The demise of the complete game

[McCovey]

Bruce Jenkins wrote a two part article about the demise of the complete game in baseball. Now, I usually enjoy Jenkin's writing but his this article is extremely one sided. It's a reactionary knee jerk, "I wish it was the 1970s again" type on mentality. I do agree with many of his points but he doesn't consider the other side of the argument and that is poor journalism IMO. As an example he goes to great lengths to give examples of pitchers that pitched high pitch counts and pitched lots of innings and had no arm problems. But he doesn't mention any of the pitchers that had high pitch counts and pitched lots of innings and did have arm problems. Koufax, Drysdale, Gooden, the 1980 Oakland A's, all pitched crazy innings and pitch counts and they all flamed out early in their careers. But Jenkins never addresses this part of the history.

[McCovey]

Part I


DOWN FOR THE COUNT
Sadly, the art of the complete game has been lost

Bruce Jenkins (bjenkins@sfchronicle.com)
Tuesday, August 26, 2008


hese are the dark ages of pitching. It is a time of cowardice and fear, oblivious to the lessons of history. If there's a bond among starting pitchers of the pitch-count era, it's that they were born too late.
One of life's great truisms is to finish what you start. It's what you tell your kids, your surgeon, your contractor. This once applied to baseball, with precision, but now there's a new law: Just quit. Let somebody else finish the job. You did your part, now go be a cheerleader.

Pitch counts have destroyed not only the elements of pride and accomplishment among starting pitchers, but the art of winning. If one thing characterized the great pitchers of the past, from Bob Feller to Warren Spahn to Tom Seaver, it's that they learned how to win. You don't get that from a "quality start" and a nice, early shower. It's when you understand the difference between a breezy sixth inning and a stressful ninth, when you brought that victory home, and can't wait to do it again.

Tim Lincecum would love to close the deal. So would Matt Cain, Dan Haren, Scott Kazmir and Carlos Zambrano. They're all prisoners of the pitch-count era, trapped inside a philosophy that characterizes every organization.

There's a way out of this, a subject we'll address later, but first consider the virtual extinction of the complete game:

Complete eradication
In 1904, a 30-year-old Yankees pitcher named Jack Chesbro led the American League with 48 complete games. Last year, Arizona's Brandon Webb topped the National League with four. The complete game has become as obsolete as five-man pepper, the two-hour game, guys swinging three bats in the on-deck circle, and coaches hitting practice pop-ups with a fungo bat.

The sins of pitch-count madness are evident nightly, but there was no more glaring example than Lincecum's July 26 start against Arizona. Lincecum, a freakish phenomenon who has not had a hint of arm trouble, was demonstrating why some sharp observers consider him the best pitcher in the National League. He had 13 strikeouts, no walks, radar readings of 98 mph and a 3-2 lead, striking out the side in the seventh inning and finishing it with his glorious, unhittable changeup.

Time out! That's it for Lincecum. He'd thrown 121 pitches in his last outing, and now he was at 111, and ... well, can't you see? It's right here on this piece of paper. Manager Bruce Bochy turned to setup man Tyler Walker, and thus was bestowed an outright gift to the opposition. Walker is a fine fellow and an earnest competitor, but he has about one-tenth of Lincecum's ability.

As that one-run lead became a two-run loss, the fans couldn't believe it. They came for De Niro and got SpongeBob. KNBR's Ralph Barbieri, who had watched from the stands, spoke for a lot of fans when he angrily called the station, got on the air and said, "If I'd known that was going to happen, I wouldn't have gone to the ballpark!"
It would be misguided to blame Bochy, pitching coach Dave Righetti or general manager Brian Sabean. They only reflect a cautious stance taken throughout baseball, and if they have decided to protect Lincecum's arm - the better for him to dominate when the team becomes relevant - who's to argue? They've been consistent with their rules, involving all of the starters, so it would look silly for Lincecum to suddenly have a 150-pitch game.
More than a numbers game

The problem isn't so much the pitch count, an honest endeavor, but the dismissal of all other factors. Fatigue can't be measured by a counter that suddenly reaches "100." For a laboring pitcher, 90 pitches could be a solid two hours of hell. For someone on cruise control, 120 pitches is about as stressful as a Caribbean vacation.
There are so many more reliable signs of trouble: if a pitcher can't throw a strike on 2-and-0, if his curveball loses snap, if he constantly lifts or shakes his arm (indicating discomfort), if he takes more than his customary time between pitches, if he starts shaking off the catcher when the two have been in sync all night, if he walks the leadoff man with a five-run lead, if he can't throw his money pitch when he had it two innings earlier, if he's fussing with needless pickoff throws, if his body language betrays frustration.

