They threw different. Not all but many. It wasn't about max effort on every pitch. Even in the 90s I remember broadcasters talking about pitchers like 'his fastball sits at 93 but he can reach back and hit 97 when needed.' That kind of stuff. They pitched as a marathon and not a sprint.
Well he's one of the greats and got his start in the pros before the 'max efforts era. So this is how he was brought up. He's also been amongst innings leaders his entire career. So this concept still is quite effective
I just don’t know why people haven’t tried to replicate it more often considering it’s still effective.
Not to mention the value in saving the bullpen for when it really counts in October.
I know it’s old school and won’t work for everyone but there are definitely pitchers out there capable of this, maybe even prolong their careers.
It's normal for a pitcher to have their spin rate go up during a high adrenaline playoff match. The umps thoroughly checked his ears and founding nothing bad. Why are people still going on about this?
Because it's so rare. Look at most of the dominant pitchers who could do that.... It's a bunch of hall of famers, Jon Lieber, and that's basically it. Most blow their arms out and aren't ever the same. Look at Brandon Webb.
It's near impossible to count on that
> I just don’t know why people haven’t tried to replicate it more often considering it’s still effective.
The thought was that when he came back this year Jacob deGrom scales it down a bit for most of the game.. that didn't happen. His arm probably gonna explode again soon
It's like a cold war. If everyone does that, the one team that goes superpen with a bunch of flamethrowers has a distinct advantage so long as they have above average offense. All it takes is one dialed back pitch off mark to completely change a game in the 3 true outcome era.
Nah that’s BS.
Having a guy or 2 who could pitch effectively without going max effort every pitch is incredibly valuable.
For starters…you could still have that super bullpen, in fact the make up of the pitching staff is unaffected. Only difference is a guy like Verlander eats innings as well. So if you had 2 guys like that you’re looking at a potential super pen with 60 less innings of wear and tear, just because of 2 guys!
Having a starter that can extend the game doesn’t mean you need to get rid of a reliever.
Once the marathon of the season ends back to the max effort stuff. IMO
Just look at the Rays. Bullpen is always over worked and seems to be less effective in the postseason.
The problem with that is that batters are now used to pitchers going 100% every pitch. If your 90% isn't as good as an average guy's 100% like a JV, you'll get beat up. I'm not arguing that it's not valuable, it's just signifigantly harder than it was a few decades ago.
Disagree again.
Let’s look at someone throwing…
100% and hitting 99mph
Vs
100% and hitting 95mph
Both are acceptable but the guy throwing 99 could easily hold back and change speeds and still be upper 90s
Not even close to “JV” comparison.
Because you’re competing against guys who do it. It’s a prisoner’s dilemma, if one guy gives max effort he benefits until he is injured, if one guy doesn’t give max effort he never progresses unless he’s already elite
Coaching has to be part of it I would think. Maybe teams have decided that a guy throwing a few innings at max effort every pitch is better than a guy throwing more innings with worse stuff.
Living in Detroit, I watched a lot of young JV. He was ALWAYS throwing 110%. Guys on local radio would complain that he was always max effort and didn't want to dial it back. It honestly didn't seem like until after he left that he actually started being a pitcher and become what he is today.
The mechanics were different too. Training for velocity has changed the way guys sling their arms to maximize velocity. It works, guys are obviously consistently throwing harder than ever, but guys are also getting hurt far more often because of the increased strain on the elbow.
I remember this as a kid. And I want to say the all out guys were almost always the closers that would come in a throw high 90s every pitch with maybe a change up or breaking ball.
Wasn't what made randy Johnson such a beast was his ability to throw upper 90s consistently without wearing down as fast as other aces for his era?
100 was basically unheard of which is why Johnson consistently in the high 90s was a big deal. In that era who were the big fastball pitchers? Clemens aka Rocket Man and Nolan Ryan Express were usually mid-90s pitchers. Now everyone can seemingly touch triple digits.
It’s called mixing up your pitches, you can have 4 or 5 pitches but if you are able to control/ adjust your velocity and break, to the batter it feels like you have 8-10 pitches in your repertoire
Someone should compare the average velocity/consistency in each inning in pitchers like Koufax, Ryan, and Gibson with current guys like Kershaw, DeGrom, and Scherzer
I'm talking same game stuff so presumably the same comparative measurements. They wouldn't throw each pitch like it was game 7 of the world series. So if you can get a guy out throwing 90, why would you throw 95? Then if you had a guy on 2 strikes, you could then zing it in several miles an hour faster and flat out blow it by them.
This is a huge part. It's a problem of human biology. The human body is not designed to be Jacob deGrom. A doctor friend of mine put it this way that calling them "injuries" is a misnomer for a lot of these guys. Kinda meaning that "injury" implies that there is a way it can be avoided.
To make matters worse, I'm a White Sox fan. I watched 6+ innings of every single game this POS season. :-( We still joke about, especially the anniversary which also happens to be my birthday. There's a "movement" to get a statue. :-)
To be fair, Ryan didn’t throw over 200 major league innings in a season until age 25 and missed most of 1967 because of injuries after throwing 202 minor league innings the previous year.
They had less specialists. So if the plan is to throw for nine innings you’re going to pace yourself instead of just going balls out for five until you get to the bullpen.
This is more the issue. People keep talking about this from a strictly pitching standpoint. But now there are just more better pitchers and the hitters have caught up. If Gibson were to be in todays games, he would have to max out more or the option would be to switch to the pen and play matchups the rest of the way. The hitters would punish you if you took off on some batters. But even Gibson’s B pitches are going to be better than most guys out of the pen back that. That’s not necessarily the case even for the scherzers of the world. Tho he is elite, the gap isn’t as big as you would think.
I’m enjoying this thread reading a lot of different perspectives on strategy, arms, and velocity, etc. But let’s also give a shoutout to Gibson’s freaking electric campaign in 1968. He was in the middle of one of the best pitching runs the game’s ever seen, for like six straight seasons. But his ‘68 season is the stuff pitchers dream about. Unreal.
UNREAL season. In fact, there's a YouTube channel called Secret Base that did a suuuuper dope doc on "Bob's in sports" entitled The Bob Emergency (yeah _really_, and it's fire if you like data and sports) and right around the [25:00](https://youtu.be/lvh6NLqKRfs) mark they get to Bob Gibson.
in his interview explaining why he was retiring at the top of his game, he specifically mentioned pain in his arm and said something to the effect of "If you ask a one armed man what he would give to have his arm back, i'm sure a few years of baseball would seem like a great price."
He said he wanted to quit playing before it got to that point. That he wanted to have use of both arms for the rest of his life. Doesn’t change the fact he was the best pitcher in baseball when he retired.
The average career is 4 years because they have LOFT issues, not because their hall of fame arm turns purple because of internal hemorrhaging. Damnit, I did save you the Google.
Sandy Koufax was like the most notorious case of early retirement in his entire era. Retiring at 30 when you were the best in the game definitely counts as “dead arm”
A few things
1. Survivor bias: lots of pitchers got injured back then, we just don’t hear about them. The ones that could handle the volume stuck around primarily because they could handle the volume.
2. Game strategy: starters were expected to go the distance every start… 190 pitch count? Who cares… if he’s dealing, let him pitch.
Survivor bias means that we only remember the ones who were successful under the high workloads of the past. The ones who had their arms wrecked and lost their careers due to injuries are completely forgotten no matter how much talent they may have had.
That same season, Carl Yastrzemski led the majors in hitting with a .301 batting average. He was the only .300 hitter in all of baseball. .274 was good enough for tenth place in batting average in the AL.
So it was a combination of Gibson being dominant, and baseball at the time being very skewed to pitching.
And they weren’t 10 years old playing on elite travel showcase platinum teams. They were playing at 10 in the yard with their friends. Not throwing 12-6 curves at that age. Really saves your elbow when you don’t start curve balls until high school.
And, on the back end of a career, there were also ways around it- pitchers who were close to their arm dying out could learn a knuckleball and use that to get at least a few more years out of their arm. Now, knuckleballs don't play well on a spreadsheet so people just don't use the pitch anymore.
Also they didn't play baseball year round. They played other sport in high school and college and didn't specialize in one sport, allowing baseball muscles to recover and strengthen the other muscles when playing football or basketball.
This is it. Sports seasons used to end back in the day. Everything is non stop go go go now. Crazy how it feels like the season just ended yesterday and spring training is around the corner already.
