By Jim Kaplan
Will we ever see another pitching duel?
I don't mean what passes for one these days - with starters lasting six, seven, or eight innings before invariably giving way to the bullpen. I'm referring to the days when two grizzled pitchers strapped on their gloves expecting to work into extra innings if that's what it took to finish the game.
Ever since I began researching the mother of all pitching duels - the 1963 16-inning classic waged by Hall of Famers Juan Marichal of the Giants (227 pitches) and Warren Spahn of the Braves (201) - I've been amazed at the decline in starters who finish. In 1963, the major leagues saw 865 complete games. In 2010, there were exactly 700 fewer - 93 in the American League and 72 in the National. And you didn't hear much complaining!
How did we reach this state of, to use John Milton's phrase, "vain wisdom ... and false philosophy"?
The late Billy Martin gave complete games a bad name when he was managing the Oakland A's in the early '80s. After his pitchers completed 60 of 109 games and led the team to a first-place finish in the strike-shortened 1981 season, they were obviously exhausted. The A's slumped to 42 of 162 starts completed and a fifth-place finish the following year.
Another Oakland manager, Tony La Russa, popularized the use of middle relievers, setup men, and short-stay closers in the late '80s and early '90s. That system works for starters who can't go the distance, but what about those who can?
Today, once they approach 100 pitches, starters may be removed even if they're at peak performance. As Bill Conlin wrote in the Daily News, "Pitching coaches love The Count because it gives them something to do with their thumbs beside husking sunflower seeds and clicking a stopwatch to time a pitcher's stretch move to the plate."
In The Complete Game: Reflections on Baseball, Pitching, and Life on the Mound, the broadcaster and ex-pitcher Ron Darling wrote that "the bar of expectation has been lowered over the years." He added, "I think today's big-money, long-term contracts are to blame. Clubs have so much money tied up in their top-tier pitchers that they don't think they can afford to let them pitch beyond a certain pitch count, so it's the club-imposed cap on a starting pitcher's workload that lowers the bar. Do the math: if you're limiting a pitcher to eighty, ninety, one hundred pitches, it follows that he won't make it much past the sixth inning, so the sixth inning has become a kind of bare-minimum marker."
Not only that, but a self-fulfilling prophecy, Darling believes, because pitchers "tend to pitch down to the low expectations managers and coaches and front-office personnel have lately set for them."
When a starter leaves after six innings, one of the weakest pitchers in the bullpen, the middle reliever, comes in. Even when starters husband their pitch counts and get through the eighth inning with no more than 100 or so throws, the closer awaits like a hooded specter wielding a scythe. We can all cite examples of games in which lights-out starters departed only to watch closers blow their leads.
But there's some good news for those who crave old-fashioned pitching duels. After Hall of Fame pitcher Nolan Ryan was appointed president of the Texas Rangers, in 2008, he banned the use of pitch counts to determine a starter's effectiveness. Texas' team ERA, which was 5.37 in 2008, declined to 4.38 in 2009 - the biggest drop in the majors. The Rangers went to the World Series with a 3.93 ERA in 2010, and their ace Cliff Lee - now back with the Phillies - threw seven complete games that season to lead the league. All told, American League pitchers had 17 more complete games in 2010 than in 2009.
Over in the National League, the World Champion San Francisco Giants allowed their minor-leaguers to throw up to 100 pitches - surely a portent of good things to come in the majors. Clubs such as San Francisco, Boston, and Milwaukee are using computer models to measure what kind of pitches, rather than how many pitches, wear out an arm. Maybe the idea of distance-going performances will return.
I would love to see Lee and the Giants' Tim Lincecum go head to head for 12 innings. Now that would be a pitching duel.