I have always had an interest in the generation of pitchers born in the early to mid-forties, the last generation of pitchers who routinely threw 300 innings, the generation that boasts a lot of the 300-game winners. My interest in this generation of pitchers is connected to my fascination with baseball statistics in general. I started looking at stats on the backs of baseball cards, and, well, these were the pitchers who had the most impressive stats. I remember the way Topps used to list a player’s entire career on the back of the card. For the old guys the print was near-microscopic. And Topps used to italicize the league leaders, and somehow those italics made the accomplishments of Palmer and Schmidt and Ryan and Reggie all the more impressive.

Last week one of the poll questions asked, “Are managers handling starters correctly, or are pitchers being babied?”

In light of that question, I thought it might be interesting to take a look at that last generation of 300-inning guys and see what their records show. How did these guys, who often notched 300 innings a year, manage to play for so damned long? How did a guy like Nolan Ryan last until his mid-forties? What about the guys who didn’t last? What happened to them? Who was babied and who wasn’t? What can we learn from this generation of pitchers? What conclusions can we draw?

The Names

I used the years 1942-1947. This was an arbitrary choice, and it leaves out a few guys (Phil Niekro, Jim Kaat, and Gaylord Perry on one side, Luis Tiant, Vida Blue, and Bert Blyleven on the other) who probably belong in the discussion. It seemed a six-year stretch was enough. The players I looked at are, for the most part, known pitchers, guy you probably know a little about:

That’s four 300-game winners (Seaver, Ryan, Carlton, and Sutton), six 200-game winners (Palmer, Tommy John, Jenkins, Koosman, Joe Niekro, Catfish), and eleven 100-game winners (the rest of ‘em). It’s a reasonable list of the best pitchers of that generation. The 100-game guys aren’t slouches: you’ve got a Cy Young winner in Lonborg, and the three Mc’s: McLain, McNally, and McDowell (there was a time when debates about the best pitcher in the game were crowded with Mc’s.

Innings Pitched

In baseball, it is generally believed that young arms should be protected. This came to attention during the trials of  Kerry Woods and Mark Prior, but the debate about pitch counts and how to develop arms has been part of baseball discourse for a lot longer than that. I remember reading Nolan Ryan’s first autobiography, where he complains about the 100-pitch count that the Astros had him on for much of the 1980’s.

But if it’s always been part of the conversation, concepts like pitch counts and limiting a young pitchers innings have never before been the dominant strategy, the official strategy, as I think they are now.

Limiting a young pitcher’s innings wasn’t the dominant strategy of the late 1960’s, but, as the following chart shows, it was practiced:

Look at those numbers for a moment. Only Larry Dierker was pitching a lot at age 19. Two guys (out of 21) had 200 IP at age 20. Thru Age 21, only 9 of the 21 pitchers had ever thrown 200+ innings in a season (although McNally and Carlton had come close). Even at age 22, only 62% of the pitchers had ever notched a 200 inning season. Fergie Jenkins had 12 major league innings through Age 22. Lonborg didn’t reach the majors until he was 23. Koosman didn’t reach until he was 24.

But by their Age 25 season, every single pitcher had notched at least one 200-inning season. 16 of the 21 had notched 250+ innings in a season. Five pitchers (Jenkins, Ryan, Dierker, Palmer, and McLain) has notched 300+ innings in a season.

Another way to look at their development is their innings pitched at a certain age:

Entering his Age 24 season, Fergie Jenkins had a total of 196 major league innings. Larry Dierker had five times that many. Carlton, John, Palmer, Seaver and Ryan were all hovering around 500 innings pitched. Catfish Hunter had a ton of innings, as did McLain and Coleman. Paul Splittorff and Jerry Koosman had 9 innings, combined.

Whether this was a strategy of the time, or merely a measure of necessity, it is worth noting that a good number of these pitchers were protected as young pitchers. Some weren’t. Nolan Ryan didn’t pitch because he was wild, and the Mets didn’t trust that. Fergie Jenkins came up with the Phillies, who had good arms and liked Rick Wise better – Jenkins didn’t get a shot until he was dealt to the Cubs. Dierker pitched because the Houston team was in last place, so what did it hurt? Catfish pitched because there was a ‘bonus-baby rule,’ and besides, it wasn’t like Charles Finley to waste money on a minor leaguer.

You know what’s interesting, though? If you set an arbitrary number of innings pitched, and split the guys up, between, say, ‘Throwers’ and ‘Babies,’ you get a pretty interesting list. Let’s say, Age 21, 300 or more major league innings:

How about Age 23? And let’s add two seasons worth of innings, bringing the total to 700 IP:

Palmer and McNally switch places, which seems apt. Palmer was worked a bit as a kid, but then he had arm trouble and missed the better part of two seasons. McNally’s right on the edge in the last table: at Age 21 he had 294 IP. He certainly wasn’t babied as a young pitcher. He belongs on the left side.

What’s obvious about this list? These are guys who have had their Age 23 season. The guys on the right have not thrown a lot of major league innings. I don’t know exactly why they’ve been protected, not in every case. And I don’t know how many of those guys threw a ton of innings in the minor leagues.

But what’s obvious to me, about the two lists, is how much better the second list is. Those guys, the guys who didn’t pitch a lot as young pitchers, they were the ones who had the careers. They were the guys who threw 260-300 innings and won 20 games a year like clockwork. You have six Hall-of-Famers on that list, 12 Cy Young Awards.

On the other side you have the burnouts. Sam McDowell struck out 325 hitters in 276 innings when he was twenty-two years old. He was done at 29, out of the majors at 32. Denny McLain won an MVP at twenty-four. Four years later he was out of baseball.

Same list, different measure:

The guys who started slow, the guys of that generation who took their sweet time getting to the majors, those babies, they lasted. The guys who were thrown to the lions, who tossed tons of innings at young ages, they were out of the game early.

Eight of the thirteen guys who were babied as young pitchers managed to pitch into their forties. None (zero) of the guys who threw a lot as youngsters made it past 36.

(Are there any) Conclusions

Are starting pitchers today being babied? I don’t know the answer to that. But I generally think that baseball evolves: strategies that lead to success become dominant strategies, while strategies that don’t succeed are replaced. If most teams limit pitch counts, I imagine they are doing so because it is in the team’s best interest to do so.

Heck, another chart. Here’s a list of the pitchers in the last 50 years who threw 400+ major league innings through their Age 21 season, and the age they retired:

Again, you have a list of burnouts. Aside from Blyleven and Tanana, these guys were done at a young age. Gooden and Fernando: they sure looked like Hall-of-Famers as young pitcher. So did Gary Nolan. Heck, even Don Drysdale and Catfish Hunter, who are in the Hall, were done at a young age.

Are pitchers being babied? I don’t know about that. Kerry Wood and Mark Prior threw a lot of innings for the Cubs. Felix Hernandez, the fine pitcher for the Mariners, is the latest entry on the list above. I think teams still overwork young pitchers, even in the face of history, and I think teams continue to do detriment to those young pitchers.

As to older pitchers being babied: do I think pitchers could throw 300 innings a year, every year, without trouble? I think they could, yes I do. There is a historical precedent to it: the generation of pitchers between 1942-1947 had an awful lot of guys who could throw 280-320 innings in a season.

But the guys who managed to do it every year, well, they were all babied as young pitchers.

You want a pitcher to throw 300 innings in a season, without him getting injured? The best way to do it is to make sure he doesn’t throw too much at a young age. Limit his innings. Limit his pitch counts. Baby the hell outta him.

(Thanks to baseballreference.com for the statistics)