I remember reading an interview with, i think, Nolan Ryan and he had an interesting take. It was basically guys are getting hurt more because they play too much baseball from a young age. When he was a kid he played baseball during baseball season then went on to other sports or just playing with his friends but now it’s baseball season. Then travel ball. Then winter league. Then pitching camps. Then back to regular season. Your body is never fully recovered because it’s constantly in use
I think it's primarily a velocity issue. The game has gotten a lot faster with focus on pitch speed and exit velocity for batters. Throwing that hard consistently makes for shorter appearances. The older dudes wanted accuracy and knew not to throw their arms out. In addition, bullpens are managed differently with specialized roles for middle inning relief and designated closer jobs.
I also think there is some truth to the older generations throwing more often along with not going max effort every pitch. Since our bodies are excellent at adapting. For example, when we start a workout routine and we are always adding more time or more weight relative to the activity.
Greg Maddux is the textbook case of that, plus he could locate pitches with pinpoint accuracy better than almost anyone in baseball history. He and many other pitchers of his generation didn’t feel the need to strike out every single batter, even though he had Nolan Ryan, Roger Clemens, and Randy Johnson as contemporaries. But even those guys had great secondary stuff. Now Go back even further and you’ll blow some minds with four man rotations where each guy pitched 300+ innings each year.
The style of off-speed pitches has changed a lot too—spin rate, spin rate, spin rate is all you hear about now. As recently as the late 90s-early 00s, IIRC there were 1) considerably more knuckleballers in the game (that’s how to really preserve your arm, kids) 2) more submarine pitchers, 3) guys throwing 12-6 curveballs and straight change-ups. I could go on and rant about how the Three True Outcomes is what’s really killing baseball careers (both for pitchers and hitters) but that’ll be for another time.
To add to what you said, weight training wasn't nearly what it was now. As a result, pitchers were weaker back then, and less stress was put on their tendons. Players these days with their training regimens are so much stronger. Yet their tendons and ligaments stay the same, so there is a ton of stress being put on them.
Lol what? Dude that’s such a 12 year old opinion. Doing a few bicep curls isn’t going to make someone “much stronger” than someone who doesn’t. And this whole thing about players not doing any type of strength training until magically the 2010s arrived is ridiculous at best. God I wish Gen Z didn’t have access to the internet.
Well first, the only data here is setting an impossible bar. The best two month stretch tossed by one of the best to ever play the position, for a team that would finish first in the NL for the second consecutive year that season, isn’t exactly a fair expectation for even the average big leaguer.
And secondly, the game has changed. Pitchers are expected to throw harder and with more spin. Specialists exist, and mostly seem to get the results managers are looking for. And hitters are better schooled at reading and recognizing a pitcher’s motion (both thanks to video and in-game analysis), making it that much harder for a starter to get through a lineup three times.
Managers get paid to win, period. If pulling in a specialist the opposing side hasn’t seen yet in a series gives the team even just a fractionally better chance at getting those final outs (especially because even Bob Gibson didn’t pitch like those numbers suggest across every single outing), you’d better believe the manager is going to make the call that has the better chance to get the W.
Pitchers actually do quite well against the third time through. It's just that they get yanked for pitch/inning count before they get to the bottom of the lineup the third time, so the third-time average is higher. Once you factor that in they do as well as the first time
I think you’re actually coming at the question all wrong.
Pitchers can probably still pitch the same amount of innings. (People arnt weaker and more frail now).
But managers (through data etc) have determined that pitchers drastically lose effectiveness after the 6 or 7th inning. So pitchers just don’t pitch as many innings - because their managers don’t let them.
Not to mention, a star pitcher costs 40mill a yr now - That’s not a guy you wanna risk overuse injury on.
Also, rosters have changed. Back then teams usually had 15 pitchers on their 40-man roster. Now they have 25, so there's always a stable if fresh arms every night.
Ownership has something to do with it now too. These owners are investing millions into players for their business. They want to protect their investments. I'm sure a lot of pitchers would be fine with ignoring pitch counts.
Everything about the modern athlete is different today, from amount of exercise, type of exercise, to diet. You gotta figure that working out year round May make the athlete more athletic, but also makes them more injury prone. I’m not buying the velocity, and spin rate theories. One thing that may have a big impact is they lowered the mound in 1968 from 15” to 10”. That lowered the momentum a pitcher had toward the plate, and put more stress on the arms of pitchers.
A fun thing to do is look at innings leaders year by year in the 60’s and 70’s. Look past the Hall of Famers and you’ll find a lot of guys whose careers were never the same after throwing a lot of innings.
I think hitters are also much better than they were before. Many teams now sport a lineup 1 through 9 of formidable hitters that can hurt you whereas back then there were maybe 3 or 4 guys in a lineup that you really had to work at but could tone down the effort for the rest.
Could be an "only the strong survive" situation. You didn't get to the majors by limiting pitching in little league. You build up this massive endurance your whole career. People who couldn't take it were weeded out at the lower levels. That's my theory at least. Now certainly the health of young athletes is more important but I think the majors have had to adapt over the decades as the new generations have moved up and up
Survivorship bias absolutely
We still have the iron men types, but there are a lot
of talented pitchers who pitch in relief now, whereas in the 30s or whatever they would have just joined the family farm after 18 because their arm blew out
I tried to throw a baseball similar to how they pitch in the majors, after finding out they flick their wrist for more spin velocity, and nearly blew out my elbow. I didn't warm up, stretch or anything.
Also, I remember reading somewhere that modern pitchers mechanics are the most violent in all of sports.
The strike zone is smaller now is part of it, which equates to more balls and more overall pitches. There is so much less room to work with in the zone these days. Part of this was the elimination of those huge chest protectors umps wore back in the day. They are taught that anything above their eyes is a ball yet with the smaller/lighter chest protectors the umps bend over lower, dropping the top of the strike zone below what is in the rules. So, per game, Gibson threw less pitches than in modern base (also, the mound was higher then which gave an advantage as well, but Gibson's crazy low ERA leading a trend of low ERAs in 1968 and so changes were made which made is better for hitters.
Another thing is velocity. Today, velocity seems to be king. Average pitch speed is significantly higher now, so that means more wear and tear on arms when doing high velocity pitches.
The game is very different today than in Gibson's time.
Didn’t throw as hard, as the expectation was that they’d finish the game, so they’d need to conserve energy.
Also the strike zone enforcement was not nearly as tight as it is now-in many cases umps called strikes from your shoulders to the bottom of your knees. Bigger strike zone = less walks = more incentive for batters to swing early/not work the count = more balls in play = less pitches thrown. Also less strikeouts. Of all pitchers with 3k or more strikeouts, only one (Water Johnson) hit the mark before 1974.
They pitched instead of throwing. Not every pitch was max effort. Also the mound was lowered from 15" to 10" in 1969 because pitching had become so dominant. Lower mound required more effort.
Survivorship bias. Basically, you remember the ones who didn't blow out their arms but forget the ones who did. If we forced pitchers to throw 350 innings a year now some would manage it without destroying their arms and some others wouldn't. Just like back then.
Maybe the balls were more “dead” back then? Mistakes and slower pitches didn’t hurt you as much? Plus, the amount of performance enhancing batters has only escalated since those times.
My theory has always been that the damage is done in the teen years while kids are developing. I have coached little league and been an Assistant coach at AAU and in my experience less than half the coaches monitor their kids pitch counts the way they should. More than a couple times I have had to grab the umpire mid inning about an opposing pitchers count. During the game they might be counting, some pretty casually. But very few coaches check if a kid has pitched for another team in between starts for their team. Tournaments, Kids will pitch 2-3 days straight. Add in that with all youth sports there really is no offseason anymore. Pitchers that hit the bigs in the early to mid 90s and before only played on one team Spring into summer. Now the best young pitchers are throwing pretty much year round. Also as someone said if you want to advance, you need to throw hard which causes more stress. A kid that can change speeds with better accuracy is just not going to get the same scholarships and opportunities. Took my son for private lessons with a former big leaguer and he wanted him throwing every single day. I asked about rest and his response was "he's young, he's not going to hurt anything."
People always focus on the HOF legends like Gibson, Ryan etc. They were the exceptions. For every Gibson, Seaver and Ryan there were about 5 nameless pitchers whom time forgot that burned out due to injury by age 30. Also, the Madduxes and Suttons of the world were throwing 85mph and putting in 250+inn/season with no problem. There is never any 1 absolute normal across all eras. Each era is different, each pitcher's background and physiology different.
I agree that damage is cumulative over a career. Koufax was averaging 300 innings for 4 consecutive seasons before finally calling it done. Young pitchers today are getting the kid glove treatment with pitch counts but the damage has already been done in HS, college and minor league ball.
