To begin with a little backstory. On September 20, 2017, Chris Sale, the ace pitcher of the Boston Red Sox, 1 strikeout shy of 300 for the season, after having pitched 7 shutout innings with a pitch count of around 100, was sent out for the 8th inning, ostensibly to reach that strikeout milestone, which he did, completing another scoreless inning in the process with a seemingly reasonable pitch total of 111, which was his final number for the game, as obviously he did not come out for the 9th inning. The Boston sports media and fan base were apoplectic about this unnecessary and highly incautious extra inning of work, concerned that with the team starting the playoffs in approximately two weeks, it was wearing out its best pitcher. After resting for five days, Sale appeared in one more regular season game, the sixth to last, throwing 5 innings and 92 pitches (and giving up 5 runs) in a loss to the Blue Jays, after which he took 8 days off before starting Game 1 of the Division series against the eventual World Series Champion Astros, in which game he got shelled, giving up 7 runs in 5 innings (and throwing 100 pitches). 3 days later he came out of the bullpen in an elimination game and pitched well for 4 innings but could not get through a 5th, giving up what turned out to be the two decisive runs that ended the Red Sox's season. The club's manager John Farrell was fired within days of the loss, and one of the dominant themes was his mishandling of Sale, burning out the pitcher due to overuse during the season, though until recently his total of 214 innings with a high single game pitch count of 118 (as well 29 innings over 5 starts in September) would have been considered a fairly light workload. This season, with a new manager and the team being on a 110-win pace for most of the year, the strategy for keeping the ace pitchers fresh for the playoffs has gone from not burning them out early in the season to basically having them take most of the 2nd half off. There are injuries involved, I suppose, but even so the extent of the precautions taken before putting Sale and David Price, the $45 million a year duo the Red Sox are counting on to lead them to the World Series, back on the field is at the point of being ludicrous. Sale has pitched a total of 17 innings since the end of July--12 in September. While the plan was for him to hopefully work his way back into something resembling mid-season form before the playoffs started, he gave up 5 runs in 8 innings in his last two starts and has not been able to complete 5 innings in a game since August. Price has been a little more active, though a season total of 176 innings is not overwhelming, especially for a guy on a seven year contract at $31 million per annum. He made 4 appearances in September for a total of 23 innings, and is not exactly entering the playoffs on the kind of roll baseball fans of a certain age were once accustomed to in anticipating the championship series(es?). With the roster expansion in September, most of the recent games have featured endless situational experimentations with an army of relievers and onetime starters to see who can come in and get an out with 2 on in the 4th inning or whose makeup is particularly suited to the 7th as opposed to the 6th. For me all of this inevitably calls to mind the days when September was the month when the pitchers of the year were not leveling off or winding down but were rolling along like locomotives at high speed barreling towards the playoffs, or at least the Cy Young Award. Just recalling a few that especially stand out:
Orel Hershiser--1988
This is perhaps the ne plus ultra example of a pitcher who went on an unstoppable tear at the end of the season and all the way through the playoffs and the World Series. At the time Hershiser was regarded as having pretty much carried his otherwise underwhelming team to an improbable championship, though I am not sure that the new analysis would acknowledge that it was possible for a single pitcher to have that outsized of an impact. Certainly no one appears to regard this as a formula for postseason success in 2018, though the Giants pulled something of the sort off (riding a hot pitcher to the title) with Madison Bumgardner as recently as 2014.
At any rate, going into his start on August 19, 1988, according to Baseball-Reference, Orel Hershiser, already established for several seasons as one of the better pitchers in the National League, was, using the archaic statistics, 16-7 with a 3.06 ERA and had thrown to that point 185 innings. He threw complete games in each of his 3 remaining starts in August, including one shutout, though one of the other games was a 2-1 loss to the Mets. Moving into September, with his team driving towards the division championship, Hershiser made six starts, throwing 9-inning shutouts in the first five, and in his final tune-up for the playoffs, throwing 10 scoreless innings in a no-decision. That 10th inning in the last game famously allowed him to break Don Drysdale's record of consecutive scoreless innings with 59, a situation analogous to that of Chris Sale's "extra inning" to get his 300th strikeout in 2017. Naturally there was no controversy, that I can remember anyway, at the time with Hershiser pitching 10 innings in a meaningless game a week before the playoffs in a month and a season in which he had pitched 54 and 266 innings respectively already. By this point much was expected of him. There is pitch count data available for these games and the totals are actually quite reasonable, regardless of whether anyone was paying attention to them or not. In the 6 September starts the numbers were 109, 109, 103, 96, 112 and 116 (the 10 inning game), though even these modest totals are more than what almost anyone would be allowed to reach today, at least over a six game span in the course of a single month. For what it's worth his high pitch game for the year was 153 in a complete game loss on June 4, but his 2nd highest was 127, and he only had over 120 pitches in 3 of his 34 starts, in spite of which he managed to throw 15 complete games, 13 of them accomplished in 118 pitches or fewer.