In a recent outing against Houston, CC Sabathia pitched his fifth complete game in the nine starts he'd made for Milwaukee. He threw 130 pitches, raising a torrent of alarmist nonsense. Fortunately, manager Ned Yost didn't join in the geeks' pencil party. What Sabathia has done for the Brewers is a story, something exceptional. It's called rising above the rest - the very essence of sports. Yost had a great answer, too, when asked if Sabathia threw too many pitches. "Never once did he labor," he said.

In other words: Open your eyes, everybody. Follow your instincts. By all means, protect an often-injured pitcher such as Rich Harden, a star (think Pedro Martinez) near the end of his career, or a prospect who hasn't worked a 100-inning season in his life. But when you have a young, healthy starter and you're making distinctions between 110 and 120 pitches, you've driven way off the road.

Nobody has to explain these things to Bochy, who caught major-league pitchers for nine years, or to any experienced manager. It's simply that nobody wants to be blamed: by the media, talk-show hosts, agents, the players' association or executives protecting their financial investments. When I spoke with Bochy in the aftermath of that Lincecum game, he actually mentioned Kerry Wood and Mark Prior, who gallantly took the Cubs to the brink of the World Series in 2003, then broke down with sore arms later, prompting some after-the-fact hysteria targeting then-manager Dusty Baker.

Inevitability is to blame
This is where fear has replaced common sense. Throwing a baseball is not a natural act; hundreds of pitchers are doomed to break down. Others are blessed with sublime longevity. Vida Blue was a high school quarterback, worked 312 innings (for the 1971 A's) at the age of 21, pitched 143 complete games over a 17-year career, and still throws a decent round of batting practice.

The bottom line: Don't be so quick to blame then-Giants manager Felipe Alou of ruining an arm when Jason Schmidt crafted a one-hit, 144-pitch shutout at Wrigley Field ("I'd do it all over again," Schmidt recently said. "There's nothing like knowing the game is in your control.") Don't single out Yost as some type of renegade because he believes in Sabathia's durability. And don't join the lunatics blaming Baker for the downfall of Prior and Wood.
Baker's Cubs went for it that year. They had a postseason in their reach, they had the right pitchers for the job, and those men wanted the ball - all night, if that's what it meant. People can sit around adjusting their spectacles and analyzing, but they have no idea how it feels to actually compete.

"Nothing that happened to me was because of that man (Baker)," Wood recently told Chicago reporters. "You have guys who go through their whole careers and don't get injured. Other guys pitch two years and get injured six times. I don't think it has anything to do with a manager or a pitching coach or anything like that. It's either going to happen or it's not."
If more people realized that, and trusted their eyes, we wouldn't have pitch counts at all.

A game of honor
The complete game is a badge of honor among starting pitchers, and historians will view the early 21st century as a veritable wasteland. Only Toronto's Roy Halladay and Milwaukee's CC Sabathia (eight each this season) bear any resemblance to the iron-man performers of the past. A few notes on the subject:

Fernando Valenzuela, with the 1986 Dodgers, was the last pitcher to have at least 20 complete games in a season. This century, no pitcher in either league has reached 10.

The Giants' Juan Marichal had 30 in 1968, a season dominated by pitching statistics, but how about Ted Lyons with the 1930 White Sox? That was a hitters' year of almost comical proportions. The Yankees hit a collective .309, the National League hit .303, and eight batters hit .370 or better, yet Lyons had 29 complete games, and the co-leaders in the National League had 22.
For all of the gaudy records compiled by the likes of Marichal and Warren Spahn, most of the durable pitchers of the '60s had complete games in the 15-20 range each year. The real heyday of modern times came in the '70s, especially in the American League. Over a seven-year span (1971-77), there were 40 instances of an AL pitcher completing 20 or more games.
John Smoltz, one of the toughest and most respected pitchers of modern times, has pitched 53 complete games in a career dating back to 1988. Spahn - and this is no misprint - had 382.

Mike Krukow had 10 complete games during his 20-win season in 1986. Since then, no Giants pitcher has had more than seven, and only Rick Reuschel (1988) has matched Krukow's 245-inning total that year.

Even with the A's rich history, their last pitcher in double figures was Dave Stewart, 11 in 1990.

Halladay owns 34 complete games since the start of the 2003 season, more than 21 teams have compiled.

As recently as the 1998 season, there were 212 instances of a starter throwing at least 125 pitches. Last season, it happened 14 times.

- Bruce Jenkins

[McCovey]

Part II


Let them learn to pitch and learn to finish

Bruce Jenkins (bjenkins@sfchronicle.com)
Wednesday, August 27, 2008

(08-26) 19:07 PDT -- Here's a remedy you might not have heard for the pitch-count madness: Start the closer. Let him work an inning or two. Then bring in the starter, the better to let him finish.

Doug Melvin, the Milwaukee general manager, swears he'd be conducting that experiment if the Brewers weren't such viable contenders. "I'm talking specifically about starters who consistently pitch six or seven innings," Melvin said. "It just makes sense to have your best pitchers, the ones you're paying the most money, working those pressure innings."

