Post by manfred on Jan 31, 2018 18:32:06 GMT -5
A word of caution. Tanana was a phenomenal talent. Drysdale did color for the Angel broadcasts in the 70s. I would catch those at night in Las Vegas. Nolan Ryan drove him nuts but Tanana he loved. Everybody did and they ruined him. They piled so many innings on that arm at such a young age that he was damaged goods at 24, and never close to the same pitcher afterwards.
There's a reason why the game has evolved the way that it has. Once players started getting paid what they were worth they became valuable assets and not just disposable commodities. Teams take much better care of the players, medical, dietary & conditioning care, and yes innings limits.
For every rubber-armed Ryan, there are dozens of Tanana's littering the MLB archives, guys who had all the talent in the world, until they didn't.
So, how did the league change? Pitch counts. Sometime around when Dusty Baker rode Mark Prior into the ground, the league started getting really serious about protecting young arms. The Pedros and Johnsons of the world stood out more in the pre pitch-count era because so many their peers had their arms ruined throwing 139 pitch games for the Toledo Mudhens. The league's model of pitching use and development at the time meant that only the rubber armed guys survived, and that meant they produced a lot more Jose Limas than Randy Johnsons. Go look at the back end of an ERA leaderboard from 1998. Steroids era? Maybe in part. I'm more and more convinced it was the John Burkett era, when guys who were basically never any good could still have 2500 inning careers because they took the mound every fifth day.
Now of course, it's the opposite. Baseball now selects pitchers for ability, not durability. If you have great stuff, teams will baby you as much as they possibly can in order to get you to the majors and get value out of you before you break down. This is part of the reason modern bullpens look the way they do; guys who used to end up as broken starters are now throwing 98 with wipeout sliders in the seventh inning. The soft throwing homer prone innings eater types almost don't exist anymore., or if they do we tell them to only throw their two best pitches and we'll pull them after two times through the order. The difference between the best and the worst pitchers in the league is smaller. The complete game is dead and with good reason; bullpens are so stocked with crazy arms, why would you want your tired starter out there for the seventh?
Anyway, two HOF takeaways from this. One, I don't think it's necessarily incorrect for the "steroids era" to be underrepresented when it comes to HOF pitchers. That era broke pitchers to the extent that the industry needed to completely revamp the way it developed them. Two, we're never going to have another 300 game winner and we can't keep only putting guys who got saves into the HOF. Halladay probably helps break this dam when he come up.
It is strange that for all the talk of the steroids era -- that pitchers need to be adjusted or excused -- as you say, we actually saw a few of the dominant pitchers put up historic numbers. The flip side, too, is this: we slam Bonds, McGuire, Sheffield, Sosa, and Palmeiro, but it is not as though those few guys were responsible for all the high ERAs. Why not Larry Walker, for example? Guy had a run from 1995-2001 this is pretty wild. No one points any fingers, but you can't have it both ways. If Walker (et al) were natural, then the steroids era is actually overrated. If it is truly an era of steroids, then we have to assume most of the stats are inflated.
I tend to think it falls in the middle but that this "Burkett" theory is not spoken enough: it was just an era where the average pitcher was not very good. Don't forget the impact of expansion in 1993, the almost complete shift to a 5-man rotation (look at the death of the 3-day rest start around this time) etc. There are more starters than ever before... how many of them are really going to be that elite?