MLB '24 Postseason thread

Steven Kwan hit .215 as an Oregon State freshman. Fans wondered how he even made the team, much less saw substantial PT. No secondary power at all. The next year he hit .331 and then in the national title year he hit .355, and played outstanding defense in CF throughout. He struck out only 38 times in almost 600 college PAs.

His walkup music his junior year was "Dancing Queen," by ABBA. He said he had no idea who ABBA was but heard the song while shopping in a grocery store and liked it. One of the most popular players in school history.

 

Very Mets appropriate Final Jeopardy tonight.

 

Fukc Cleveland. It's not even the biggest city in Ohio.

 

And that’s the ballgame. Your bullpen can’t save you if you can’t hit.

 

Yeah, but we can spell the tough four-letter words here.

 

Yeah, well, Columbus’ mom went to college

 

Today, we got an excellent view of the epidemic that is pitching injuries. The Dodgers had a "bullpen game" in Game 2 of their LCS. It did not go well. It was necessitated by the injuries to several people who are actually accomplished Major League pitchers.
In Game 1 of the ALCS, the Cleveland Guardians tapped a guy who pitched one regular-season game this year. It did not go well.

 

Three, but your point is well taken. Their bigger issue was going to a rookie in relief of what was still a close game (and their Nos. 3 and 5 hitters continuing to do zilch in the postseason).

And the bigger issue for everyone is that less than 10 years ago bullpen games did not exist, let alone in the playoffs. But this is what happens when teams like the Guardians and Dodgers -- division-winning teams -- are down to two healthy starters. Because maybe all this babying of young pitchers is not paying off. We're talking strong, healthy 25-ish-year-old men, who aren't allowed to throw more than 100 pitches because their arms might fall off. Maybe if they'd condition them a bit more, their arms would, in fact, not fall off.

And maybe if a few of the radar-busters would give way to a few more strike-throwers, guys who work in and out, up and down, and change speeds, pitch to contact, etc., there wouldn't be arm injuries to something like 40 percent of the starters in the major leagues. The split-finger fastball wrecked a lot of arms. Now relatively few throw one. Maybe it's time to do away with cutters or whatever else is causing nearly half the elbow ligaments in the big leagues to snap.

The plague of arm injures certainly coincides well with two things, the pitch clock and "spin rate." Pretty sure there have been quick workers as long as there have been pitchers. There was no such thing as spin rate not long ago. And now that there is, arm injuries are soaring.

There are a lot of things that get accused of "ruining baseball" these days. Not having enough pitchers on teams one step away from the World Series is near the top of that list.

 

It's not just the 101-mph heaters, either.

You ever see how a circle change is thrown? It's a wonder the elbow doesn't fall right out on the mound. The pitcher is supposed to "throw" the thumb-forefinger circle directly through the target. Which means you're throwing with an inverted arm at full speed.

 

Part of the reason pitchers didn’t get babied with pitch counts back in the day is because they were regarded as disposable. If one guy blew out his arm, swap another in like he was a D cell battery. And because expansion hadn’t thinned out the talent pool, you had better odds of finding someone serviceable to decent to surprisingly good.

 

What day is back in the day, though? Guys like Gibson, Ryan, Palmer, Carlton, Seaver, and many others (not just HOF types), had no trouble throwing 300+ innings a year. Now 150 is considered a milestone. And in theory, every time you lift a starter in the third inning, you're leaving five-plus innings to be thrown by guys deemed not good enough to be starters. So you're not really trying your hardest to win.

I also would argue that based on the addition of more foreign players, more guys getting added seasoning in college, which allows for more other guys in the minors, the increase in popularity of things like private pitching lessons and facilities where kids can play all year round, even in the colder areas, the talent pool is deeper than it's ever been.

The innings pitched leader this year had 208. In 1974, a year I picked at random, more than 60 guys, enough to staff 12 rotations, pitched more than that. One did it in relief! Their arms were not falling off. Guys now are much bigger, much stronger and, one would think, much more durable than they were then, though we'll never know about that last one.

And if you're a team like, say, the Guardians, why baby a guy like Bibee, when you only have him for a few years before he heads to New York or L.A. anyway? Let him pitch.

 

I would disagree with the notion that the relievers aren’t as good as the starters. Back in ‘74, that was true. Nowadays, teams are training pitchers to be short-inning relievers instead of just parking them in the pen as failed starters. That’s one reason why we’re seeing openers. Teams want the reliever to start and get through the top of the order before committing to a lesser long-man.

Also, as far as arms not falling off, in ‘74, teams didn’t have the technology to know if a pitcher’s arm was injured or not. All they knew was that a pitcher had a sore arm.

I agree, though, about letting pitchers pitch. The analytics of only allowing starters two turns through the batting order exist in part because pitchers are only training to go 5-6 innings at max.