That's a radical approach, but it reflects widespread disgust among those from past eras. "Pitch counts are absurd," said Ron Darling, who spent five of his 13 seasons with the A's. "Mentally, you're training pitchers to look over their shoulder for the next guy to bail them out, and then you have the 12th- or 13th-best pitcher on your team coming in for important outs. That doesn't make sense."

One of the most respected pitchers of the 1980s, Jack Morris, said, "I'm not even sure I could pitch today. I'd probably want to be a reliever. As a starter, you have no chance of controlling your destiny. You can have a great game and not be able to finish it. I trust me more than I trust a reliever."

As for Jim Kaat, who had 180 complete games in a 25-year career, "We were on a performance count, not a pitch count," he said. "A pitch count would have hurt my development."

How did it come to this? It's wise not to dwell on those early-century iron men. In the days before Babe Ruth ushered in the lively-ball era (1920), the "spitball" and other ball-scuffing methods were legal. Pitchers tended to use the same ball - brown-colored, difficult to see, heavily doctored and thoroughly dead - inning after inning. A typical home run king in those days was Frank "Home Run" Baker, who slugged nine in 1914 - and led the American League.

More relevant are comparisons to the '50s, '60s and '70s, when pitchers' endurance matched the game's ever-growing emphasis on scoring. There was no better example than the classic 1963 matchup between the Giants' Juan Marichal and the Braves' Warren Spahn, each going the distance in a 16-inning game that ended on Willie Mays' homer. Marichal threw 227 pitches that night, and there was a point when his catcher, Ed Bailey, told him, "Don't let them take you out. Win or lose, this is great."

Exactly. It was great. Back then, pitchers were conditioned to finish games. It was the hallmark of their upbringing, their time in the minor leagues and every big-league start they made. Nobody had an eye on the bullpen, because chances are, nobody was warming up. Marichal made his next start on time (he wound up leading the league with 3211/3 innings that year), and as Steve Hirdt noted at the Elias Sports Bureau, "Pitchers of the generations up to Marichal's had a belief that 'This game is mine.' The idea of doing permanent harm to a pitcher's arm didn't come into anyone's mind."
Defenders of the pitch count point to how drastically the game has changed over the years, and that is undeniably true. Shrinking strike zones have removed the high strike from a pitcher's repertoire. Most new ballparks are a hitter's dream, and despite all denials from Major League Baseball, the balls have been "juiced" for years. Lineups are more loaded with power hitters, particularly in the American League, with the DH. Teams are highly sensitive to their financial investments, and the players' union encourages the idea of two or three vitally important relief specialists per team.
As much as anything, though, the pace of the game has changed. I once asked Leonard Koppett (the sage historian who passed away in 2003) why games of the past were so routinely played in two hours. "They didn't have lights," he said. Pitchers worked quickly, batters went up there hacking, only a minute or so passed between half-innings, and it was all very tidy. Pitchers are infinitely more deliberate today. They require more pitches to get through an inning and the hitters, as a whole, aren't nearly as aggressive. In the era of on-base percentage, it's downright heroic for a batter to be up there taking pitches for a 3-and-1 count.

One thing hasn't changed at all: the simple act of a man throwing a baseball as hard as he can. Watching 60-year-old films of the NFL or college basketball, you wonder if it's even the same sport. There is no difference whatsoever between Matt Cain unloading a fastball to Ryan Howard and Bob Feller doing the same to Ted Williams.

The crucial factor is that pitchers of past eras were groomed to pitch nine innings. Perhaps the most famous pitching coach of all time, Johnny Sain, spent decades encouraging his pitchers to throw every day - not hard, necessarily, simply to keep the arm loose. If your job security depends on finishing a game - with 160 pitches, if that's what it takes - then you don't think twice about it, nor does your manager, general manager or owner. The act becomes as mundane as covering first base or laying down a bunt.
Now that teams are deeply settled into the era of caution, it would be ridiculous for the Giants, or any other team, to suddenly scrap the "setup man" and demand excessive pitch counts of their starters. Restoring pitchers' dignity would require a long-term process, extending all the way to the lower minors, perhaps a three-year program designed to gradually build durability throughout the system. With a four-man rotation, fewer pitchers on the staff and devaluation of the setup man - pretty much a joke on many teams - teams could make infinitely better use of a 25-man roster.
Morris questions whether there's any value to contemporary thought, saying, "I think it's proving over time that they aren't really saving anybody. Guys are getting hurt just as much today as they were before, if not more. So this whole theory about saving their arms, I ain't buying it. I think kids have to throw more, and the more they throw, the stronger they'll get. In time, I think it will go back to what it was for 100 years of baseball."
Still, Kaat wonders, "What organization is going to have the guts to go down to the lower minors and have a four-man rotation and forget about counting pitches and let them figure out how to pitch? I think a lot of them want to. It's a combination of agents, the money in the game today, and fear."

