I thought about calling this article, "The Devil and Steve Siviski" because Steve Siviski is the one who got me thinking about this.
Steve Siviski is a college freshman and American Legion pitcher in the town where I live. He's the kind of pitcher baseball people would say is nuts -- in a good way. Last summer, he played quarterback in the state's senior all-star football game, and then threw over 160 pitches in a Legion game the next day.
This past week, Siviski outdid himself. He threw seven innings on Saturday, using just 85 pitches. Three days later, in the game that put his team in the state tournament, Siviski went all nine innings and threw 183 pitches. He'll start again on Sunday, on four days rest.
To put that in perspective, no major leaguer threw more than 130 pitches in a game last season. This year, it's been done once -- by Ricky Nolasco, who threw 132.
Now, I know there are about a million differences between throwing a lot of pitches in a major league game, and throwing them in a Legion game. The quality of competition, obviously, along with kids starting maybe 15 games a year versus 30-plus.
Still, there's something I don't understand about modern pitchers. I really don't see a valid reason why there should be any alarm for a starter throwing 140-150 pitches in a game.
There's a poll question on the site about this: "Are today's managers handling their starting pitchers correctly, or are the starters babied too much?" As of Sunday night, 35 of 61 people who answered said the starters were being babied. I'd count myself as one of those 35.
As you probably know, in the 1970s, starters pitched more often and threw more innings. Today's athletes are bigger and stronger, and one would think that conditioning techniques are constantly evolving. Let's put that another way: If conditioning techniques were better in the 1970s, something is definitely wrong.
Moreover, there are pitchers who threw ridiculous (by today's standards) numbers of pitches and still kept pitching effectively.
Bob Knepper threw 163 pitches in a game in 1979. He was a regular starter for another 10 years. Greg Maddux threw 167 pitches in a game in 1988. He's still pitching today. Yet if Edinson Volquez throws 120 pitches in a game, Dusty Baker is ruining his career.
I'll tell you what I think has happened. This is one of those ideas that could be completely kooky, even though I've thought about it for a while.
I think starters today are conditioned to believe that they should be throwing fewer pitchers. For years, the mentality was that a starting pitcher should finish what he started. That's not the mentality anymore.
Today, a pitcher is conditioned to believe that he should be ready to pitch six or seven innings. If he throws well over 100 pitches, he is conditioned to believe that he is making an extraordinary effort.
Psychologically, wouldn't you think that takes a toll? Now, I'm not a Christian Scientist. I don't believe the fatigue and pain from throwing over 100 pitches is all mental. I'm saying that a starter would push himself to go further into the game if that's what he believed he should be doing. Again, this isn't a perfect parallel, but Steve Siviski threw 183 pitches that night because a) he believed he should be in there and b) his team didn't have any better options.
Side story: Using an old radio broadcast, I recently charted a game in September 1974 when Ross Grimsley went the first 14 innings of a 17-inning victory over the Yankees. Grimsley threw 158 pitches in this game. (Using Tom Tango's pitch estimator, you get 199 pitches for Grimsley. This is a little off, but whatever. The point is, it's a lot of pitches.)
One thing that may explain why pitchers threw more complete games in the 1970s is that the Yankees batters weren't exactly up there to work the count. Grimsley threw 33 first-pitch strikes, and the Yankees swung at 23 of them. In Grimsley's last inning, with 13 innings and almost 150 pitches behind him, Sandy Alomar and Fred Stanley both swung at the first pitch and popped out.
I think we can state with a pretty good level of confidence that Grimsley would not throw that many innings or pitches today. He would have come out after eight innings and 97 pitches. If not, he would have come out in the ninth. With the score tied 2-2, Grimsley walked the leadoff batter on four pitches. After the next batter bunted, Grimsley walked another batter on four pitches. That put him at 107 pitches, with two on in the ninth inning of a tie game. Today, exit Grimsley, and bring in a reliever who's kicked around with three or four teams.
And here's the other thing. Grimsley started four days later. Against Cleveland. Now, granted the Indians were a decent team that year until doing a 1964 Phillies-level tank in September, but still, that's pretty extreme by today's standards. Grimsley went 8 1/3 innings, and lost 1-0 to Gaylord Perry.
I don't think starters should go in with the goals of 150-plus pitches and extra innings if the game is tied. I do think starters could average 110-120 pitches in a five-day rotation and still be all right.
But I don't think that will happen. If a manager used his pitchers that way today, the media and fans would go crazy, because they "know" that it's abusing the pitcher's arm. The pitcher would start to buy into this after a while, and believe that he was tired. We can't remove those outside influences and change people's thinking over a period of months. It would take decades, and it would have to be done gradually.
Obviously, there's a breaking point for how much you can ask a pitcher to do before you're hurting him, and I can see why no one wants to find out by reaching that point. But I think today's pitchers area lot further away from that point than we are led to believe.
Matt DiFilippo can be reached at allthings222@fastmail.fm