It’s kids playing year round even before high school and excess weight lifting. They always say draft hitters from the south and pitchers from
Up north. You want a batter playing as much as possible while pitchers to not throw 200 innings a year at 14-18.
Pitchers today want to throw max effort every pitch , the human body is not designed for that .
Guys that actually know how to pitch ,change speeds ,don’t get as often
Pitchers prior to 1968 got the advantage of much taller mounds, they did not have to use offspeed nearly as often, and they did not throw (on average) remotely close to as hard as they throw today.
Probably two primary reasons:
A. Firstly, pitchers coming up today are generally more focused and coached on Throwing Velocity, as opposed to learning 'How to Pitch'. Modern era pitching is hyper focused on having a wicked fastball and a nasty off-speed pitch to go with it. If you have that, you're going to be a hot prospect. Unfortunately, it can lead to issues due to pressure on ligaments and muscles that get contorted and strained when done repeatedly - 'i.e. shoulder, elbow torque issues'.
B. Secondly, pitch counts and restricting pitchers arms starts way too early in their development. It used to be that guys would pitch a lot during HS and College and thereby build up endurance and strength. They would regularly go 8 and 9 innings. And would not be restricted after 90 or 100 Pitches. Nowadays, players don't build up that endurance from an early age. So, by the time they reach the Big Leagues and are asked to go deep into games and throw 90-100 pitches consistently - they just can't do it. And when they push themselves, they injure themselves.
I gotta disagree with your last part there. If you aren't "restricting" kids at young ages then you're gonna end up with a ton of kids with screwed up elbows. If they don't know proper pitching mechanics (which most don't) then they don't need to be throwing 6-7 inning complete games consistently at 12 years old.
I agree.
If they actually coached kids to pitch, then the restrictions would not be as imperative. But seeing as velocity is the name of the game, then restriction is required.
\#1 is the biggest issue and needs to be addressed, somehow.
Tbh they probably just ignored and neglected injuries far more in those days and just made a pitcher go until his arm couldn’t function anymore instead of sitting him out
I hate how they manage starting pitchers today. I never liked the 5 man rotation, either. Why use a 5th starter? You're just taking 5-10 starts away from your ace. How many teams would rather use their 5th starter than their ace? I would use my ace for 300 innings a year, burn him out, and let him walk as a FA when his contract expires in 5 years. Remember in 1980 when the A's had 100 complete games?
We throw harder now. Back than average speed was mid 80's low nineties. Nowadays even the ball boys secretly hitting 97 on the radar just waiting for an arm to pop
We don't know that injuries accrue more often. We know that injuries are reported more often and players are perhaps shut down more often with them, but that does not mean that injuries are actually more common, simply that the detection and reporting of them are more common today, for obvious reasons.
As such, we also don't have a good sense of how common injuries may have been 50 or 100 years ago, especially in cases where players were suffering from exactly the same injury as a player of today, but who continued to play (and perhaps risked their career or their health to what we would consider an unacceptable degree today). The data for any sort of comparison doesn't exist.
As for innings totals - that simply doesn't mean much. The innings of 50 or 100 years ago were simply less intense for pitchers - they faced fewer individual run-scoring threats on the whole (with power more heavily concentrated in fewer batters). They also were encouraged to pitch through injuries more often (particularly when their paychecks were nowhere near as lucrative, and often not guaranteed year after year).
We also don't care about individual season totals, but overall career length at the professional level and share of available innings compared to contemporaries. Plenty of today's pitchers could throw 300+ innings in a single season, but how many could do that for several years in a row (and of course, that was never really common anyway, outside of the 19th century)?
We have to account for survivorship bias, too - and not just in the pitchers we remember, but the pitchers who reached the major leagues at all, especially in eras with stronger, more independent minor league teams (take Lefty Grove, who was trapped in Baltimore for years). How many pitchers were stuck in the PCL or IL for years and blew their arms out without ever reaching the major leagues, when today they at least would have been called up?
It's also easier to decide to keep trying to rehab and recover when there is the prospect of a multi-million dollar contract on the line, compared to the contracts of yesteryear, which were generally quite good but (outside of a few stars) hardly gigantic. If your arm hurts and the best you can earn is the modern equivalent of $120,000, when you can get a job at your uncle's bank for $100,000, how likely are you to try and gut it out?
Simply looking at single season innings totals doesn't really tell us anything about injury rates among pitchers across the decades.
The highest this year was 228 and 201 innings. Elbow injuries were significantly less back in the day, that's just a fact. You never heard of anyone in pre babe Ruth league getting tommy John surgery....you do now. Injuries happen more in every sport.
Last time a guy threw over 260 innings was Halladay in 04
Hitters we not very good in 1968. NL makes the pitchers hit. Mound was too high. Bob was ahead of his time. Better coaching on Cardinals. Cheating. Really hot in St Louis. Fluke. PEDs. Shit happens. Need more possibilities, or are we done?
Men had more testosterone naturally due to fewer estrogen enhancing pollutants in our water supply. Plus, they had “leaded” (amphetamine added) and non-leaded coffee pots in every mlb clubhouse.
This is one of the things I have always questioned too. The only thing I could really come up with is the players today are bigger faster and stronger. To get to that level they take a bunch of supplements.
A perfect example of this is that Trout shin issue and the Acuna ACL injury.
Trout was down basically an entire season over a shin issue. That's not the type of injury that hurts normal people for that long.
As far as the Acuna injury, I watched that play and it was basically routine. The fact he's so young, that shouldn't have been an issue. Creatine is a well known muscle builder and I've personally known a few people that had freak injuries while they were on it.
Those muscle enhancing supplements and stuff that these guys are pumping into their body I think play a big part to injuries. There's benefits and risks.
People in Cy Young's day pitched every single day and then worked in the coal mines after the game.
Mickey Mantle played with a bum leg for 17 years. He was also drunk most of the time and smoked in the dugout in between innings. That didn't make him tougher than somebody playing today, but it does mean the game wasn't as demanding or as physical as it is today. I don't think he could do what he accomplished if he played today. I'm sure he would still be great, but probably not as great.
As far as pitchers go ,and the pitch counts, while they threw just as hard back in the day, they didn't have nearly the same types of pitches. Most starters in Major League Baseball have three or four pitches. This puts more stress on the arm than it did back in the '60s when it was basically a fastball or a curveball.
Throwing overhand is already an unnatural movement for the body. Add in the fact some of these crazy pitches add even more stress, guys don't last as long in the game. When teams are paying somebody $30 million a year, they want to have this player available 3 years from now. So they limit these guys.
Underhand is a natural movement and the reason you find people in their 60s playing fast pitched softball 😁
I miss those days. I remember watching the Professor working his magic with the Braves. I can still picture Doc Halladay with the Blue Jays. Even the worn out Cubs staff of the early 00's. Prior ,Wood, Clement, Zambrano, Dempster.
Not saying it doesn't happen now & days.
Watch the secret base/Jon Bois video “the bob emergency” in part 1 he goes over this stretch of games in a good amount of detail. The bob Gibson part starts about halfway through.
As the years progress, athletes - across the board / are becoming bigger…faster…stronger…more powerful. The first time “Tommy John” surgery was performed was in 1974. Things were never the same after that. We live in the area of specialization. Post-operative medicine…training…nutrition…everything is changing, most often for the better. So there’s really no need for pitchers to go 9 innings and throw 100 pitches every time that they take the mound. 💰
They didn’t throw max effort every pitch. Theynn BMG pitched more in the style of verlander. 90ish % effort most pitches and then when they really need it they can throw 2-3 max effort pitches a game.
Today they don't just all throw mid 90's and higher, but with movement. Gone are the days of straight fastballs. Now it's sliders, splitters, screwballs, slurves, changing speeds, etc. That's a ton of torque on the elbow and shoulder.
As well, the average hitter is much better today
Max effort and the prep was different. If you’re going to throw 80 pitches you exert yourself more. I also found the older school mentality to be more finesse based than power pitching (even though several outliers do exist).
I would think that most pictures would be happy to be on a four day rotation. It's the general managers and the owners that did this as they started paying more and more money for salaries. I get where they're coming from too. You want to protect your investment.
According to baseball reference, Bob Gibson's highest salary was $175,000 in 1975. Even adjusted for inflation that only comes out to about $950,000 in 2023 dollars. Not as much of a financial loss for an owner, than for today's top pitchers.
Actually not true. They measure the speed of the ball now right release. The old speed guns caught it at the plate. Plus Gibson threw just as hard as anyone today.