As many will recall, he was so exhausted by this historic run that he went on to be the MVP of both the League Championship and World Series. Until Game 7, in which he pitched another shutout, his LCS performance was more heroic than impeccable. He started off by throwing 8 more shutout innings to open Game 1, but then the unthinkable happened in the ninth and he gave up 2 runs and ultimately the game (though his final pitch count was a still impressive 100). After a rainout pushed Game 3 in New York back a day, he came back to start that one and pitched 7 gritty innings in what I remember as a gray, windy, chilly afternoon though the Dodgers went on to lose that game as well. He then came out of the bullpen to get the final out in a very dramatic Game 4, which the team was believed to have found inspiring, before winning the aforementioned 7th game, for which no pitch count seems to be available. In the World Series he threw another shutout in game 2 (no pitch count), and threw a 4-hitter, 2 runs allowed, in the clincher in Game 5 (117 pitches).
He came back to have another fine year in 1989, posting a 2.31 ERA in 256 innings, his sixth straight outstanding year. However in the final game of that season, which was completely meaningless as the Dodgers finished well out of the playoff race, he was allowed to throw 11 innings and 169 pitches. He consequently missed most of the 1990 and 1991 seasons with an injured shoulder and when he came back he was never as good as he had been in his prime, though he did have eight more seasons as a more or less full time pitcher, until he was 40.
Mike Scott--1986
What I remember about this year offhand is that Mike Scott, after being something a bust after coming up with the Mets, went to Houston and salvaged his career, having a nice 18-8 season in 1985 before exploding as a dominant pitcher in 1986, racking up 300 strikeouts and eventually the Cy Young Award. He culminated the regular season by throwing a no-hitter in the Astros' division-clinching game, after which he pulverized the 108-win (and eventual World Champion) Mets with a 14 strikeout 5-hit 1-0 shutout in Game 1 of the NLCS (125 pitches), followed up by a 3-hitter in a 3-1 victory in game 4 (111 pitches). The Mets, desperate, so the storyline went, to avoid facing Scott again in Game 7, outlasted Houston in 16 innings in an epic Game 6 to win the Series 4 games to 2. How was his September leading up to this memorable postseason, I wonder? 6 starts, 4-1 record, 46.1 innings, 11 runs, 65 strikeouts, only 2 complete games though, including the no-hitter. Scott would go on to have three more very good seasons before his arm gave out (and by the way, it isn't like people's arms are still not giving out, and after a lot less work and accomplishment, despite being protected more than ever).
John Tudor--1985
John Tudor's incredible 1985 season has always been somewhat underappreciated, due to being overshadowed by Dwight Gooden's even more incredible season in the same division, and also because he unfortunately melted down badly in Game 7 of the World Series, a game which, if he had won, might have elevated his season to at least quasi-legendary status. I have very vivid memories of this season. I grew up as a fan of the Philadelphia Phillies, and this was the last full year when I lived in Philadelphia and really followed the season. The Cardinals and Mets were of course in the same division and had an outstanding pennant race that year, and while the Phillies finished far behind them they played both teams 18 times, and while I did not like either of their superior rivals at the time, they were both compelling teams with lots of stars, and I would often watch them when they weren't playing the Phillies on the national Game of the Week or on WOR-TV in New York, the Mets' flagship station, which we got on cable (this was my big lonely teenager year when I also began reading a lot). John Tudor started out that year at 1-7, but he ended it on a 20-1 run, and threw 10 shutouts, remaining to this day the last pitcher to attain that feat. I am aware of how much we are supposed to disdain "wins" for pitchers nowadays, and while this does make sense in terms of assessing players and handing out contracts, there is still the circumstance that the ultimate object of all this assessing is to actually win games and championships, so I am still galvanized by these kinds of streaks.
From September 1 until the end of the 1985 regular season, which ended on October 6th that year, John Tudor made 8 starts, in which he pitched 67 innings, surrendering 10 runs. His record in those games was 6-0. He threw 5 complete games and 4 shutouts, one of them a 10-inning shutout. In one of the no-decisions, he threw another 10 scoreless innings, which would have given him an 11th shutout for the season. He made his final start of the season on 3 days rest following the 10 inning no-decision and threw a 4-hitter against the Cubs. In the NLCS he did lose Game 1, again on 3 days rest, giving up 4 runs in 5 2/3 innings, but rebounded to pitch 7 innings in a 12-2 win in game 4. In the World Series he was the winning pitcher in Game 1 (6 2/3 innings, 101 pitches--I am surprised he was lifted so early) and Game 4 (shutout-108 pitches), before losing in Game 7. He went on to pitch 5 more seasons with pretty good numbers, though he would only reach 200 innings in one more season (1986). He went 12-4 with a 2.40 ERA in 146 innings in 1990 and called it a career.
Where pitch count data is available, it does seem to indicate that it was much easier and common to complete nine innings in fewer than 125 pitches in the past than it is now, at least in the National League.
