Warren Spahn at age 42 tossed a league leading 22 complete games.
For his career, he completed 57 percent of his starts.

And they pitched on three days rest.

Athletes do what they are conditioned to do. Blame the organizations they pitch for if you don’t like the number of innings pitchers are throwing.

I suspect that the stats for the HOF pre-War pitchers will show even higher percentages of starts completed: for example:

WaJo completed 531 or 79.7% of his 666 regular season starts.
Matty completed 435 or 78.8% of his 552 regular season starts.

Because they throw way harder than the starters of yore. EVERYONE throws much harder than guys in the past. With very, very few exceptions, you simply can't have the same stamina throwing 99 as you can throwing 91. And managers have also seen the numbers on how much worse guys are the third time through the lineup.

Don Newcombe was 123-66 for the Brooklyn Dodgers from 1949-1956.
He won 27 games in 1956 and 20 in 1955.
He pitched in 3 World Series. His record was 0-4 with an 8.59 ERA.
He never could win the big game for them.

Chris, I think that another factor is the variety and frequency of breaking pitches thrown by today's pitchers compared to what pitchers threw in the past, especially during the dead-ball era. WaJo and other dead-ball era pitchers relied heavily on their fast balls and maybe one other pitch (e.g., Matty with his screwball); this worked wonderfully, until the live-ball era, at which time WaJo worked to improve his other pitches, especially his curve ball, and I assume other predominantly-fast-ball pitchers had to do the same to maintain their excellence.

When they show three pitches from the same pitcher (eg fastball, slider and curve) superimposed together and all three remain on the same track for 30 feet and then spin off in three different directions, i’m Glad that I am not in the batter’s box.

I believe this accounts for both the increasing number of whiffs and the increasing incidence of Tommy John procedures.

Warren Spahn pitched his first complete game before Tommy John was born and would have had more if it wasn’t for that damned war.:rolleyes:

Absolutely true.

For a guy not on the roster, he seems to be in the game as I type this.

Due to shoulder & knee injuries, they didn't include CC from the divisional series vs Minnesota.
Since he would have more rest the Yankees added him to the roster vs Houston.

Since this post has already taken the turn...LET'S GO YANKEES!!
If the Dodgers want to ship Kershaw over here I am sure Yankees can find a spot for him..

Verlander

14-11 with a 3.40 ERA doesn’t qualify

Very disappointing post-season by Verlander in any event.

It was a disappointing post - season for Verlander, and I am a Verlander fan but I wonder if fatherhood and being married to Kate Upton took its toll on him as a 36 year old with a lot of innings thrown this year and as the season wore on and as the post - season continued that fatigue and the pressure to rid himself of the pitching curse in the W S mentally and physically wore him down .
No comments needed about Kate Upton wearing anybody down ...that fact is self evident !!!

From what I've read he has a very strong marriage, aside from the obvious silly innuendo why would that wear him out? He was terrific during the season, he probably just had a few bad outings.

ok worst WS pitcher


".... in the World Series, Verlander is 0-6 with a 5.68 ERA in seven career starts."