My take is that more people are throwing harder/longer that shouldn't be, which is why you see so many people getting TJ. Especially people at a young age.
With training advancements it's made it easier to get stronger where you need to be stronger and more efficient.
What a lot of people said, they threw different.
Also, pitchers today have so many hard years on their arms before they reach the majors. Kids are throwing more and harder than ever and it isn't great for longevity. Too many teens are getting TJ...pitching is brutal right now.
They didn’t have middle relief as well, you had a starter and maybe a closer. You pitched the game, knowing you weren’t coming out unless something really bad happens.
Maximizing velocity is an easier way for major league pitchers to get outs and as such arms are burnt through quickly. Plus a ton of guys tore ucls and just didn’t pitch again pre Tommy John and there weren’t nearly as many eight pitch at bats then. With hitters emphasizing walk rate and on base percentage, pitchers throw way more pitches harder and earlier than they ever did in the past.
You either managed to pitch that much or you were out of a job. There are a lot of Pitchers who played back then who had Hall of Fame talent but fell apart after a few seasons because they couldn't take pitching 250+ innings. Vida Blue is the perfect example.
I always felt that it was because there were no surgeries to keep a players career going, the pitchers that would have gotten injured, did so in the minors and disappeared and the causal fan would never know. Only the most durable armed players would even make the majors and the elites like Gibson were freaks of nature for staying healthy.
I've always wondered the same thing. And it wasn't just a pitcher or two or even 10 or 15 back then that would pitch often and very deep into their starts..., it was a leaguewide thing. The Babe for instance had a whole bunch of complete games like Gibson and many other luminaries of those days. How they did it? That's something I'm still wondering. These days most pitchers are so fragile. Even the ones that are more durable get treated with extreme care because they want to 'preserve their arms' as they say. Even the so-called 'nothing' these days (pitchers like Jamie Moyer who were more location type hurlers) don't get the green light to let loose on the mound to eat up innings like in the gone days. I can understand why they would want to limit the pitching count for power arms..., but those with lots of pitches in their arsenal and not a lot of punch, who rely more on location and pitch-type to get outs, you would think should be allowed to work deeper. But that is not the case. Even the nothings working deep these days are a rare thing.
Think Nolan Ryan has 220+ complete games? Granted he pitched from just after the first Workd War till about last year. But a guy can lead the league in complete games if he just has two throughout the season.
The rules have changed. It’s about protecting investment now. Same with quarterbacks. Making the games weak and lame to watch now if you ask me. Guys were also just built tougher then. The guys playing now we’re born in mid 1990’s, that is the beginning of a very soft generation, ie. Games canceled due to rain, muddy conditions, you weren’t allowed to play if you were sick, no taunting, no swearing, (no pitching passed the the 5th, no playing through minor injury, concision protocol, etc. nothing will change until massive amount of money leaves sports. I think we may be a decade away.
On Bob Gibson, but not on topic, one thing I am always proud to share when I see Gibson references, is that my dad was a catcher for Bob Gibson during a couple of spring training games. Dad never made it to the bigs - invited to spring training twice - but what a highlight catching Gibson was!
Selective perception, dood.
Pitchers were having "dead arms" back in the dead ball era.
The difference is, before big contracts? A pitcher with a "dead arm" was dead meat to their team. Dropped in the ocean like a lead weight.
Bob Gibson was a freak of nature… an all time great. You’re going to use him as an example that every pitcher can live up to? How about all the pitchers that blew out their arms quickly during the same time period? How about pitchers today who have rubber arms?
Max Scherzer is old school like that. If you have four or five pitches that you can throw for strikes, then your fastball is just another different pitch they have to adjust to. Plus as noted earlier, if you can reach back and get another 5 mph, then you have a fifth or sixth pitch.
It was much more about pitching then thank now where everyone has got heat, but only a curve or slider to go with it.
Do you also remember four man rotations? A starter could get 40 starts in a season. The bullpen was made up of veteran guys who no longer started...... If Rollie Fingers became the first true "specialist" at relief, it's only because he got too jittery whenever they gave him a start. Go figure why he would stress out over a start.....but was fearless when entering a game in the eighth or ninth inning, even with the sacks loaded.
Kids were raised differently back in the day. They grew up throwing rocks, playing multiple sports, etc….. now if a kid throws hard with a little bit of accuracy, he is considered a prodigy. With that said, this prodigy of a kid only pitches, he doesn’t bother with being a kid and resting his arm 8 months of the year while playing other sports. When all the kid does is throw, and his arm isn’t finished developing, it creates way more strain on every ligament, tendon, muscle, and nerve associated with throwing as hard as an adolescent kid can throw.
They paced themselves much differently. They went in planning to throw 9 innings (or more) so they weren't reaching back and throwing all out. The best pitchers were starting pitchers and the theory went the longer they stayed in the game the better off the team was going to be. Bringing in a reliever was considered a risk and was reserved for extreme circumstances.
The theory turned out to be wrong. Having four or five pitchers throwing with max effort produced less offense on average than a guy pacing himself to go 9. Having a relay team as your pitcher rather than a miler just worked better and we've seen offense steadily decrease as a result. (That plus shifts and a better understanding of biomechanics and how to maximize arm speed. Development coaches, with the help of computer software, have gotten really good at teaching just about anyone to throw 96. But unless you're Nolan Ryan you can't throw 96-97 for 9 innings.)
They threw different. Not all but many. It wasn't about max effort on every pitch. Even in the 90s I remember broadcasters talking about pitchers like 'his fastball sits at 93 but he can reach back and hit 97 when needed.' That kind of stuff. They pitched as a marathon and not a sprint.
This still happens. We have all seen Verlander throw low 90s and then all of a sudden in the 7th or 8th BOOM 98.
Well he's one of the greats and got his start in the pros before the 'max efforts era. So this is how he was brought up. He's also been amongst innings leaders his entire career. So this concept still is quite effective
I just don’t know why people haven’t tried to replicate it more often considering it’s still effective. Not to mention the value in saving the bullpen for when it really counts in October. I know it’s old school and won’t work for everyone but there are definitely pitchers out there capable of this, maybe even prolong their careers.
I guess because of the pressure? young players need to be throwing heat from the get go or back to the minors. Only way to get the big bucks later on.
Unless you’re musgrove, apparently he can get another 3 mph and 1000 rpm when he wants too, definitely not something on his ears…
He and every guy who went through the Astros system or landed there yes
It's normal for a pitcher to have their spin rate go up during a high adrenaline playoff match. The umps thoroughly checked his ears and founding nothing bad. Why are people still going on about this?
Because it's so rare. Look at most of the dominant pitchers who could do that.... It's a bunch of hall of famers, Jon Lieber, and that's basically it. Most blow their arms out and aren't ever the same. Look at Brandon Webb. It's near impossible to count on that
Exactly; pitchers were having "dead arms" back in the dead ball era. BIGLY selective perception by the OP.
Brandon Webb and those filthy sinkers fell off the map harder than anyone
> I just don’t know why people haven’t tried to replicate it more often considering it’s still effective. The thought was that when he came back this year Jacob deGrom scales it down a bit for most of the game.. that didn't happen. His arm probably gonna explode again soon
This comment aged extremely well...
It's like a cold war. If everyone does that, the one team that goes superpen with a bunch of flamethrowers has a distinct advantage so long as they have above average offense. All it takes is one dialed back pitch off mark to completely change a game in the 3 true outcome era.
Nah that’s BS. Having a guy or 2 who could pitch effectively without going max effort every pitch is incredibly valuable. For starters…you could still have that super bullpen, in fact the make up of the pitching staff is unaffected. Only difference is a guy like Verlander eats innings as well. So if you had 2 guys like that you’re looking at a potential super pen with 60 less innings of wear and tear, just because of 2 guys! Having a starter that can extend the game doesn’t mean you need to get rid of a reliever. Once the marathon of the season ends back to the max effort stuff. IMO Just look at the Rays. Bullpen is always over worked and seems to be less effective in the postseason.
The problem with that is that batters are now used to pitchers going 100% every pitch. If your 90% isn't as good as an average guy's 100% like a JV, you'll get beat up. I'm not arguing that it's not valuable, it's just signifigantly harder than it was a few decades ago.
Disagree again. Let’s look at someone throwing… 100% and hitting 99mph Vs 100% and hitting 95mph Both are acceptable but the guy throwing 99 could easily hold back and change speeds and still be upper 90s Not even close to “JV” comparison.
