Hey Bill, looking back at your writing on regularity of use, I guess the request of Whitey Ford of Houk for regular work has developed into something of a sea change moment. It occurred to me that one of the underpinning complaints of Ford's request -- that under Stengel he had been held out of games against weaker opponents to toss against upcoming stronger opponents -- would leave a statistical residue after this transition period passed. It seems like to a certain degree, the back of the rotation saw weaker opponents than the aces more than today's etched-in-stone rotations. Do you feel this evened out the historic records prior to the 60s between the aces and the whozatts to a meaningful degree?

I certainly think that there was a sea change in the view of baseball men as to the regularity of use of starting pitchers, and that this change occurred at about the time you indicate.   I don’t know, however, whether Whitey Ford’s public request of Ralph Houk to leave him in the rotation and let him pitch actually precipitated this change or was merely in keeping with something that was happening at that time, so I got interested in that question. ..was Ford’s public request actually the trigger that led to that change?

Not precisely on point of the reader’s question, I developed the concept of a "Combined Use Score" for a pitcher.   The Combined Use Score of a pitcher is simply the number of starts that he has made, multiplied by the number of relief appearances he has made.    If you make 10 starts and 10 relief appearances, that’s a Combined Use Score of 100.   If you have 15 of one and 20 of the other, that’s a Combined Use Score of 300.   If you pitch only in relief or only as a starter, you will have a Combined Use Score of zero.

This turns out to be an extremely handy tool.  One can figure a Combined Use Score for a pitcher in a season, for a pitcher in a career, for a team, for a league, or for a year.   And by the use of these scores, a few things that previously were not entirely clear become…well, entirely clear.

First point. .. most pitcher/seasons in baseball history have non-zero Combined Use Scores—over 50%, even if you include the pitchers who only pitched in one or two or three games.  In modern baseball, of course, the opposite is true.  In 2013 there were 679 major league pitchers, of whom 537 had Combined Use Scores of zero.  That’s 79%.  Among those pitchers who appeared in ten games or more, 78% had Combined Use Scores of zero.

Between 1920 and 1939, however, 76% of pitchers had Combined Use Scores greater than zero, and among pitchers who appeared in ten games or more, 94% had Combined Use Scores greater than zero.  It was simply assumed of every pitcher that he could and would pitch whenever and however he was needed to pitch. 

The highest Combined Use Score ever (868) was by Dave Davenport in 1916, 31 starts and 28 relief appearances.  The top ten are almost all from the years 1908 to 1916:

Until the early years of the 20^th century is was assumed that the starting pitcher would finish every game.  When this assumption started to crumble, the first relievers were other starters.   One starter knocked out; another one in.   There weren’t any bullpen specialists.  This resulted in pitchers with 30 starts, 25 relief appearances, or combinations like that.

In a career, however, almost all of the highest totals are by pitchers of the last two generations.   The highest Combined Use Score ever, for a career, was by Dennis Eckersley, with 361 starts and 710 relief appearances:

And these pitchers, of course, were not pitchers who were working the two jobs interchangeably, but pitchers who switched at some point in their careers from being starters to being relievers, or vice versa.  Danny Darwin and Terry Mulholland were legitimate dual-use guys.

A couple of other things we could do here, but I will spare you, are:

1)  To give you the league leader for each season in baseball history, and

2)  To give you a list of the most effective pitchers pitching in a mixed role in each season.

The league leading totals actually have not changed very much over time.  The major league leader in 2013 was Garrett Richards of the Padres (510). . .well, here are the major league leaders over the last ten years:

These numbers actually are not very much different from the numbers of the league leaders in the 1950s.  Dave Koslo led the majors in 1952 with a score of 408.    The reason that number hasn’t changed very much over the last 60 years (while every other number we will see here has changed) is that there is a natural limit to it.   If you pitch in 50 games and they’re evenly divided between starts and relief appearances, that’s a score of 625.  You can’t go much higher than that, under normal circumstances, and there is always one pitcher in the majors who divides his season fairly evenly between the two, so that guy is always going to be up near the limit.

