up after 2 to 2 and a half hours, and I can't remember the
>> last time I saw a game that was under 3.
>> There's a great quote by Jim Kaat, who was known for working quickly,
>> where he explained that his arm turned into a pumpkin after 2 hours.
>> Jason