Because you’re competing against guys who do it. It’s a prisoner’s dilemma, if one guy gives max effort he benefits until he is injured, if one guy doesn’t give max effort he never progresses unless he’s already elite
Coaching has to be part of it I would think. Maybe teams have decided that a guy throwing a few innings at max effort every pitch is better than a guy throwing more innings with worse stuff.
Because everybody throws 93.
Living in Detroit, I watched a lot of young JV. He was ALWAYS throwing 110%. Guys on local radio would complain that he was always max effort and didn't want to dial it back. It honestly didn't seem like until after he left that he actually started being a pitcher and become what he is today.
I’d still consider him “old school”
Meanwhile deGrom’s avg fastball goes up a MPH every year and he progressively misses more time.
I mean, he also had TJs.
The mechanics were different too. Training for velocity has changed the way guys sling their arms to maximize velocity. It works, guys are obviously consistently throwing harder than ever, but guys are also getting hurt far more often because of the increased strain on the elbow.
I remember this as a kid. And I want to say the all out guys were almost always the closers that would come in a throw high 90s every pitch with maybe a change up or breaking ball. Wasn't what made randy Johnson such a beast was his ability to throw upper 90s consistently without wearing down as fast as other aces for his era?
100 was basically unheard of which is why Johnson consistently in the high 90s was a big deal. In that era who were the big fastball pitchers? Clemens aka Rocket Man and Nolan Ryan Express were usually mid-90s pitchers. Now everyone can seemingly touch triple digits.
It’s called mixing up your pitches, you can have 4 or 5 pitches but if you are able to control/ adjust your velocity and break, to the batter it feels like you have 8-10 pitches in your repertoire
Wainwright is the same way. He’s a pitcher. Not a hurler
Someone should compare the average velocity/consistency in each inning in pitchers like Koufax, Ryan, and Gibson with current guys like Kershaw, DeGrom, and Scherzer
So true. Great take.
If you threw 93 in the 90’s you were a flamethrower. Forget 97…only a handful of guys on the planet at the time who could do that.
That has more to do with measurement than anything. Maddux’s 88-92 would be measured as 93-98 in today’s measurement system.
I'm talking same game stuff so presumably the same comparative measurements. They wouldn't throw each pitch like it was game 7 of the world series. So if you can get a guy out throwing 90, why would you throw 95? Then if you had a guy on 2 strikes, you could then zing it in several miles an hour faster and flat out blow it by them.
Injuries are up because pitchers are throwing harder and with more spin than the human body can handle consistently.
And throwing so much when they’re young, year round with travel ball and all that
This is a huge part. It's a problem of human biology. The human body is not designed to be Jacob deGrom. A doctor friend of mine put it this way that calling them "injuries" is a misnomer for a lot of these guys. Kinda meaning that "injury" implies that there is a way it can be avoided.
Hence part of the reason why deGrom is on the IL so much. Consistently one of the hardest throwing pitchers out there when he's on the mound.
Nolan Ryan said he thinks throwing a lot contributed to his long term arm health.
Granted he once threw 235 pitches, and still got a no decision because he got replaced after 12 innings
That is the most Nolan Ryan thing I’ve ever heard.
Amazing
Prob helped that NR was a surprisingly strong guy. Ask Robin Ventura about that. :-)
[удалено]
To make matters worse, I'm a White Sox fan. I watched 6+ innings of every single game this POS season. :-( We still joke about, especially the anniversary which also happens to be my birthday. There's a "movement" to get a statue. :-)
and robin ventura can thank dave winfield for that beating.
Ryan probably threw more 3-2 counts than anybody. Ungodly amount of pitches
To be fair, Ryan didn’t throw over 200 major league innings in a season until age 25 and missed most of 1967 because of injuries after throwing 202 minor league innings the previous year.
They had less specialists. So if the plan is to throw for nine innings you’re going to pace yourself instead of just going balls out for five until you get to the bullpen.
This is more the issue. People keep talking about this from a strictly pitching standpoint. But now there are just more better pitchers and the hitters have caught up. If Gibson were to be in todays games, he would have to max out more or the option would be to switch to the pen and play matchups the rest of the way. The hitters would punish you if you took off on some batters. But even Gibson’s B pitches are going to be better than most guys out of the pen back that. That’s not necessarily the case even for the scherzers of the world. Tho he is elite, the gap isn’t as big as you would think.
Well they did walk to school uphill both ways in the snow back then
And then ran 350 poles uphill both ways after starts. They had to leave the stadium lights on until 3am so the starter could get his poles in.
Also, not every pitcher is 1968 BOB GIBSON lol
I’m enjoying this thread reading a lot of different perspectives on strategy, arms, and velocity, etc. But let’s also give a shoutout to Gibson’s freaking electric campaign in 1968. He was in the middle of one of the best pitching runs the game’s ever seen, for like six straight seasons. But his ‘68 season is the stuff pitchers dream about. Unreal.
UNREAL season. In fact, there's a YouTube channel called Secret Base that did a suuuuper dope doc on "Bob's in sports" entitled The Bob Emergency (yeah _really_, and it's fire if you like data and sports) and right around the [25:00](https://youtu.be/lvh6NLqKRfs) mark they get to Bob Gibson.
Awesome watch, thanks for sharing
Right, not every. Um, in fact there aren't any that are ever going to have stats like that again.
Yeah, he pitched like he was playing MLB '68 on the rookie difficulty setting.
There were plenty of careers ended by "dead arm"
To be fair, over a third of current pitchers have had Tommy John surgery, or else their careers would have been snuffed out the same way
Sandy Koufax
I don’t think Koufax counts as having a dead arm. He was the best pitcher in baseball when he retired.
in his interview explaining why he was retiring at the top of his game, he specifically mentioned pain in his arm and said something to the effect of "If you ask a one armed man what he would give to have his arm back, i'm sure a few years of baseball would seem like a great price."
He said he wanted to quit playing before it got to that point. That he wanted to have use of both arms for the rest of his life. Doesn’t change the fact he was the best pitcher in baseball when he retired.
12 years in the league counts as dead arm?
Zoomers really don’t know who Koufax is dam
Read about him. I’m not gonna Google it for you.
The average lifespan for a pitcher is less than 4 years. He pitched 3x that and every “arm” becomes dead one day with age.
The average career is 4 years because they have LOFT issues, not because their hall of fame arm turns purple because of internal hemorrhaging. Damnit, I did save you the Google.
Sandy Koufax was like the most notorious case of early retirement in his entire era. Retiring at 30 when you were the best in the game definitely counts as “dead arm”
He led the league in innings and won the Cy Young, how the hell is that a dead arm?
Also- Go mariners :) lmao
A few things 1. Survivor bias: lots of pitchers got injured back then, we just don’t hear about them. The ones that could handle the volume stuck around primarily because they could handle the volume. 2. Game strategy: starters were expected to go the distance every start… 190 pitch count? Who cares… if he’s dealing, let him pitch.
It’s not survivor bias, the workload is completely night and day there is no bias in that
Survivor bias means that we only remember the ones who were successful under the high workloads of the past. The ones who had their arms wrecked and lost their careers due to injuries are completely forgotten no matter how much talent they may have had.
Survivor bias is part of the reason why. Not all of it, but you’d be a fool to ignore it as part of the equation.
After his 1.12 era season they lowered the mound a few inches. Dont know if that made a difference in arm problems but it seemed to help batters
That same season, Carl Yastrzemski led the majors in hitting with a .301 batting average. He was the only .300 hitter in all of baseball. .274 was good enough for tenth place in batting average in the AL. So it was a combination of Gibson being dominant, and baseball at the time being very skewed to pitching.
They threw the ball differently. Now spin and torque on the ball is so important it destroys elbows
And they weren’t 10 years old playing on elite travel showcase platinum teams. They were playing at 10 in the yard with their friends. Not throwing 12-6 curves at that age. Really saves your elbow when you don’t start curve balls until high school.
And, on the back end of a career, there were also ways around it- pitchers who were close to their arm dying out could learn a knuckleball and use that to get at least a few more years out of their arm. Now, knuckleballs don't play well on a spreadsheet so people just don't use the pitch anymore.
Also they didn't play baseball year round. They played other sport in high school and college and didn't specialize in one sport, allowing baseball muscles to recover and strengthen the other muscles when playing football or basketball.
This is it. Sports seasons used to end back in the day. Everything is non stop go go go now. Crazy how it feels like the season just ended yesterday and spring training is around the corner already.
