Baseball Stategy

A great article by Murray Chass on 4 man pitching rotations

Four-man Rotations a Distant Memory
By Murray Chass
March 1, 2009

The four-man pitching rotation became extinct a long time ago. Teams began adding a fifth starter to their rotations in the late ’60s and early ’70s, and the four-man rotation was basically gone by the ’80s. Three decades later even the occasional pitcher starting on three days of rest instead of four has become virtually extinct.

According to research by Elias Sports Bureau, less than one percent of last season’s games were started by pitchers on fewer than four days of rest. Elias traced the decline:

In 1973, the first year of the designated hitter, the percentage of major league games started by pitchers with rest shorter than four days was 39.6.

Since then the percentage has dropped steadily to 21.3 in 1978, 11.1 in 1983, 5.6 in 1988, 1.1 in 1998 and 0.9 last season. That last percentage means that pitchers started only 22 of last season’s 2,428 games on fewer than four days of rest.

The trend has resulted from an industry-wide change in pitching philosophy. Four-man rotations have changed to five, starting pitchers are limited to 100 pitches, bullpens have added setup men to precede closers and a pitching staff generally is more pampered than a nursery full of babies.

As late as the ’50s and ’60s, teams carried nine pitchers. Today’s staffs number 12 and 13. Teams complain they don’t have enough pitching, but they won’t revert to past practices, which would reduce the need for as many pitchers as they use.

Tom Seaver, who began his career with the Mets in 1967, said recently he didn’t recall pitching with three days of rest in his Hall of Fame career, but he did - eight times in 1967, four times in ‘68 and eight in ‘69, Elias records show. But he was also part of the beginning of the transformation from the four-man to the five-man rotation.

“Essentially, when Gil came over he put us on a five-man rotation,” Seaver said of the Mets’ manager, Gil Hodges. Tommy John, who would pitch against the Mets for the Los Angeles Dodgers, recalled Rube Walker, the pitching coach under Hodges. “Rube was big on giving the pitchers an extra day’s rest so they started using a 5-man,” John said.

We were all power pitchers - Gentry, Ryan, Koosman, myself,” Seaver said. “Over the course of the season you’d probably pitch more effective innings. If you could get guys pitching on the fifth day you’d probably have a higher percentage of good innings.”

Seaver said he never pitched 300 innings in a season but said, “You may give up innings, but you may pitch a higher percentage of effective innings.”

Ferguson Jenkins, whose career began in 1965 and ended in 1983, pitched more than 300 innings five times. Robin Roberts, who pitched from 1948 through 1966, did that six times. Jenkins made 35 or more starts in a season 10 times, Roberts nine times. Pitching in a five-man rotation doesn’t allow that many starts.

“You have 13 pitchers on a staff,” Jenkins said. “When I came in, there were nine, four starters, five in the bullpen. Now they have five starters, eight in the bullpen.”

Pitchers, Jenkins noted, do not have the opportunity to pitch with three days of rest. “That’s unfortunate,” he said. “There are some guys who are capable of doing it - Carlos Zambrano, Josh Beckett, for example. But management doesn’t want to get into a problem of them not doing well their next start, which is something that happens.”

Management is also concerned about overusing pitchers. With all of the starts he made and innings he pitched, was Jenkins ever injured? “Never,” he said. “In my 21 years of playing I never had a sore arm.”

Did Roberts ever have a sore arm? “My last 11 years I didn’t throw like I did early,” he said. “My arm bent up a little bit and I didn’t quite have that little extra.”

The problem, however, developed for a reason other than starting every fourth day.

“I pitched, then I came in in relief,” Roberts said. “That’s silly. I shouldn’t have done that. It didn’t work out. That is a dumb thing, to have a starter relieving. I would start and then I’d relieve the middle days. I was a closer. I had about 25 saves in my career.”

“We pitched probably too many and they don’t pitch enough now,” he added. “In our case, we pitched in a three-day rotation and sometimes we pitched on two days.” That pattern of starting, Roberts said, didn’t hurt his career, “but when I had four days’ rest I had better stuff. That extra little rest gave your fast ball a little more zip to it. It didn’t help your control.”

Only four teams in the expansion era - beginning in 1961 - have had four pitchers make at least 35 starts each, according to Elias: 1966 Dodgers (Sandy Koufax, Don Drysdale, Claude Osteen, Don Sutton); 1972 Orioles (Mike Cuellar, Pat Dobson, Dave McNally, Jim Palmer); 1984 Blue Jays (Doyle Alexander, Jim Clancy, Luis Leal, Dave Stieb); 1993 Braves (Steve Avery, Tom Glavine, Greg Maddux, John Smoltz).

In 1971, the Orioles regularly started four pitchers on three days of rest, and they each became a 20-game winner: Dave McNally (21) and Mike Cuellar, Pat Dobson and Jim Palmer (20 each).

“George Bamberger took over as the Orioles’ pitching coach,” recalled John, who was pitching for the Chicago White Sox at the time, “and with his Staten Island accent, he said they have to throw more, they’ll pitch better. He dropped a starter and went with four.”

While other teams were switching to five-man rotations, the Orioles stayed with four as long as Bamberger remained Earl Weaver’s pitching coach. In 10 years with Weaver, Bamberger developed 18 20-game winners, at least one each season.

“He did the same thing when he managed the Brewers,” John said, meaning a four-man rotation, though Bamberger added two more 20-game winners. “It could be done now. But whatever manager or general manager allows it, they’re going to have the wrath of an agent on them if anybody gets hurt.”

With good pitching in short supply, this would seem to be a good time for teams to revert to four starters, eliminating the need for one starter.

“I’m a proponent of a 4-man staff,” John said. “Most major league staffs have three quality starters. Pitchers four and five are the 5-inning guys.” But, he added, “Two things keep them from doing it - the amount of money they have invested in them, and if somebody went to a 4-man and a guy hurt his arm he’d have the biggest lawsuit in the world.”

Seaver said pitching mentality is extremely different today. “I just don’t understand the mentality of saying ‘I’ve thrown 90 pitches and 6 innings and I’m out of the game.’ In our day the minimum of pitching was seven innings. I’m talking about the mental approach. The objective was to get 21 outs, to get to the eighth at a minimum.

“Today you look for reasons to take pitchers out rather than leave them in. Certain pitchers will look to come out of a game. I pray for the day when the manager goes out and says, ‘You’re pitching great, kid. I’m not coming back.’”