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:
“Our achievements speak for themselves. What we have to keep track of are our failures, discouragements, and doubts. We tend to forget the past difficulties, the many false starts, and the painful groping. We see our past achievements as the end result of a clean forward thrust, and our present difficulties as signs of decline and decay.”
—Eric Hoffer (1902–1983)
“But only that soul can be my friend which I encounter on the line of my own march, that soul to which I do not decline, and which does not decline me, but, native of the same celestial latitude, repeats in its own all my experience.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“The chief misery of the decline of the faculties, and a main cause of the irritability that often goes with it, is evidently the isolation, the lack of customary appreciation and influence, which only the rarest tact and thoughtfulness on the part of others can alleviate.”
—Charles Horton Cooley (1864–1929)