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I was reading a comment from Brian in another thread and it made me think about how teams used to split the 25 man rosters between pitchers and field players.
It seems like they used to carry 10 or 11 pitchers and use a 4 man starting rotation and have 14 or 15 field players making for a 5 or 6 man bench.
Is this how it used to be or am I misremembering?
You are accurate on that, ZTR. Over the around 125 year history of the “modern era” of Major League Baseball, the game has evolved fairly consistently towards rosters carrying more pitchers. Without doing any research, it seems that for many years, say post WWII to around 1980 or so, teams typically carried 10 pitchers. Usually four or five were starters, another guy would be a “swing man” and maybe start a dozen games or so, and also relieve in another 20 or 30, and then four guys that almost exclusively were relief pitchers.
Thus you had a deep bench and could do more pinch-hitting, pinch-running and that sort of thing. With no DH a good pinch hitter was nice to have – a Jerry Lynch, Smoky Burgess or Jose Morales could win you a game or two. At times teams would carry three catchers. The early ‘60s Yankees had Easton Howard, John Blanchard and Yogi Berra all on the active roster. Course they would use Yogi in left field quite a bit by then, which resulted in his classic quote when asked about playing the outfield after so many years as a catcher. Yogi responded, “It gets late early out there.” 🙂
Yep, and now they even have an extra, 26th man and still the bench is shorter.
13 players (with a 4-man bench) and 13 pitchers seems to be the current thinking as both leagues now have the DH (which I do not like).
I do like the new ‘must face at least three batters’ rule (unless the inning ends or injury) as it prevents a pitching change after a single batter – the LOOGEY lol.
Once a PH is announced he HAS to take the AB, right? Even if the pitcher is changed – and once a pitcher comes in he HAS to face his three batters.
That was back when starters didn’t receive a ticker tape parade for going more than 5 innings. It used to be common for starters to rack up 250 IP for a season. Now very few go over 200. I remember Steve Carlton going over 300 IP in one season.
My guess is the trend toward more pitchers on the roster is a consequence of the emergence of radar guns and later other technology, and the migration of it downward to youth baseball. They are all incentivized to pitch at the limit of what the physical structures in the body can withstand. If they don’t do it, someone else will, and beat them out. IPs have to be curated pretty carefully, so you need more pitchers.
Back in the day when I used to get The Sporting News, and I remember a columnist, probably Joe Falls, wrote that he had a note written “Mickey Lolich 376.”
He said he jotted that down to remind him to comment on how amazing it was that Lolich just pitched 376 innings in the recently completed season (1971).
That’s two long seasons for modern guys, and three seasons for some.
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