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| Former all-star Tim Lincecum heads to the bullpen accompanied by his pitching coach and former all-star Dave Righetti. Picture by Daniel Millhouse. |
In the 1970's and before, league leaders in innings pitched would routinely be over 300 innings a season. In 2014, the MLB leader was David Price with 248.1 innings pitched and even that was higher than the American League leader from the previous season when James Shields pitched 228.2 innings.
Part of the reason for the reduction in innings is because of teams converting from four-man rotations to five-man rotations. This was done to extend the amount of rest a starting pitcher has between starts. Even when this happened, league leaders during the 1980's would reach up to the high 200's in innings pitched (e.g. Bert Blyleven 292.2, Steve Carlton 295.2).
When the 1990's rolled around and the contracts of professional baseball players jumped up at a higher rate than ever before. The highest paid pitcher going into 1990 was Dave Stewart at $3.5 million a year. By the end of the decade, Kevin Brown was making $15 million a year. As player contracts jumped in value, agents started making demands on behalf of the pitchers they represented. One of the most common demands was limiting the pitchers in innings pitched and/or pitches thrown in a game. They felt this would preserve their client's career.
Since then, MLB teams leaned towards conserving their pitcher's usage. Often rookie pitchers are held to around 150 innings or less, and then are shut down for the rest of the season regardless of whether or not their team needed them to secure a playoff spot or pitch for them in the playoffs.
In 2012, Stephen Strasburg finally was ready to pitch a complete season for the first time in his career. By the end of August, Strasburg had reached 159.1 innings pitched and the Washington Nationals shut his season down despite being in the middle of a playoff race. The Nationals took first place, but entered the first round of the playoffs without the intention to using their young star player. They lost three-to-two in the playoffs, using only their middle level starting pitchers. If they had turned to Strasburg who went 15-6 with a 3.16 ERA and 197 strikeouts, the Nationals could have been the team in the World Series that year possibly. They were too conservative with their star player.
Almost all the teams in the MLB pull the same thing now. This is partially due to every team thinking that once they develop a star pitcher, that he'll be a star pitcher for years to come. Historically this has never been the case. There are hundreds of examples of pitchers only having several star-like seasons before fading off. Sometimes this is because it takes pitching several years before hitters adapt to the star pitcher and sometimes it's just plain luck. Not every pitcher that has a 20 win season is a future Hall-of-Famer.
Examples of players that once dominated, but faded off include Brett Saberhagen, Orel Hershiser, and Ron Guidry. Each one of those pitchers were so dominating at some point in their career, they had been awarded the Cy Young Award. This isn't unusual.
Even players such as the Giants' Tim Lincecum, can be seen as a prime example of this. Lincecum won back-to-back Cy Young Awards and received votes for the award the next two years, but then fell off into pitcher obscurity. He never dropped off because of over-usage or injury. It just happened.
Teams need to let their star pitchers pitch. Let your pitchers do the job they're receiving millions of dollars for. Don't be so conservative. Their time as stars will most likely be short enough. Take advantage of their abilities and ability to deceive the hitters in their league before everyone catches up.
