–
–
Fred Wilpon’s New York Mets are switching to a six man pitching rotation. Talk about dumb ideas.
Mets manager Terry Collins told his players of the move over the weekend. According to Collins, the alternative was to take out pitchers after 5 innings. he told AP that he said to his pitchers, “if we stay with the five-man, I’m going to take you out after five innings. You guys OK with that?” Apparently they were not.
Will you offer us a hand? Every gift, regardless of size, fuels our future.
Your critical contribution enables us to maintain our independence from shareholders or wealthy owners, allowing us to keep up reporting without bias. It means we can continue to make Jewish Business News available to everyone.
You can support us for as little as $1 via PayPal at office@jewishbusinessnews.com.
Thank you.
Just when baseball fans thought that the coddling of pitchers could not go any further, the Mets have gone and done something just plain silly.
When I was a kid, teams first went to a five man rotation from only four and no one ever dreamed of having a pitch count. I may be old, but not that old. Now pitch counts keep getting lower for some pitchers and soon no one will make it to the sixth inning, let alone have a complete game.
Can you imagine it? Soon we will be telling our grandchildren about the time back when there were pitchers who actually got no hitters and perfect games and lasted past the third inning.
Much talk has been made of the fact that certain pitching records will never be broken because of how few innings pitchers actually pitch these days.
Nolan Ryan’s 5, 714 career strikeouts and 383 in a single season will probably stand forever now. The last time a pitcher won more than 30 games was in 1968. How many win 20 games any more or will ever come close to the single season record of 41.
Cy Young can rest in peace knowing that no one will ever get anywhere near his 511 career wins and Walter Johnson sits safely at second place with 417.
On that point, will anyone even get to the former career benchmark of 300 or more wins achieved by 24 pitchers? 300? Soon we will settle for 100.