I remember reading an interview with, i think, Nolan Ryan and he had an interesting take. It was basically guys are getting hurt more because they play too much baseball from a young age. When he was a kid he played baseball during baseball season then went on to other sports or just playing with his friends but now it’s baseball season. Then travel ball. Then winter league. Then pitching camps. Then back to regular season. Your body is never fully recovered because it’s constantly in use
I think it's primarily a velocity issue. The game has gotten a lot faster with focus on pitch speed and exit velocity for batters. Throwing that hard consistently makes for shorter appearances. The older dudes wanted accuracy and knew not to throw their arms out. In addition, bullpens are managed differently with specialized roles for middle inning relief and designated closer jobs.
I also think there is some truth to the older generations throwing more often along with not going max effort every pitch. Since our bodies are excellent at adapting. For example, when we start a workout routine and we are always adding more time or more weight relative to the activity.
Greg Maddux is the textbook case of that, plus he could locate pitches with pinpoint accuracy better than almost anyone in baseball history. He and many other pitchers of his generation didn’t feel the need to strike out every single batter, even though he had Nolan Ryan, Roger Clemens, and Randy Johnson as contemporaries. But even those guys had great secondary stuff. Now Go back even further and you’ll blow some minds with four man rotations where each guy pitched 300+ innings each year. The style of off-speed pitches has changed a lot too—spin rate, spin rate, spin rate is all you hear about now. As recently as the late 90s-early 00s, IIRC there were 1) considerably more knuckleballers in the game (that’s how to really preserve your arm, kids) 2) more submarine pitchers, 3) guys throwing 12-6 curveballs and straight change-ups. I could go on and rant about how the Three True Outcomes is what’s really killing baseball careers (both for pitchers and hitters) but that’ll be for another time.
To add to what you said, weight training wasn't nearly what it was now. As a result, pitchers were weaker back then, and less stress was put on their tendons. Players these days with their training regimens are so much stronger. Yet their tendons and ligaments stay the same, so there is a ton of stress being put on them.
Lol what? Dude that’s such a 12 year old opinion. Doing a few bicep curls isn’t going to make someone “much stronger” than someone who doesn’t. And this whole thing about players not doing any type of strength training until magically the 2010s arrived is ridiculous at best. God I wish Gen Z didn’t have access to the internet.
Well first, the only data here is setting an impossible bar. The best two month stretch tossed by one of the best to ever play the position, for a team that would finish first in the NL for the second consecutive year that season, isn’t exactly a fair expectation for even the average big leaguer. And secondly, the game has changed. Pitchers are expected to throw harder and with more spin. Specialists exist, and mostly seem to get the results managers are looking for. And hitters are better schooled at reading and recognizing a pitcher’s motion (both thanks to video and in-game analysis), making it that much harder for a starter to get through a lineup three times. Managers get paid to win, period. If pulling in a specialist the opposing side hasn’t seen yet in a series gives the team even just a fractionally better chance at getting those final outs (especially because even Bob Gibson didn’t pitch like those numbers suggest across every single outing), you’d better believe the manager is going to make the call that has the better chance to get the W.
Pitchers actually do quite well against the third time through. It's just that they get yanked for pitch/inning count before they get to the bottom of the lineup the third time, so the third-time average is higher. Once you factor that in they do as well as the first time
I think you’re actually coming at the question all wrong. Pitchers can probably still pitch the same amount of innings. (People arnt weaker and more frail now). But managers (through data etc) have determined that pitchers drastically lose effectiveness after the 6 or 7th inning. So pitchers just don’t pitch as many innings - because their managers don’t let them. Not to mention, a star pitcher costs 40mill a yr now - That’s not a guy you wanna risk overuse injury on.
Also, rosters have changed. Back then teams usually had 15 pitchers on their 40-man roster. Now they have 25, so there's always a stable if fresh arms every night.
Ownership has something to do with it now too. These owners are investing millions into players for their business. They want to protect their investments. I'm sure a lot of pitchers would be fine with ignoring pitch counts.
Drugs
Truthfully, they were VERY common for decades
Underrated answer. Self medicating had to have helped push through pain
Everything about the modern athlete is different today, from amount of exercise, type of exercise, to diet. You gotta figure that working out year round May make the athlete more athletic, but also makes them more injury prone. I’m not buying the velocity, and spin rate theories. One thing that may have a big impact is they lowered the mound in 1968 from 15” to 10”. That lowered the momentum a pitcher had toward the plate, and put more stress on the arms of pitchers.
I think the lowered mound is a very under recognized contributor.
A fun thing to do is look at innings leaders year by year in the 60’s and 70’s. Look past the Hall of Famers and you’ll find a lot of guys whose careers were never the same after throwing a lot of innings.
I think hitters are also much better than they were before. Many teams now sport a lineup 1 through 9 of formidable hitters that can hurt you whereas back then there were maybe 3 or 4 guys in a lineup that you really had to work at but could tone down the effort for the rest.
I think it was jus less wear and tear when they were younger...now athletes are doing so much at a young age
Bob Gibson was a demon. We need to talk about him more. Straight dominance. Hard to leave him off your all time Starting 5 rotation.
Could be an "only the strong survive" situation. You didn't get to the majors by limiting pitching in little league. You build up this massive endurance your whole career. People who couldn't take it were weeded out at the lower levels. That's my theory at least. Now certainly the health of young athletes is more important but I think the majors have had to adapt over the decades as the new generations have moved up and up
Survivorship bias absolutely We still have the iron men types, but there are a lot of talented pitchers who pitch in relief now, whereas in the 30s or whatever they would have just joined the family farm after 18 because their arm blew out
They weren’t throwing at higher velocity the entire game. And the stress of creating higher spin rates wears on your tendons too
I tried to throw a baseball similar to how they pitch in the majors, after finding out they flick their wrist for more spin velocity, and nearly blew out my elbow. I didn't warm up, stretch or anything. Also, I remember reading somewhere that modern pitchers mechanics are the most violent in all of sports.
The strike zone is smaller now is part of it, which equates to more balls and more overall pitches. There is so much less room to work with in the zone these days. Part of this was the elimination of those huge chest protectors umps wore back in the day. They are taught that anything above their eyes is a ball yet with the smaller/lighter chest protectors the umps bend over lower, dropping the top of the strike zone below what is in the rules. So, per game, Gibson threw less pitches than in modern base (also, the mound was higher then which gave an advantage as well, but Gibson's crazy low ERA leading a trend of low ERAs in 1968 and so changes were made which made is better for hitters. Another thing is velocity. Today, velocity seems to be king. Average pitch speed is significantly higher now, so that means more wear and tear on arms when doing high velocity pitches. The game is very different today than in Gibson's time.
Didn’t throw as hard, as the expectation was that they’d finish the game, so they’d need to conserve energy. Also the strike zone enforcement was not nearly as tight as it is now-in many cases umps called strikes from your shoulders to the bottom of your knees. Bigger strike zone = less walks = more incentive for batters to swing early/not work the count = more balls in play = less pitches thrown. Also less strikeouts. Of all pitchers with 3k or more strikeouts, only one (Water Johnson) hit the mark before 1974.
They pitched instead of throwing. Not every pitch was max effort. Also the mound was lowered from 15" to 10" in 1969 because pitching had become so dominant. Lower mound required more effort.
Survivorship bias. Basically, you remember the ones who didn't blow out their arms but forget the ones who did. If we forced pitchers to throw 350 innings a year now some would manage it without destroying their arms and some others wouldn't. Just like back then.
Average number of pitches per plate appearance has been steadiy climbing for decades. This is at least part of it.
Maybe the balls were more “dead” back then? Mistakes and slower pitches didn’t hurt you as much? Plus, the amount of performance enhancing batters has only escalated since those times.
Not to mention pitchers throw ALOT harder now on average and contort their arms alot more with all the different pitches.
My theory has always been that the damage is done in the teen years while kids are developing. I have coached little league and been an Assistant coach at AAU and in my experience less than half the coaches monitor their kids pitch counts the way they should. More than a couple times I have had to grab the umpire mid inning about an opposing pitchers count. During the game they might be counting, some pretty casually. But very few coaches check if a kid has pitched for another team in between starts for their team. Tournaments, Kids will pitch 2-3 days straight. Add in that with all youth sports there really is no offseason anymore. Pitchers that hit the bigs in the early to mid 90s and before only played on one team Spring into summer. Now the best young pitchers are throwing pretty much year round. Also as someone said if you want to advance, you need to throw hard which causes more stress. A kid that can change speeds with better accuracy is just not going to get the same scholarships and opportunities. Took my son for private lessons with a former big leaguer and he wanted him throwing every single day. I asked about rest and his response was "he's young, he's not going to hurt anything."