I wouldn't put it past Tony La Russa to lead the way, with St. Louis or some other team. The most appropriate setting might be the American League, where the DH eliminates the necessity of pinch-hitting for the pitchers. Then again, it could happen right here in San Francisco.
When you think about it, the Giants are in ideal position. They have Lincecum and Cain in position to be complete-game mainstays within a year or two. They have Tim Alderson, Madison Bumgarner and at least a half-dozen other top prospects just beginning their professional careers. Perhaps it's the type of thinking that escapes the team's current management. Perhaps fear will continue its oppressive reign.
I'm betting a revolution will come, somewhere, and it will be beautiful.


A true workhorse
Robin Roberts was a workhorse starter who crystallized his reputation during the Philadelphia Phillies' stretch drive in 1950. In the season's final week, he started the first game of a doubleheader on Wednesday, lasting five innings, then came back the following day to pitch the full nine innings in the second game of another doubleheader, each against the New York Giants. With two days' rest, he was asked by manager Eddie Sawyer to pitch the do-or-die game against the Dodgers on Sunday. The 24-year-old right-hander went the distance, getting a single to open the pennant-clinching rally in the 10th. Three starts in five days, but Roberts' performance had no lasting effect on his arm. These were his innings-pitched totals over the next five years (each with at least 21 wins and 22 complete games):

Year--IP
1951--315
1952--330
1953--3462/3
1954--3362/3
1955--305


Arms of iron
Most of this will shock today's pitchers, while sending their coaches into therapy, but here are some standard-setters in the realm of durability:

-- New York Giants pitcher Joe McGinnity, known as "Iron Man," didn't start pitching in the major leagues until he was 28. Five times, he pitched both ends of a doubleheader. He worked an astounding 434 innings in the 1903 season, and over his 10-year career racked up 247 wins and 314 complete games. Get this, though: Wandering through the minors until he was 52, McGinnity collected 204 more wins.

-- It's remarkable enough that on May 1, 1920, Brooklyn and Boston played a 1-1 tie that lasted 26 innings. Incredibly, pitchers Leon Cadore and Joe Oeschger each went the distance. Historians estimate that Cadore threw 345 pitches, Oeschger 319.

-- Allie Reynolds, a hardy starter throughout his career with the Yankees, pitched occasional relief in all of his 13 seasons. From 1947 through '53, Reynolds had seven wins and four saves in World Series play.

-- In a 16-inning, complete-game win against Baltimore in 1962, Washington's Tom Cheney threw 228 pitches.

--Nolan Ryan, known as much for his walks as his strikeouts, routinely surpassed 150 pitches as his career progressed (27 years, 222 complete games and 5,386 innings pitched). In 1974, according to beat writers in attendance, Ryan threw 259 pitches in a 12-inning win over Kansas City.

[SF Kid]

I agree with you Mac. The articles are pretty one sided. There are other issues to consider.

I'm not much of a fan of the pitch count mentality used by every manager in baseball today. Seems they have no mind of their own and just follow along like sheep because it's the safest thing to do to keep their jobs in many cases. It helps them avoid criticism the way we hammered Dusty Baker for his handling of the pitching staff.

But there are pitchers that do want the ball and want to compete. He names a few of them. It's kind of a moot point as the way baseball is played today it isn't likely to revert back to the 70's. As fans we have to learn to take the game the way it's played now or just move on. I admit I'm a Giants fan but more of a casual baseball fan. Not like when I was a kid and knew the batting averages of every player in the National League. I don't even care that much any more. But the way the pitching is handled most of the time these days really irritates me. Most of the time it's simply looking at the pitch count and calling for the bull pen. I know there are exceptions but not very many. Oh well that's how it is.

[McCovey]

I agree with you Mac. The articles are pretty one sided. There are other issues to consider.
I'm surprised Jenkins did bring up those other issues.


I'm not much of a fan of the pitch count mentality used by every manager in baseball today. Seems they have no mind of their own and just follow along like sheep because it's the safest thing to do to keep their jobs in many cases. It helps them avoid criticism the way we hammered Dusty Baker for his handling of the pitching staff.
Yeah, it is annoying sometimes. That game where Lincecum had 13 Ks through eight innings and was cruising then got pulled from the game because he had 112 pitches was just lame. The Giants ended up losing that game in the ninth inning. :rolleyes:


But there are pitchers that do want the ball and want to compete. He names a few of them. It's kind of a moot point as the way baseball is played today it isn't likely to revert back to the 70's.
For sure. I think t hat comes with confidence. Guys like Sabathia and Halladay just want to pitch all the time. They don't want to come out.