But now there are one or two pitchers per season who are up near the limit.  In the 1950s there were many more.   In 1954 there were 42 major league pitchers who had Combined Use Scores over 200; in 1955 there were 51, and in 1956, 45.   In 2011, with twice as many teams and a longer schedule, there 14 pitchers with Combined Use Scores over 200.   In 2012 there were 14, and in 2013 there were 15.  The number of pitchers per team being used a significant amount in both roles has decreased by about 80%.

We can chart the decrease in the acceptance of the practice of using a pitcher in both roles by charting the major league Combined Use Score total over time.   From 1876 until 1904, this total was under 10,000 every year:

At about that time there began what we could call the Ed Walsh era, in which starting pitchers were also used to pitch relief.  From 1904 to 1914, the major league Combined Use Score total jumped almost six fold:

The 1914 figure, aided by the fact that there was a third league that year, the Federal League, climbed to 37,619.   That remains to this day the highest total ever for a season.  From 1914 to 1958, the major league total was flat:

What was established as the accepted practice, in the Ed Walsh era, remained the accepted practice until the late 1950s, except that managers backed off the very high games and innings loads of the 1910s.

And then—as was stated at the top of the article—there was a relatively sudden change.    Because of the 1961/1962 expansion I am going to list the per-team figures as well as the major league totals.   The major league average per team dropped from 1,532 in 1958 to 914 in 1968:

After 40+ years of almost no change in the major league norm, the norm dropped by 40% in ten years—and continued to drop.    By 1971 the major league norm (per team) was down to 804, by 1978 down to 730, by 1985 down to 662, by 1988 down to 586, by 1997 down to 570, by 2004 down to 450.   In the last three years the major league norms (team total CUS) have been 326, 353, and 355 (1911-12-13).   The five-year trend line has continued to decrease from 1959  to the present time.

Overall, then, Combined Use Scores have dropped almost 80% since 1958.   Getting back to the question with which we began this exercise:  Was it Whitey Ford’s public request to be left alone in the starting rotation that triggered this change?

No, it was not.  The change started in 1958; Ford’s request came two years later.   There may have been a triggering event; there may not have been.  I don’t know.

Let’s look a minute at team totals.    Casey Stengel’s team totals were high.  In 1956 the Yankees’ team total was 1,522, fourth highest in baseball.   In 1959 the Yankees were at 1,591, again fourth highest in baseball; in 1960 they had a team total of 1,408, sixth highest in baseball. 

One could say, then, that Stengel’s totals were high, but not remarkably high.   There were other managers who were more willing than Stengel to shift pitchers back and forth between starting and relieving.

You know the description of a statistician, that a statistician is a person who, if you have one foot in the fire and the other in a block of ice, will tell you that on average, you’re comfortable?  There is something about Casey Stengel’s use of starter/relievers that is too subtle for the average.

The teams with very high numbers were generally the bad teams.  This is still true today.   A bad team doesn’t necessarily know who its best starting pitchers are.   A bad team is searching for answers, and, in searching for answers, one of the things they will typically do is give relievers a shot in the starting rotation.   In 1960 the major league team with the highest Combined Use Score was the Washington Senators.   In 1957 the American League leaders were the Kansas City A’s.

Yes, there were other managers who were even more inclined to switch pitchers between roles than was Stengel, and this is something that I didn’t see clearly until I had this method.    I think that I may have written that Casey Stengel was the last manager to use his ace to close out games for other pitchers.   Not strictly true.   The major league 1-2 leaders in Combined Use Scores, by season beginning in 1954. .1954 Chicago White Sox (Paul Richards, manager) and Pittsburgh Pirates (Fred Haney.)   1955 Washington Senators (Chuck Dressen) and Pittsburgh Pirates (Fred Haney).    1956 Cincinnati Reds (Birdie Tebbetts) and Washington Senators (Chuck Dressen).   1957 Cincinnati Reds (Birdie Tebbetts) and Kansas City A’s (Lou Boudreau).   1958 San Francisco Giants (Bill Rigney) and Cleveland Indians (Joe Gordon).   1959 San Francisco Giants (Bill Rigney) and Cleveland Indians (Joe Gordon).    1960 Washington Senators (Cookie Lavagetto) and Baltimore Orioles (Paul Richards).

