FOUR IS PLENTY:

Dubious philosophy leads to weak pitching: Bigger rotations, staffs counterproductive (Glenn Dickey, April 3, 2003, San Francisco Chronicle)

A copycat mentality among baseball people has brought about a fundamental change in philosophy that has resulted in a general deterioration in pitching.

Arithmetic tells the story. Forty years ago, teams usually had 10-man staffs, and most of the work really was done by five pitchers. There were four- man starting rotations with one principal relief pitcher, who was used for however long was necessary; Rollie Fingers pitched 3 1/3 innings in the A's Game 1 win in the 1973 World Series and worked 4 1/3 innings in their Game 1 win in the '74 Series.

The remaining five pitchers were used for long relief in games that seemed hopelessly lost, occasionally in middle relief if a starter got knocked out in what was still a close game, and for spot starts.

The A's championship teams of the '70s were sometimes an exception, because manager Dick Williams had excellent relievers like Darold Knowles, Paul Lindblad and Bob Locker, in addition to Fingers. But in the '74 Series, Alvin Dark used only five pitchers: starters Catfish Hunter, Vida Blue and Ken Holtzman, and John "Blue Moon" Odom and Fingers in relief (Hunter also got the final out in relief in the opener).

Now, there are five-man rotations, and these starters seldom pitch as many total innings as the four-man staffs did earlier. Complete games used to be the goal. Now, managers are satisfied if a starter goes seven innings.

So, more pitchers are needed. Staffs have swollen to 11, 12, even 13 on extreme occasions.

In any baseball era, there is a sprinkling of great pitchers, a larger supply of good pitchers, an even larger supply of mediocre pitchers and some very bad ones.

In an earlier era, managers of good teams usually selected from the first two groups for the key pitchers on their staff. Less fortunate managers sometimes had to dip into the third group. The really bad teams had to use pitchers from the fourth group.

Now, because so many more pitchers are used, there are many more pitchers from the third and fourth groups. On both an absolute and relative scale, there are no more bad pitchers today than there ever were. It's just that they're being used much more frequently, and that's why you see these 13-11 scores.

There's another, less obvious, effect of this trend: the death of the fastball. Pitchers who are only going to go six innings every five days are much more prone to run up high pitch counts, to nibble at the strike zone with breaking stuff and try to trick guys, rather than challenging them. When pitchers went eight or nine every fourth day they had to throw more fastballs because they're easier on the arm and easier to throw for strikes. And, of course, the ultimate result of all this is that games get longer and longer until even die-hard fans are hard pressed to pay attention for the whole three hours. Posted by Orrin Judd at April 3, 2003 9:54 PM