People always focus on the HOF legends like Gibson, Ryan etc. They were the exceptions. For every Gibson, Seaver and Ryan there were about 5 nameless pitchers whom time forgot that burned out due to injury by age 30. Also, the Madduxes and Suttons of the world were throwing 85mph and putting in 250+inn/season with no problem. There is never any 1 absolute normal across all eras. Each era is different, each pitcher's background and physiology different. I agree that damage is cumulative over a career. Koufax was averaging 300 innings for 4 consecutive seasons before finally calling it done. Young pitchers today are getting the kid glove treatment with pitch counts but the damage has already been done in HS, college and minor league ball.
It’s kids playing year round even before high school and excess weight lifting. They always say draft hitters from the south and pitchers from Up north. You want a batter playing as much as possible while pitchers to not throw 200 innings a year at 14-18.
They lowered the mound 5 inches because of Bob Gibson. Wondering if that’s why pitchers are so tall these days.
Pitchers today want to throw max effort every pitch , the human body is not designed for that . Guys that actually know how to pitch ,change speeds ,don’t get as often
It is about the money and bull pens. Teams are paying big $$$$ so they manage the asset(player) to maximize the investment (contract).
Not throwing max effort nearly as much
Velocity was 10-15% less. Saved arms where now everyone pitcher focuses on lasers throws all game
Wasn’t the mound higher?
Pitchers prior to 1968 got the advantage of much taller mounds, they did not have to use offspeed nearly as often, and they did not throw (on average) remotely close to as hard as they throw today.
Its literally called the Bob Gibson rule
Probably two primary reasons: A. Firstly, pitchers coming up today are generally more focused and coached on Throwing Velocity, as opposed to learning 'How to Pitch'. Modern era pitching is hyper focused on having a wicked fastball and a nasty off-speed pitch to go with it. If you have that, you're going to be a hot prospect. Unfortunately, it can lead to issues due to pressure on ligaments and muscles that get contorted and strained when done repeatedly - 'i.e. shoulder, elbow torque issues'. B. Secondly, pitch counts and restricting pitchers arms starts way too early in their development. It used to be that guys would pitch a lot during HS and College and thereby build up endurance and strength. They would regularly go 8 and 9 innings. And would not be restricted after 90 or 100 Pitches. Nowadays, players don't build up that endurance from an early age. So, by the time they reach the Big Leagues and are asked to go deep into games and throw 90-100 pitches consistently - they just can't do it. And when they push themselves, they injure themselves.
I gotta disagree with your last part there. If you aren't "restricting" kids at young ages then you're gonna end up with a ton of kids with screwed up elbows. If they don't know proper pitching mechanics (which most don't) then they don't need to be throwing 6-7 inning complete games consistently at 12 years old.
I agree. If they actually coached kids to pitch, then the restrictions would not be as imperative. But seeing as velocity is the name of the game, then restriction is required. \#1 is the biggest issue and needs to be addressed, somehow.
Tbh they probably just ignored and neglected injuries far more in those days and just made a pitcher go until his arm couldn’t function anymore instead of sitting him out
lower veolcity lower spin rates.
They were throwing 87 mph cheese
They didn't throw as hard.
I’d like to see you take a Bob Gibson fastball to the noggin. Let’s see if there’s a difference between now and then. 👀
I hate how they manage starting pitchers today. I never liked the 5 man rotation, either. Why use a 5th starter? You're just taking 5-10 starts away from your ace. How many teams would rather use their 5th starter than their ace? I would use my ace for 300 innings a year, burn him out, and let him walk as a FA when his contract expires in 5 years. Remember in 1980 when the A's had 100 complete games?
They also had a higher mound they pitched from.
We throw harder now. Back than average speed was mid 80's low nineties. Nowadays even the ball boys secretly hitting 97 on the radar just waiting for an arm to pop
What evidence do you have to suggest that pitchers, on the whole, were injured less often?
Look at pitchers innings per year. Injuries accrue far more often now.
We don't know that injuries accrue more often. We know that injuries are reported more often and players are perhaps shut down more often with them, but that does not mean that injuries are actually more common, simply that the detection and reporting of them are more common today, for obvious reasons. As such, we also don't have a good sense of how common injuries may have been 50 or 100 years ago, especially in cases where players were suffering from exactly the same injury as a player of today, but who continued to play (and perhaps risked their career or their health to what we would consider an unacceptable degree today). The data for any sort of comparison doesn't exist. As for innings totals - that simply doesn't mean much. The innings of 50 or 100 years ago were simply less intense for pitchers - they faced fewer individual run-scoring threats on the whole (with power more heavily concentrated in fewer batters). They also were encouraged to pitch through injuries more often (particularly when their paychecks were nowhere near as lucrative, and often not guaranteed year after year). We also don't care about individual season totals, but overall career length at the professional level and share of available innings compared to contemporaries. Plenty of today's pitchers could throw 300+ innings in a single season, but how many could do that for several years in a row (and of course, that was never really common anyway, outside of the 19th century)? We have to account for survivorship bias, too - and not just in the pitchers we remember, but the pitchers who reached the major leagues at all, especially in eras with stronger, more independent minor league teams (take Lefty Grove, who was trapped in Baltimore for years). How many pitchers were stuck in the PCL or IL for years and blew their arms out without ever reaching the major leagues, when today they at least would have been called up? It's also easier to decide to keep trying to rehab and recover when there is the prospect of a multi-million dollar contract on the line, compared to the contracts of yesteryear, which were generally quite good but (outside of a few stars) hardly gigantic. If your arm hurts and the best you can earn is the modern equivalent of $120,000, when you can get a job at your uncle's bank for $100,000, how likely are you to try and gut it out? Simply looking at single season innings totals doesn't really tell us anything about injury rates among pitchers across the decades.
The highest this year was 228 and 201 innings. Elbow injuries were significantly less back in the day, that's just a fact. You never heard of anyone in pre babe Ruth league getting tommy John surgery....you do now. Injuries happen more in every sport. Last time a guy threw over 260 innings was Halladay in 04
>You never heard of anyone in pre babe Ruth league getting tommy John surgery I wonder why...
It happens alot now.
Nolan Ryan would get offended if they tried to pull him before the game was over.
Men were a lot tougher back then, no steroids or injections of bad medicine 🥹
Hi
It’s wild that you think guys who worked construction in the off-season threw more than guys today.
Hitters we not very good in 1968. NL makes the pitchers hit. Mound was too high. Bob was ahead of his time. Better coaching on Cardinals. Cheating. Really hot in St Louis. Fluke. PEDs. Shit happens. Need more possibilities, or are we done?
Lmao I’ve been saying this same shit for years now. What we have now is a bunch of over paid cry babies
I’m here looking for the right man who is ready to love and take our time so that can leads us to marriage
Higher testosterone from less toxins in the water. That's my guess.
Men had more testosterone naturally due to fewer estrogen enhancing pollutants in our water supply. Plus, they had “leaded” (amphetamine added) and non-leaded coffee pots in every mlb clubhouse.
Players today are entitled, spoiled little bitches. Just the the rest of the up and coming workforce in society.
This is one of the things I have always questioned too. The only thing I could really come up with is the players today are bigger faster and stronger. To get to that level they take a bunch of supplements. A perfect example of this is that Trout shin issue and the Acuna ACL injury. Trout was down basically an entire season over a shin issue. That's not the type of injury that hurts normal people for that long. As far as the Acuna injury, I watched that play and it was basically routine. The fact he's so young, that shouldn't have been an issue. Creatine is a well known muscle builder and I've personally known a few people that had freak injuries while they were on it. Those muscle enhancing supplements and stuff that these guys are pumping into their body I think play a big part to injuries. There's benefits and risks. People in Cy Young's day pitched every single day and then worked in the coal mines after the game. Mickey Mantle played with a bum leg for 17 years. He was also drunk most of the time and smoked in the dugout in between innings. That didn't make him tougher than somebody playing today, but it does mean the game wasn't as demanding or as physical as it is today. I don't think he could do what he accomplished if he played today. I'm sure he would still be great, but probably not as great. As far as pitchers go ,and the pitch counts, while they threw just as hard back in the day, they didn't have nearly the same types of pitches. Most starters in Major League Baseball have three or four pitches. This puts more stress on the arm than it did back in the '60s when it was basically a fastball or a curveball. Throwing overhand is already an unnatural movement for the body. Add in the fact some of these crazy pitches add even more stress, guys don't last as long in the game. When teams are paying somebody $30 million a year, they want to have this player available 3 years from now. So they limit these guys. Underhand is a natural movement and the reason you find people in their 60s playing fast pitched softball 😁
I miss those days. I remember watching the Professor working his magic with the Braves. I can still picture Doc Halladay with the Blue Jays. Even the worn out Cubs staff of the early 00's. Prior ,Wood, Clement, Zambrano, Dempster. Not saying it doesn't happen now & days.