We can see, then, that

a)  there were some managers who were comfortable doing this,

b)  it tended to be done most on bad teams, and

c)  Casey Stengel was not the manager MOST likely to use a pitcher in dual roles.

When Ralph Houk replaced Stengel in 1961, the Yankees’ position on the list really did not change.    The 1961 Yankees had Bill Stafford (25 starts, 11 relief appearances, Combined Use Score 275), Rollie Sheldon (294), and Jim Coates (352).    In 1962 Yankees had Jim Bouton (320), Jim Coates (264), Rollie Sheldon (288), and Bud Daley (222).    These are high numbers.   The Yankees didn’t stop using pitchers in mixed roles; they just stopped using Whitey Ford in both roles.

One more thing in closing.   By the use of this method, we can designate any pitcher with a Combined Use Score of 300 or more as a Mixed Role Pitcher, and we can then give the Ed Walsh Award for each season to the best Mixed Role Pitcher in the major leagues.

We could do that, but I promised you I wouldn’t.    But I can do one per decade or so.   The greatest Mixed Role season in major league history was by Ed Walsh in 1908.    Walsh made 49 starts and also 17 relief appearances, won 40 games, lost 15, pitched 464 innings and posted a 1.42 ERA.

1910s, the greatest was Walter Johnson, 1913; Craig Wright just did a nice piece on that season for Pages From Baseball’s Past, so I’ll leave that one alone.  1920s, Jim Bagby had 9 relief appearances for a Combined Use Score of 351 in 1920, when he won 31 games.  1930s, Lefty Grove had a Combined Use Score of 330 in 1931, when he went 31-4.   1940s, Hal Newhouser had 34 starts, 13 relief appearances in 1944, when he was the American League MVP with a record of 29-9, 2.22 ERA.   Again, being used in a mixed role was the norm in that era, not the exception.

1950s, the best was Mike Garcia, 1952; 22 wins, 11 losses, 36 starts, 10 relief appearances, 2.37 ERA.

1960s, the best season in a mixed-use role was by Dean Chance in 1964:  35 starts, 11 relief appearances, 20 wins, 1.65 ERA, Cy Young Award Winner (that was Bill Rigney again. Rigney was a manager who would use a pitcher both ways.)   970s, Wayne Garland in 1976 made 25 starts, 13 relief appearances, was 20-7 with a 2.67 ERA.  Mike Cuellar bombed out of the Orioles’ famous starting rotation in mid-season, and Garland slipped into the job.  Rudy May with the 1980 Yankees was 15-5, led the league in ERA at 2.46, made 17 starts and 24 relief outings.   1990s, Curt Schilling in 1992 made 26 starts, 16 relief appearances, finished 14-11 with a 2.35 ERA.    Since 2000. .. Johan Santana in 2003 made 18 starts, 27 relief appearances, went 12-3 with a 3.07 ERA, 169 strikeouts in 158 innings.

Since then we can go year by year.  2004, Rodrigo Lopez with the Orioles, 23 starts, 14 relief, 14-9 with a 3.59 ERA.

2005, Jorge Sosa of the Braves, 20 starts, 24 relief, 13-3, 2.55 ERA.

2006, Nobody really.   Brett Tomko of the Dodgers if somebody has to win—8 and 7 with a 4.73 ERA.

2007, Chad Billingsley of the Dodgers, 20 starts, 23 relief, 12-5 with a 3.31 ERA.

2008, Nobody really.  Jorge Campillo of the Braves was 8-7 with a 3.91 ERA. 

2009, Matt Palmer of the Angels, 13 starts, 27 relief, 11-2 with a 3.93 ERA.

2010, Brian Duensing of the Twins, 13 starts, 40 relief, 10-3 with a 2.62 ERA.

2011, Kyle McClellan of the Cardinals, 17 starts, 26 relief, 12-7 with a 4.19 ERA.

2012, Kris Medlen of the Braves, 12 starts, 38 relief, 10-1 with a 1.57 ERA.  

2013, Joe Kelly of the Cardinals, 15 starts, 22 relief, 10-5 with a 2.69 ERA.