From: rpb@palmen.colorado.edu (Robert Baptist)
Subject: Re: Cone threw how many pitches?
Summary: George Will's comments on the subject.
Organization: NOAA Climate Research Division
Date: Thu, 30 Jul 1992 17:04:19 GMT

In article <1992Jul29.195919.27622@serval.net.wsu.edu> crichard@yoda.eecs.wsu.edu (richardson craig s - CS500) writes:
>In article <20218@bunker.shel.isc-br.com> jerry@bunker.shel.isc-br.com (Gerald J. Lanza) writes:
>>|>
>>***********************************************************************
>>|>Besides, the game was different then.  Pitchers didn't go all out
>>|>on every pitch.  Probably less stressful.
>>***********************************************************************
>>
>>	Now that's a scientific statement if I ever saw one. May I ask
>>	how one arrives at the conclusion that the game was less
>>	stressful for pitcher's back then ?
>
>Umm, their own testimony?  Christy Mathewson, in _Pitching_In_A_Pinch_, 
>affirmed that "coasting" was not only accepted, but was the general rule
>through the Dead-Ball Era, which is primarily what we are talking about here,
>although workloads, unlike some other conditions, show no real discontinuity
>at the advent of Ruth.  Workloads have been gradually declining ever since
>the beginning of the game, with only individual exceptions.  Most of these
>exceptions ruined their arm, since exceeding the accepted workload for a given
>era has always caused arm problems (general statement, but more true than not,
>by far...).
>

This from George Will's book _Men at Work_: (pp 126, 127.) 

   "Now, to be fair to today's pitchers, it should be noted that some of
these statistics that seem to establish the superior durability of either
generations of pitchers must be partially discounted, for reasons given
by Craig C. Wright.  Wright, a statistician and co-author (with Tom
House the Rangers' pitching coach) of _The Diamond Apraised_ notes
that in the dead ball era, before the home-run threat became pervasive,
pitchers faced fewer crucial situations, so there was less nibbling at the
strike zone and more coasting by pitchers.... Today more pitches are thrown
per batter and 130 to 150 per game is normal.  Also, more home runs mean
more careful pitching, more deep counts, more walks.  More base runners
mean more pitching from the stretch, which increases the burden on the arm
decreasing the involvement of the rest of the body.  And more baserunners also
means more throws from the mound to first.
    "Big Ed Walsh pitched 464 innings while winning 40 games in 1908.
But using and estimate of 2.8 pitches per batter then, and a conservative
estimate of 3.5 pitches per batter in 1971 when Detroit's Mickey Lolich
pitched 376 innings, Lolich threw about 500 more pitches than Walsh did.
Grover Cleveland Alexander's total of 38 complete games in 1916 is
impressive... [but] many of the pitches he threw were fat and slow,
allowing weak hitters to dribble the dead (and gray and battered)
ball at fielders."

>>	I could throw out my own unscientific opinion that today's 
>>	crop of pitchers have grown up in a less demanding time with
>>	mom's chauffering them around to uniformed little league games.
>
>You could, but this sounds awfully like a value judgment.  Today's crop of
>pitchers also throw the slider and the split-fingered fastball, both notorious
>arm-wreckers, and have to throw all-out all the time due to the fact that 
>today's pitchers must face today's hitters, who are much better atheletes as
>a whole than their forefathers (another sweeping generalization, but also
>largely borne out by facts), and must face them in a game in which the home run
>is an ever-present danger, so in a sense the batter is always in scoring 
>position, which is a danger that dead-ball pitchers rarely, if ever, faced.
>

   This is true... I believe baseball is like most and other sport these
days in that today's professionals are generally *better* athletes
than those of yesteryear.. When the batters are becoming better
relative to the pitchers, however, one doesn't notice.  I think that
the advent of the relief pitcher and the "closer" is not due to the
frail soul of today's pitcher, I think it's due to the fact that today's
hitters require new weapons to stop them.  Further, in the "old days",
more leads may have been blown-- I don't know. 

>>	The reason for today's pitcher's apparent fraility may be due
>>	to the softer life style to which we all have become accustomed.
>
>That's as may be.  I can't say much one way or the other, except in noting
>workloads as above.  I wouldn't make such a broad generalization without *some*
>facts to back me up, though...

     The old "America is going to hell" arguement-- you hear that one
everywhere and from every generation....

>--Craig
>

- Robert