[McCovey]

This is a funny response to Jenkins' article. It's from the firejoemorgan.com website.

Part 1


BRUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCE

Sorry it's taken so long. It's just that this is post #1353, and we wanted to take our time and really get it right. So let's go with Bruce Jenkins and his screed about the dire consequences of adhering to pitch counts (http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/08/26/SPJV122RBS.DTL).

These are the dark ages of pitching.

I like opening grafs that read like Star Wars scrolls.

It is a time of cowardice and fear, oblivious to the lessons of history. If there's a bond among starting pitchers of the pitch-count era, it's that they were born too late.

Yes. I'm sure Barry Zito wishes he were born in 1884, and instead of making $126m over the next six+ years, he had made $40 per 350 innings and lived in a crappy one-bedroom near the park and aspired to drive a Model T and read with great interest news of the first plane flight and carried a watch fob and used a glove that was only slightly bigger than his hand that he had to leave on the mound for the guy on the other team to use and died of typhoid at the age of 28. Ah...the good old days, for baseball players.

One of life's great truisms is to finish what you start.

All kinds of [sic]s here, but I can't grammar-police this article. There's too much other work to do.

It's what you tell your kids, your surgeon, your contractor.

Who tells his surgeon this? And in what context? Like, through the anaesthesia somehow, you say this to your gall bladder surgeon, who has decided to half-ass it?

This once applied to baseball, with precision, but now there's a new law: Just quit. Let somebody else finish the job. You did your part, now go be a cheerleader.

Pause briefly to say: BP has done a lot of work on pitch counts, as evidenced in their PAP (Pitcher Abuse Points) index. You can find that here (http://www.baseballprospectus.com/statistics/sortable/index.php?cid=204015). Other, more qualified people than I have researched the effects of pitch counts on the human physique, and I won't pretend to know nearly as much as they do. But it stands to reason, in this day and age, that 7-, 8-, or 9-figure investments should be protected slightly more than their more expendable counterparts in years past.

It also stands to reason that pitchers probably have to work a little harder these days to be successful, what with all of the modern strength training, nutrition, drug abuse, tape-watching, analysis, and preparation that hitters have at their disposal. Albert Pujols (and others) routinely go into the clubhouse immediately after at bats to review the tape on how the pitcher got him out. If you could go back in time and take Nap Lajoie into a room after Rube Waddell K'd him on three pitches and show him a glowing box with a video replay of the at bat, he would call you a demon, slit your throat, tear out his eyes, and generally freak the fuck out. It's a different game, these days.

That's my lob to Jenkins. Here's his return:

Pitch counts have destroyed not only the elements of pride and accomplishment among starting pitchers, but the art of winning. If one thing characterized the great pitchers of the past, from Bob Feller to Warren Spahn to Tom Seaver, it's that they learned how to win. You don't get that from a "quality start" and a nice, early shower. It's when you understand the difference between a breezy sixth inning and a stressful ninth, when you brought that victory home, and can't wait to do it again.

I would say, based purely on anecdotal evidence, that there are many pitchers who would like to close out more games than they are allowed. I would also say, based on anecdotal and statistical evidence, that the average pitcher in this league can convert most save opportunities that might come his way, and the average good closer can convert like 90-95% of them, so there just really isn't a good reason to throw Brandon Webb back out there for the ninth inning of a 5-2 game after he's thrown 125 pitches. Or whatever.

Tim Lincecum would love to close the deal.

Tim Lincecum is fourteen years old and weighs 88 pounds. I don't care if his delivery (http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2008/writers/tom_verducci/07/01/lincecum0707/index.html) was designed by NASA torque specialists. He can just relax and let someone else pitch.

So would Matt Cain, Dan Haren, Scott Kazmir and Carlos Zambrano. They're all prisoners of the pitch-count era, trapped inside a philosophy that characterizes every organization.

Haren, Cain, and Z have been relatively injury free so far. But here's the 24 year-old
Kazmir (http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/players/news?playerId=5917) over a less-than-2-year-span:

March 25, 2008Placed on 15-day DL (Left elbow strain)August 26, 2006Placed on 15-day DL (Left shoulder soreness)July 30, 2006Placed on 15-day DL (Left rotator cuff inflammation)That's at least two and maybe 3 different arm injuries. You want that guy pushing it?

Complete eradication

In 1904, a 30-year-old Yankees pitcher named Jack Chesbro led the American League with 48 complete games.

