September 30, 2024
The 2024 Major League baseball season wraps up today, with the Mets and the Braves playing a double-header. If either team sweeps, the losing team will be knocked out of the play-offs. If they split, both teams will move on. Any guesses as to what is likely to happen?
In any event, I have lost most of my interest in baseball since the Expos left Montreal, but my childhood team, the Detroit Tigers, have emerged from nowhere to notch a playoff bid and even though I cannot name two players on their current roster (in sharp contradistinction, I am fairly certain I could name at least 22 of the players on the 1968 World Series-winning team), I’ll likely watch at least a portion of their Wild Card game at Houston on Tuesday.
Which almost brings me to the point of this blog. I saw the Tigers in person in Minneapolis when I was visiting my daughter last summer, and the Tiger starting pitcher lasted one inning. He didn’t get yanked for poor pitching; he threw a scoreless inning. It just happens that pitchers simply don’t throw as much as they used to.
I noticed, in looking at the stats for the 2024 season, some interesting tidbits when it comes to pitching. For one, the major league leader in complete games this year had a grand total of two. In 2004 (which wasn’t too too terribly long ago, and which I chose because it was 20 years ago, and then realized it was also the year that the Boston Red Sox ended “The Curse”), there was one pitcher with 9 complete games, five with five, three with four and four with three.
The MLB leader in innings pitched this year, Seattle’s Logan Gilbert, pitched 208 innings. He was one of four pitchers with 200 innings pitched or more. In 2004, FORTY-TWO pitchers pitched at least 200 innings.
I remember when, in 1969, the Baltimore Orioles had four starting pitchers with 20 wins in a single season (don’t look it up; I got it — Dobson, Cuellar, McNally and Palmer). For that matter, I was at Tiger Stadium a year earlier when Denny McLain won his 30th game on his way to a 31-6 record. This year, there were no 20-game winners; the Braves’ Chris Sale and the Tigers’ Tarik Skubal ended the season with 18 wins each.
Maybe I’m Old School (ok, ok… I’m Old School), but I think we lose something when a team uses six or seven pitchers in a game.
I bet you didn’t come to today’s blog expecting baseball chat.