Today's Pitchers

[Pogotheostrich]

I'd be interested to know the average length of a SP career 30 years ago. I'm guessing it is much longer now.

[Ursa]

Olney gave his top three "horses" of all time last night. Number one was, understandably, Cy Young:

511 Career Wins
749 Career Complete Games
400 Innings Plus - 5 years
300 Innings Plus - 16 years
2.63 Career ERA

It was definitely a different time then, but you have to give this guy credit pitching like that in an era before personal trainers, luxury travel arrangements, cortisone shots, Tommy John surgery and, dare I say, performance enhancing drugs.

Those numbers are eye-popping. Any idea what the rotation was back then? 2 pitchers, 3 pitchers? Also, the concept of a relief pitcher was almost unheard of.

[Coppermine]

Olney gave his top three "horses" of all time last night. Number one was, understandably, Cy Young:

511 Career Wins
749 Career Complete Games
400 Innings Plus - 5 years
300 Innings Plus - 16 years
2.63 Career ERA

It was definitely a different time then, but you have to give this guy credit pitching like that in an era before personal trainers, luxury travel arrangements, cortisone shots, Tommy John surgery and, dare I say, performance enhancing drugs.

How do you know he didn't use performance enhancing drugs though? I don't think anyone knows for sure but yeah, those are some ridiculous numbers he put up.

All right, if we want to turn this into that kind of argument, then just pretend I never said it. I find it unlikely that there were performance enhancing drugs at the turn of the century unless you count opium and absinthe... and I wouldn't exactly say they enhanced performance. I don't mean to suggest that today's pitchers are all juicing, I just think it's an interesting thing to consider.

To answer Ursa, I'm not sure what the rotation was like, but I'm pretty sure this was before career relief pitchers as any pitcher could come on to finish a game if necessary. It says something that Young pitched over 200 more complete games than he has wins, which means even if a pitcher was struggling, they were left in for the game without question.