Yes. I'm sure he was still firing 94 with wicked movement late in those games. I'm sure for most of the 450+ innings he threw that year, he was fresh as a daisy. Things that happened in 1904 are incredibly relevant today. I mean, 1904 was virtually yesterday, in baseball terms. I mean, that's only 10 years before this rule (http://www.baseballlibrary.com/baseballlibrary/excerpts/rules_chronology2.stm):

In the case of fire, panic, or storm, the umpire does not have to wait until the pitcher has the ball on the mound to call a time-out. [9.04]

was adopted. It's only a few scant years before women gained suffrage. There's basically no difference in baseball -- or any sport -- between 1904 and now. To prove that, here are some things that happened in the 1904 Olympics (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1904_Olympics), held in St. Louis:European tension caused by the Russo-Japanese War and the difficulty of getting to St. Louis kept many of the world's top athletes away.

One of the most remarkable athletes was the American gymnast George Eyser, who won six medals even though his left leg was made of wood.

The marathon was the most bizarre event of the Games. It was run in brutally hot weather, over dusty roads, with horses and automobiles clearing the way and creating dust clouds.

1. The first to arrive was Frederick Lorz, who actually was just trotting back to the finish line to retrieve his clothes, after dropping out after nine miles. When the officials thought he had won the race, Lorz played along with his practical joke until he was found out shortly after the medal ceremony and was banned for a year by the AAU for this stunt, later winning the 1905 Boston Marathon.

2. Thomas Hicks (a Briton running for the United States) was the first to cross the finish-line legally, after having received several doses of strychnine sulfate mixed with brandy from his trainers. He was supported by his trainers when he crossed the finish, but is still considered the winner. Hicks had to be carried off the track, and possibly would have died in the stadium, had he not been treated by several doctors.

3. A Cuban postman named Felix Carbajal joined the marathon. He had to run in street clothes that he cut around the legs to make them look like shorts. He stopped off in an orchard en route to have a snack on some apples, which turned out to be rotten. The rotten apples caused him to have to lie down and take a nap. Despite falling ill to apples he finished in fourth place.

4. The marathon included the first two black Africans to compete in the Olympics; two Tswana tribesmen named Len Tau (real name: Len Taunyane) and Yamasani (real name: Jan Mashiani). But they weren't there to compete in the Olympics, they were actually the sideshow. They had been brought over by the exposition as part of the Boer War exhibit (both were really students from Orange Free State in South Africa, but this fact was not made known to the public). Len Tau finished ninth and Yamasani came in twelfth. This was a disappointment, as many observers were sure Len Tau could have done better if he had not been chased nearly a mile off course by aggressive dogs.That seems like 2008, Beijing, right? Good. Let's keep going.
Last year, Arizona's Brandon Webb topped the National League with four. The complete game has become as obsolete as five-man pepper, the two-hour game, guys swinging three bats in the on-deck circle, and coaches hitting practice pop-ups with a fungo bat.
1. NO PEPPER
2. If every game were Mark Buehrle v. Joe Blanton, you'd get bored in May.
3. It's hard to hold three bats.
4. Coaches still do this.

The sins of pitch-count madness are evident nightly, but there was no more glaring example than Lincecum's July 26 start against Arizona.

I can't believe you're not going with Johan for "the most glaring example." His bullpen has lost him like 6 games this year, and those games, unlike the Giants', actually matter.

Lincecum, a freakish phenomenon who has not had a hint of arm trouble, was demonstrating why some sharp observers consider him the best pitcher in the National League. He had 13 strikeouts, no walks, radar readings of 98 mph and a 3-2 lead, striking out the side in the seventh inning and finishing it with his glorious, unhittable changeup.
Time out! That's it for Lincecum. He'd thrown 121 pitches in his last outing, and now he was at 111, and ... well, can't you see? It's right here on this piece of paper.

It's also right here in the part of my brain that creates and registers "common sense." This game is meaningless. Tim Lincecum is the future of your organization. Remove him from the game.

Manager Bruce Bochy turned to setup man Tyler Walker, and thus was bestowed an outright gift to the opposition. Walker is a fine fellow and an earnest competitor, but he has about one-tenth of Lincecum's ability.

Most pitchers do -- Lincecum is awesome. Which is why it wouldn't really make sense to stretch him past 111 pitches in a meaningless game in late July when he'd thrown 126 pitches four days earlier.

As that one-run lead became a two-run loss, the fans couldn't believe it. They came for De Niro and got SpongeBob.

In this analogy:
Robert DeNiro = Good Actor
SpongeBob = ...Bad...Actor?

KNBR's Ralph Barbieri, who had watched from the stands, spoke for a lot of fans when he angrily called the station, got on the air and said, "If I'd known that was going to happen, I wouldn't have gone to the ballpark!"

You would have missed seven good innings of Tim Lincecum pitching, which, if you're a Giants fan, is about as good as it can get right now.

It would be misguided to blame Bochy, pitching coach Dave Righetti or general manager Brian Sabean. They only reflect a cautious stance taken throughout baseball, and if they have decided to protect Lincecum's arm - the better for him to dominate when the team becomes relevant - who's to argue? They've been consistent with their rules, involving all of the starters, so it would look silly for Lincecum to suddenly have a 150-pitch game.
Correct. Why did you write this article?

