Decline
The only active players in the top 100 all-time at the end of the 2009 season were Tom Glavine (ranked 30th with 4,413 1⁄3 IP), Randy Johnson (ranked 38th with 4,135 1⁄3), Jamie Moyer (ranked 45th with 3,908 2⁄3) and John Smoltz (ranked 74th with 3473). This is because over time, innings pitched has declined. Several factors are responsible for this decline:
- From 1876–1892, pitchers threw from fifty feet and exerted less stress on their arms (also pitchers often threw underhand in this era). In this era, innings pitched totals of 600 innings were not uncommon.
- In 1892, pitchers moved back to the current distance of sixty feet, six inches. However, they still often threw 400 innings in a season. This was because the home run was far less common and pitchers often conserved arm strength throughout the game.
- From 1920 to the 1980s, the four-man pitching rotation was well established. Pitchers could no longer throw 400 innings in a season, as the home run meant a run could be scored at any time. The league leader in innings pitched often threw somewhat more than 300 innings. Occasionally, innings pitched would spike, as in the early 1970s, when Wilbur Wood pitched 376 2⁄3 innings in 1972 and then 359 1⁄3 innings in 1973.
- From the 1980s to the present, the four-man rotation was replaced with the five-man rotation, with a weak fifth man who would often be skipped on off days. Also, managers starting using their bullpens more and more, accelerating the decline in innings pitched. Today, rarely more than a few pitchers pitch more than 250 innings in a season.
Read more about this topic: Innings Pitched
Famous quotes containing the word decline:
“Families suffered badly under industrialization, but they survived, and the lives of men, women, and children improved. Children, once marginal and exploited figures, have moved to a position of greater protection and respect,... The historic decline in the overall death rates for children is an astonishing social fact, notwithstanding the disgraceful infant mortality figures for the poor and minorities. Like the decline in death from childbirth for women, this is a stunning achievement.”
—Joseph Featherstone (20th century)
“We can recognize the dawn and the decline of love by the uneasiness we feel when alone together.”
—Jean De La Bruyère (1645–1696)
“I heard a Californian student in Heidelberg say, in one of his calmest moods, that he would rather decline two drinks than one German adjective.”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)