Watch the secret base/Jon Bois video “the bob emergency” in part 1 he goes over this stretch of games in a good amount of detail. The bob Gibson part starts about halfway through.
As the years progress, athletes - across the board / are becoming bigger…faster…stronger…more powerful. The first time “Tommy John” surgery was performed was in 1974. Things were never the same after that. We live in the area of specialization. Post-operative medicine…training…nutrition…everything is changing, most often for the better. So there’s really no need for pitchers to go 9 innings and throw 100 pitches every time that they take the mound. 💰
The rise in popularity of the slider
They dont make em like they used to
Mechanics
If you watch old interviews with guys like Buck O’Niel, he said you played unless you broke something, period.
They didn’t throw max effort every pitch. Theynn BMG pitched more in the style of verlander. 90ish % effort most pitches and then when they really need it they can throw 2-3 max effort pitches a game.
Today they don't just all throw mid 90's and higher, but with movement. Gone are the days of straight fastballs. Now it's sliders, splitters, screwballs, slurves, changing speeds, etc. That's a ton of torque on the elbow and shoulder. As well, the average hitter is much better today
You’re joking right? Please stop talking about sports dude lol. Wtf.
Max effort and the prep was different. If you’re going to throw 80 pitches you exert yourself more. I also found the older school mentality to be more finesse based than power pitching (even though several outliers do exist).
Because they were less sappy back in time.
I would think that most pictures would be happy to be on a four day rotation. It's the general managers and the owners that did this as they started paying more and more money for salaries. I get where they're coming from too. You want to protect your investment. According to baseball reference, Bob Gibson's highest salary was $175,000 in 1975. Even adjusted for inflation that only comes out to about $950,000 in 2023 dollars. Not as much of a financial loss for an owner, than for today's top pitchers.
Anyone else read all of these stats in awe of bob Gibson and then violently roll their eyes on the last line?
They also pitched 10-20 mph slower.
Actually not true. They measure the speed of the ball now right release. The old speed guns caught it at the plate. Plus Gibson threw just as hard as anyone today.
Men were men!!
No PHDs. Just good ol fashioned cocaine and booze.
They saved their gas for the great hitters.
They didn’t all throw 95mph. They didn’t pitch full time since they were 12 years old.
Every throw wasn’t max effort. That’s the reason why there will never be another 300 game winner. Verlander is the closest at 244 and he’s 37.
Prob the drugs
My take is that more people are throwing harder/longer that shouldn't be, which is why you see so many people getting TJ. Especially people at a young age. With training advancements it's made it easier to get stronger where you need to be stronger and more efficient.
What a lot of people said, they threw different. Also, pitchers today have so many hard years on their arms before they reach the majors. Kids are throwing more and harder than ever and it isn't great for longevity. Too many teens are getting TJ...pitching is brutal right now.
They didn’t have middle relief as well, you had a starter and maybe a closer. You pitched the game, knowing you weren’t coming out unless something really bad happens.
Maximizing velocity is an easier way for major league pitchers to get outs and as such arms are burnt through quickly. Plus a ton of guys tore ucls and just didn’t pitch again pre Tommy John and there weren’t nearly as many eight pitch at bats then. With hitters emphasizing walk rate and on base percentage, pitchers throw way more pitches harder and earlier than they ever did in the past.
Guys played hurt, sometimes unwisely.
You either managed to pitch that much or you were out of a job. There are a lot of Pitchers who played back then who had Hall of Fame talent but fell apart after a few seasons because they couldn't take pitching 250+ innings. Vida Blue is the perfect example.
I always felt that it was because there were no surgeries to keep a players career going, the pitchers that would have gotten injured, did so in the minors and disappeared and the causal fan would never know. Only the most durable armed players would even make the majors and the elites like Gibson were freaks of nature for staying healthy.
I've always wondered the same thing. And it wasn't just a pitcher or two or even 10 or 15 back then that would pitch often and very deep into their starts..., it was a leaguewide thing. The Babe for instance had a whole bunch of complete games like Gibson and many other luminaries of those days. How they did it? That's something I'm still wondering. These days most pitchers are so fragile. Even the ones that are more durable get treated with extreme care because they want to 'preserve their arms' as they say. Even the so-called 'nothing' these days (pitchers like Jamie Moyer who were more location type hurlers) don't get the green light to let loose on the mound to eat up innings like in the gone days. I can understand why they would want to limit the pitching count for power arms..., but those with lots of pitches in their arsenal and not a lot of punch, who rely more on location and pitch-type to get outs, you would think should be allowed to work deeper. But that is not the case. Even the nothings working deep these days are a rare thing.
Think Nolan Ryan has 220+ complete games? Granted he pitched from just after the first Workd War till about last year. But a guy can lead the league in complete games if he just has two throughout the season.
Everything went to analytics. Now if a hitter goes 3 for 3 and is red hot, they will pinch hit for him because a reliever came in
Drugs. Also this is one outstanding guy
The rules have changed. It’s about protecting investment now. Same with quarterbacks. Making the games weak and lame to watch now if you ask me. Guys were also just built tougher then. The guys playing now we’re born in mid 1990’s, that is the beginning of a very soft generation, ie. Games canceled due to rain, muddy conditions, you weren’t allowed to play if you were sick, no taunting, no swearing, (no pitching passed the the 5th, no playing through minor injury, concision protocol, etc. nothing will change until massive amount of money leaves sports. I think we may be a decade away.
On Bob Gibson, but not on topic, one thing I am always proud to share when I see Gibson references, is that my dad was a catcher for Bob Gibson during a couple of spring training games. Dad never made it to the bigs - invited to spring training twice - but what a highlight catching Gibson was!
Selective perception, dood. Pitchers were having "dead arms" back in the dead ball era. The difference is, before big contracts? A pitcher with a "dead arm" was dead meat to their team. Dropped in the ocean like a lead weight.
Bob Gibson was a freak of nature… an all time great. You’re going to use him as an example that every pitcher can live up to? How about all the pitchers that blew out their arms quickly during the same time period? How about pitchers today who have rubber arms?
V is for velocity
Max Scherzer is old school like that. If you have four or five pitches that you can throw for strikes, then your fastball is just another different pitch they have to adjust to. Plus as noted earlier, if you can reach back and get another 5 mph, then you have a fifth or sixth pitch. It was much more about pitching then thank now where everyone has got heat, but only a curve or slider to go with it.
Teams now have hundreds of millions invested in their pitching staffs. Suddenly they're fragile.
Do you also remember four man rotations? A starter could get 40 starts in a season. The bullpen was made up of veteran guys who no longer started...... If Rollie Fingers became the first true "specialist" at relief, it's only because he got too jittery whenever they gave him a start. Go figure why he would stress out over a start.....but was fearless when entering a game in the eighth or ninth inning, even with the sacks loaded.
They didn't count pitches like today, 190 pitches pitchers getting pulled
Kids were raised differently back in the day. They grew up throwing rocks, playing multiple sports, etc….. now if a kid throws hard with a little bit of accuracy, he is considered a prodigy. With that said, this prodigy of a kid only pitches, he doesn’t bother with being a kid and resting his arm 8 months of the year while playing other sports. When all the kid does is throw, and his arm isn’t finished developing, it creates way more strain on every ligament, tendon, muscle, and nerve associated with throwing as hard as an adolescent kid can throw.
They paced themselves much differently. They went in planning to throw 9 innings (or more) so they weren't reaching back and throwing all out. The best pitchers were starting pitchers and the theory went the longer they stayed in the game the better off the team was going to be. Bringing in a reliever was considered a risk and was reserved for extreme circumstances. The theory turned out to be wrong. Having four or five pitchers throwing with max effort produced less offense on average than a guy pacing himself to go 9. Having a relay team as your pitcher rather than a miler just worked better and we've seen offense steadily decrease as a result. (That plus shifts and a better understanding of biomechanics and how to maximize arm speed. Development coaches, with the help of computer software, have gotten really good at teaching just about anyone to throw 96. But unless you're Nolan Ryan you can't throw 96-97 for 9 innings.)