By
Steve Kallas (posted by Rick Morris)
While
you have to go back to the beginnings of major league baseball, once upon a
time baseball pitchers pitched on two days rest (i.e., a three-man
rotation). For example, Cy Young began
his career in the early 1890s averaging 47 starts a season from 1891-94. The great Walter Johnson, from 1912-1914,
started 50, 48 and 51 games, respectively.
By
the 1920s and 30s, however, teams had switched to having their pitchers start
on three days rest (i.e., a four-man rotation) where, instead of starting
somewhere in the high 40s or even 50 games a year, your top starting pitchers
would “only” start 38 or 39 games a year based on a 154-game season. After expansion in 1961, when the schedule
was lengthened to the present 162 games, a regular season top starter in a
four-man rotation (who made every start) would start 40 or even 41 games a
season.
That
all changed, according to pitching/broadcasting great Jim Kaat, in the late
1960s. When this writer interviewed Kaat
in 2001, he said that the Mets of the late 1960s were the first team to go to
giving their young pitchers four days rest between starts (i.e., a five-man
rotation). Thus, your top starting
pitchers, who didn’t miss a start, would start 34 or 35 times a season.
In
1969, for example, Tom Seaver and Gary Gentry each started 35 games. Jerry Koosman started 32 games. For you hard-core Met fans, Don Cardwell and
Jim McAndrew pretty much shared the fourth spot, starting 21 games each (and
somebody named Nolan Ryan started 10 games while also working as a reliever).
While
all other teams didn’t follow immediately, by the 1980s the five-man rotation
was here to stay.
WHICH
BRINGS US TO 2014 (ACTUALLY 2015)
With
pitchers young and old, good and bad, with poor mechanics (Stephen Strasburg)
and supposedly flawless mechanics (Matt Harvey), seemingly dropping like flies
in need of Tommy John surgery, one solution to at least stem the injury tide
could be the six-man rotation. Based on
the history of baseball, it’s coming.
The
only question is when?
While
you can’t yet compare the 2015 Mets of next year to the 1969 Mets who won it
all, you can see a similar vein of young pitching coupled with a new age need
to protect all of these pitchers (do you think the Yankees, for example, should
think about pitching Masahiro Tanaka every sixth day when he returns to
pitching (this season or next?).
We
already know it can work. This year,
Hyun-jin Ryu of the Dodgers is 7-1 (with one no decision) when pitching with
extra rest. A few years ago, Josh
Beckett was something like 9-2 with an extra day of rest.
If
the Mets keep all (or even most) of their starting pitchers, they will have
enough to at least try a six-man rotation.
A healthy (but coming off Tommy John surgery) Matt Harvey, an old (but
still good) Bartolo Colon, John Niese, Dillon Gee, Jacob deGrom, Zach Wheeler
and maybe Noel Syndergaard and Rafael Montero all could benefit from an extra
day of rest.
If
this goes against your “traditionalist” sense of baseball, it’s something that
first was changed in the 1920s or so, then was changed in the 1960s and 70s and
will eventually be changed in the 2010s or 20s.
Eventually,
in another 40 years or so, we might see the Japanese way, pitch once a week.
While
many will say there isn’t enough pitching to fill five-man rotations (and they
would be right), the reality is, with the 2015 Mets, they might be able to pull
it off.
Again,
it’s not a matter of if, but when.
Whatever
team is the first to do it (assuming that you have enough starting pitchers to
do it) will have an advantage until other teams follow suit (see, for example,
the proliferation of shifting this year, a few years after Joe Maddon and the
Rays were ahead of the crowd, which gave them an advantage that is now
diminishing).
It
says here that the Mets might be (should be?) the first to do it.
As
early as next season.
@
COPYRIGHT 2014 BY STEVE KALLAS ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
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