The lost art of the long reliever

To the editor,

As a 68-year-old man, I’m old enough to remember when it was normal for starting pitchers to pitch deep into a game. Most of the best ones would pitch many complete games in a season.

Relief pitchers would often pitch multiple innings. There used to be something known as a spot starter/long reliever. The championship Yankees teams of the late 90s had a really good one in Ramiro Mendoza.

Now, the Yankees have a dim-witted manager named Aaron Boone. He makes so many pitching changes he often wears out his 13-man staff. He would not have lasted during the days of 10-man pitching staffs. On June 21, he took Clark Schmidt out after seven innings while he was pitching a no-hitter.

During that broadcast, there was a very interesting conversation between the Yankees’ announcers. Michael Kay often does a poor job calling games but is better when a good color commentator forces him to actually talk about the game. Joe Girardi is one such example. Surprisingly, Kay made a very intelligent statement, “Pitchers are pampered nowadays but they get hurt more often.”

Girardi pointed out reasons for this. Pitchers throw harder all the time and start throwing earlier, in January. That puts more strain on them.

I could add the following. When pitchers throw harder, they have less accuracy. That’s why there are more pitchers with control problems than ever before. That always contributes to a higher pitch count, which there is too much emphasis on nowadays.

When it was mentioned to Mariano Rivera about how many pitchers throw 98 miles an hour, he responded, “I’d rather throw 90 and get the pitch where I want it.” 

The pitch count has become more of an issue since Johann Santana suffered multiple injuries after throwing 134 pitches when he hurled the Mets’ only no-hitter June 1, 2012. Never mind how many others threw a similar number of pitches before that without getting hurt.

On July 2, 1963, the Giants’ Juan Marichal and the Braves’ Warren Spahn both pitched 16 innings. Marichal would win that 1-0 game. Marichal threw 227 pitches and Spahn tossed 201. The 42-year-old Spahn was near the end of his career, but Marichal would have more great, injury-free seasons.

I remember something retired pitcher and current Mets announcer Ron Darling once said. Even though I’m a Yankees fan, during Yankees-Mets games, I watch the Mets broadcast. Kay’s whining aside, The Mets do have the best broadcasting team in town. Darling said “Nowadays, they tell a pitcher to throw as hard as you can for as long as you can and then we’ll get you. I wouldn’t know how to do that.”

Girardi says pitchers throw that way nowadays because that’s what gets them signed and gets them the money. So ultimately, baseball has the same problem as so many other professions, bad management.

Richard Warren