More than a numbers game

The problem isn't so much the pitch count, an honest endeavor, but the dismissal of all other factors. Fatigue can't be measured by a counter that suddenly reaches "100." For a laboring pitcher, 90 pitches could be a solid two hours of hell. For someone on cruise control, 120 pitches is about as stressful as a Caribbean vacation.

True 'dat, my brother. Other things you should consider: does the game mean anything? Is the pitcher the complete and utter future of your franchise? Did the pitcher throw a lot of pitches in his last (also meaningless) game? If the answers are: no, yes, yes, then you should pull him after seven innings.

There are so many more reliable signs of trouble: if a pitcher can't throw a strike on 2-and-0, if his curveball loses snap, if he constantly lifts or shakes his arm (indicating discomfort), if he takes more than his customary time between pitches, if he starts shaking off the catcher when the two have been in sync all night, if he walks the leadoff man with a five-run lead, if he can't throw his money pitch when he had it two innings earlier, if he's fussing with needless pickoff throws, if his body language betrays frustration.
The implication here: major league managers and pitching coaches have never considered this. They have seen pitchers exhibit this trouble and thought nothing of it. They have watched the absence of these signs and thought nothing of it. They have simply never thought to consider these factors at all. Not once. And they never go up and talk to their pitchers between innings and ask them how they feel. They never have, or formulate, plans. They just wait until the eighth inning and toss a reliever in there. Managing.

In a recent outing against Houston, CC Sabathia pitched his fifth complete game in the nine starts he'd made for Milwaukee. He threw 130 pitches, raising a torrent of alarmist nonsense. Fortunately, manager Ned Yost didn't join in the geeks' pencil party. What Sabathia has done for the Brewers is a story, something exceptional. It's called rising above the rest - the very essence of sports. Yost had a great answer, too, when asked if Sabathia threw too many pitches. "Never once did he labor," he said.

It has not occurred to Mr. Jenkins, apparently, that CC is 99% likely to leave the team after this season. Which means: the Brewers could not give less of two shits [sic] how beat up he gets. They are driving for the playoffs. If CC blows his arm out in June of next year, that's Hank Steinbrenner's problem.

In other words: Open your eyes, everybody. Follow your instincts. By all means, protect an often-injured pitcher such as Rich Harden, a star (think Pedro Martinez) near the end of his career, or a prospect who hasn't worked a 100-inning season in his life. But when you have a young, healthy starter and you're making distinctions between 110 and 120 pitches, you've driven way off the road.

Tim Lincecum had thrown a grand total of 62.2 innings in professional baseball before throwing 146 with the Giants last year (after 31 of those minor league innings). He is on pace to throw 216 this year.

...nobody wants to be blamed: by the media, talk-show hosts, agents, the players' association or executives protecting their financial investments. When I spoke with Bochy in the aftermath of that Lincecum game, he actually mentioned Kerry Wood and Mark Prior, who gallantly took the Cubs to the brink of the World Series in 2003, then broke down with sore arms later, prompting some after-the-fact hysteria targeting then-manager Dusty Baker.

I wouldn't call it hysteria. I'd call it "anger (http://sportsix.blogspot.com/2008/06/mark-prior-should-sue-dusty-baker.html)."

[McCovey]

Part 2



Don't be so quick to blame then-Giants manager Felipe Alou of ruining an arm when Jason Schmidt crafted a one-hit, 144-pitch shutout at Wrigley Field ("I'd do it all over again," Schmidt recently said. "There's nothing like knowing the game is in your control.")

July 16, 2008 Recalled from minors rehab
June 28, 2008 Sent to minors for rehabilitation
June 01, 2008 Recalled from minors rehab
May 20, 2008 Transferred to 60-day DL
May 11, 2008 Sent to minors for rehabilitation
March 30, 200 8 Placed on 15-day DL (Recovery from right shoulder surgery)
November 01, 2007 Removed from 60-day DL
August 13, 2007 Transferred to 60-day DL
June 18, 2007 Placed on 15-day DL (Right shoulder surgery - out for season)
June 05, 2007 Removed from 15-day DL
May 30, 2007 Sent to minors for rehabilitation
April 17, 2007 Placed on 15-day DL (Right bursa sac inflammation)
May 24, 2005 Removed from 15-day DL
May 10, 2005 Placed on 15-day DL (Strained right shoulder)
April 16, 2004 Recalled from minors rehab
April 16, 2004 Removed from 15-day DL
April 10, 2004 Sent to minors for rehabilitation
April 03, 2004 Placed on 15-day DL (Right shoulder stiffness)
April 24, 2002 Recalled from minors rehab
April 13, 2002 Sent to minors for rehabilitation
May 11, 2001 Recalled from minors rehab
April 30, 2001 Sent to minors for rehabilitation
April 20, 2001 Recalled from minors rehab
April 13, 2001 Sent to minors for rehabilitation
September 01, 2000 Transferred to 60-day DL
August 23, 2000 Recalled from minors rehab
July 29, 2000 Sent to minors for rehabilitation
August 30, 1996 Recalled from minors rehab
August 11, 1996 Sent to minors for rehabilitation

Not that many games have been under his control, really. What with all the injuries.