Steve Carlton--1980, 1982, 1983
I choose these three seasons because, besides all of them involving pennant races, the Phillies being my team I have distinct memories of how they unfolded. One note of interest about Carlton's 1980 campaign is that is the last time anybody pitched over 300 innings in the regular season. This was not recognized at the time as any particularly notable feat, since many pitchers had thrown over 300 innings throughout the 1970s (Carlton himself had a high of 346 in 1972). If the Phillies had not clinched the division in the 2nd to last game of the season Carlton was due to start in the finale as well and would have thrown even more innings that year. As it was he made 8 starts from September 1st on, 5 of them on three days rest, going 4-2, pitching 66 innings, allowing 19 earned runs, with 3 complete games and 1 shutout, and a 4th game in which he pitched 9 innings in a game that went into the 10th. Pitch count data is not available though I suspect his numbers were often high. Carlton had what was considered at the time an extreme training regimen which included moving his arm around in a vat of rice and was widely thought by coaches and the media, at least publicly, to be indefatigable. The idea that he might ever have gotten tired on the mound was evidently inconceivable, since it was never brought up and never seems to have influenced the way managers handled him. He was good, but not dominant in the playoffs, going 3-0 and pitching 7, 5.1, 8 and 7 innings in 4 starts, with relatively reasonable pitch counts of 106, 97, 159 (OK) and 110 respectively.
In 1982 the Phillies ended up 3 games behind the Cardinals and missed the playoffs but Carlton, who as late as August was not one of the frontrunners for the Cy Young Award, went on a late season tear that year and ended up winning it pretty convincingly. He made 8 starts in September, the last 5 on 3 days rest to maximize his appearances, something that a manager might get shot for attempting to do now, going 6-2 with 5 complete games, 2 shutouts, 64 innings pitched and 13 runs allowed, and 75 strikeouts. In 1983 he finished with a record of 15-16 and that season is often remembered as the beginning of the end for him, and in a sense it was, however he did have 275 strikeouts and finished with an identical ERA to that of the Cy Young season the year before. In my memory a lot of those losses that year came late in games where he had been very strong through 7 innings and faded in the 8th or 9th. He only made 6 starts in September that year and did not complete any of them, going 3-2 with 43.1 innings and 46 strikeouts, but 20 runs allowed. He pitched very well in the LCS that year, allowing 1 run over 13.2 innings in 2 victories (pitch counts 100 and 110), and was decent in his only World Series start, a losing effort in which he lasted 6.2 innings and allowed 3 runs, throwing 107 pitches.
Curt Schilling--2001
Trying to think of a somewhat more recent example. Curt Schilling made 6 outstanding starts in the expanded 21st century playoffs, totaling 48.1 innings, which combined with his regular season work actually put him over 300 for the season. He did take 12 days off between starts in early and mid September that year but still managed to appear 5 times in the final month of the season, going 8 innings in 4 of those games as he tuned up for the post-season. He then threw complete games in his first 3 playoff starts, with pitch counts of 101, 121 and 127, followed by three starts in the World Series of 7, 7 and 7.1 with pitch totals of 102, 88 and 103, though you see by this that managers were already being more careful even with ace starters, at least on short rest.
Bob Gibson--1968
Of course it's a completely different era, and I was not even born yet, but this is one of this most legendary seasons of this type of all time. After having dominated the World Series in 1967 and racking up a 1.12 ERA and 13 shutouts in the 1968 season as his Cardinals rolled to another easy pennant, Gibson loomed like a colossus over the impending Fall Classic that year, famously the last one before the introduction of divisions and preliminary playoff series. The Cardinals effectively knew by August that they would be playing for the championship, but Gibson did not exactly shut it down to rest up for the big event. For the season he would make 34 starts and throw a complete game in 28 of them. After going 7 innings in his 1st 2 starts he would pitch at least 8 in every single start afterwards. Between May 28 and September 2 he completed 19 out of 20 starts, pitching 11 innings in the one game he was not able to finish. After his 10 inning shutout on September 2nd, his ERA actually dropped to 0.99 for the season. But he would be comparatively roughed up in September, giving up 9 runs in 52 innings over 6 starts (1.56 ERA), 5 of them complete games. In the World Series he was famously matched up in games 1 and 4 against 31-game winner Denny McLain of the Tigers and while the sabermeticians probably have a more nuanced take on the dynamic, the impression made at the time was that the intimidating Gibson personally humiliated McLain in those contests, striking out 17 hitters in a 4-0 shutout in Game 1 in which McLain bowed out after 5 innings, and whiffing 10 more in a 10-1 massacre in Game 4 in which Gibson also hit a home run, though that was not off McLain, who only lasted 2.2 innings. Of course Gibson would just as famously meet his Waterloo in a duel in Game 7 against the supposedly more game and pugnacious Mickey Lolich, when the Tigers broke through for three runs in the 8th inning to break a scoreless tie and stun the seemingly invincible Gibson, who would never return to the World Series though he did have several more fantastic seasons as a pitcher.
What is the point of all this, you ask? Well, I like the stories that the old set-up of baseball could produce, and I like seeing superstar pitchers pitch and pitch to the point that they actually decide games and pennants and championships, and the modern game is not giving me what I like (I also like the old simplified playoff system and pennant races. I can easily remember who made the playoffs and the World Series in every season from 1903 until the expansion in the mid-90s, but since then I generally I have no idea who played whom and who had the best record in the season or anything); so I have to look back to the past to feel even a little fulfilled.
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