Don't single out Yost as some type of renegade because he believes in Sabathia's durability. And don't join the lunatics blaming Baker for the downfall of Prior and Wood.

We've covered the situation in Milwaukee. And we're not lunatics. We're people who watched Dusty Baker have Kerry Wood throw 141 pitches after an injury-riddled early career and asked: "WTF?" (Also, how is Kerry Wood different from Rich Harden? Remember back when you suggested protecting Rich Harden?)

Baker's Cubs went for it that year. They had a postseason in their reach, they had the right pitchers for the job, and those men wanted the ball - all night, if that's what it meant. People can sit around adjusting their spectacles and analyzing, but they have no idea how it feels to actually compete.

I'll have you know that I once pitched six grueling innings with a sore toe in a little league game against Rent-a-Wreck in 1988. I gave up four runs but also drove in three with a 3-R bomb to left off Dave Forgione. We won 19-4. Then my mom took me for ice cream. So, yeah, I think I know how to compete.

"Nothing that happened to me was because of that man (Baker)," Wood recently told Chicago reporters.

This reminds me of something...oh. Right.
"I did not have sexual relations with that woman (Miss Lewinsky)."

I bet you fuckers never thought you'd get a Monica Lewinsky joke on this blog, did you?! You never saw that coming! I got you! I got you all!

Sincerely,

Jay Leno

P.S. Viagra!

"You have guys who go through their whole careers and don't get injured. Other guys pitch two years and get injured six times. I don't think it has anything to do with a manager or a pitching coach or anything like that. It's either going to happen or it's not."

This is an oddly fatalistic attitude to apply to a game that requires extreme stress on a player's muscles, ligaments, and tendons. I don't think winning the dead lift competition has to do with how strong your legs are. It's either going to happen or it's not.

If more people realized that, and trusted their eyes, we wouldn't have pitch counts at all.

This condescending sentence seems like a good place to end.

What? There's like 10000 more words?

A game of honor

The complete game is a badge of honor among starting pitchers, and historians will view the early 21st century as a veritable wasteland. Only Toronto's Roy Halladay and Milwaukee's CC Sabathia (eight each this season) bear any resemblance to the iron-man performers of the past. A few notes on the subject:

Fernando Valenzuela, with the 1986 Dodgers, was the last pitcher to have at least 20 complete games in a season. This century, no pitcher in either league has reached 10.

Then Fernando Valenzuela went on to pitch 10 more years of awesome baseball and got elected to the Hall of Fame with 350 wins.

Oh no wait -- that's not what happened. What happened was (http://www.baseball-reference.com/v/valenfe01.shtml), he threw like 1550 innings before the age of 25, had that last good year in 1986, then the next year his WHIP shot up to 1.5 and he never had a good season again due to -- in no small part -- a lot of injuries.

The Giants' Juan Marichal had 30 in 1968, a season dominated by pitching statistics, but how about Ted Lyons with the 1930 White Sox? That was a hitters' year of almost comical proportions. The Yankees hit a collective .309, the National League hit .303, and eight batters hit .370 or better, yet Lyons had 29 complete games, and the co-leaders in the National League had 22.

Yeah, how about Ted Lyons and those 1930 numbers? Crazy. 297 IP. But more to the point, how about Ted Lyons and that 1931 arm injury (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Lyons) that made it impossible for him to throw his cut fastball anymore? And how about the fact that he never pitched anywhere close to that number of innings again? And how about the fact that he's in the HOF even though his 1.348 career WHIP (http://www.baseball-reference.com/leaders/WHIP_career.shtml) is only slightly worse than Bronson Arroyo's? It was a different game, man.

Also, do you do any research? I have no idea if Ted Lyon's arm injury was due to the 297 innings he had thrown the year before. For all I know he injured his arm waving a sign of support for Herbert Hoover, who was President in 1930, because that's how fucking long ago 1930 is. But why use Fernando and Lyons, two guys who got badly arm-injured the very next year you cite for each of them, to try to prove your point? That's crazy.

[...] As recently as the 1998 season, there were 212 instances of a starter throwing at least 125 pitches. Last season, it happened 14 times.

Baseball is lost.

I don't think every arm injury is caused by pitcher abuse. I do think that certain pitchers could complete more games, if they wanted to, without career-ending injuries. So why did I take three hours to break down this article? Because it's in my blood, man. It's in my blood.
Lewinsky!