Why is pitching in baseball more strenuous?
Remembering the National League, 1962-1968
In this year’s fantasy baseball auction, I decided to anchor my team with two of the consensus top-three pitchers, Tarik Skubal and Garett Crochet. Each is currently on the injured list. Many other major league pitchers have joined them there. Pitching injuries have become epidemic in recent years.
In my youth, I followed the National League during what you might call the Ten-Team Era. The NL expanded to 10 teams in 1962 and stayed that size until 1969, when it added two more expansion teams and split into two divisions, thus inaugurating the era of postseason playoffs (which now include the abomination of wild card teams).
During the 1962-1968 period in the NL, it was common for the best hurlers to log over 300 innings pitched, roughly 50 percent more work than the leaders of recent years. And they seemed to get through their careers with fewer arm injuries. Of course, Sandy Koufax, the most spectacular pitcher of the era, retired at his peak because of the arthritic pain in his elbow. And over in the American League, Tommy John toiled away, unbeknownst to all that in the following decade his eponymous ligament surgery would make its debut.
Why does pitching today take such a large toll on pitchers’ arms compared with the 1960s? I think that the factors that matter most are:
the ball
smaller ballpark dimensions
larger players
the designate hitter
The Ball Carries Farther
There is no reliable data about the history of the baseball, other than the transition in the 1920s to the “lively ball.” But I remember in the 1960s a baseball that would barely bounce if you dropped it.
The Internet tells me that an even more important property of a baseball than its resilience is its aerodynamic drag, which can vary from ball to ball. We cannot be sure that today’s baseball travels farther for a given quality of contact, but I think that it is a good bet that it does. By the same token, lower drag would mean that pitches would travel faster to the plate.
It doesn’t have to travel as far
The outfield dimensions of ballparks have generally gotten a bit smaller than they were in the 1960s. Today’s emphasis on lofting the ball (the “launch angle revolution”) would have backfired in back then. Especially in the early part of the decade, there were still ballparks with very capacious center fields. And there were some very speedy centerfielders—Willie Mays, Curt Flood, Willie Davis, and Vada Pinson come to mind—in whose direction it did not pay to hit a fly ball.
While the ballparks may have gotten smaller, the dimensions of the players have gotten bigger. In one way, this favors today’s pitchers. They extend closer to home plate, and larger hands mean a tighter grip on the ball, enhancing the pitcher’s ability to apply speed and spin to the ball.
But larger hitters, smaller ballparks, and a ball that travels farther make every hitter a threat. I think this is the biggest difference that makes pitching harder today. In the 1960s, there were soft spots in the lineup, where pitchers faced little risk of giving up a homerun.
There was one particularly soft spot in the lineup, occupied by the other team’s pitcher. There was no designated hitter back then. The other team’s pitcher usually struck out or attempted a sacrifice bunt. Homeruns from the other pitcher were a rarity.
How much softer were the batting lineups in the 1960s? In 1964, the leading homerun hitters on the Cardinals hit 24, 21, 12, and 12 homeruns, respectively. No one else hit as many as ten! And the Cardinals won the pennant! And finished second in the league in scoring!
Like the Cardinals, many teams only had homerun threats batting 3rd and 4th. Otherwise, you could let the batter hit the ball and see what happens.
Koufax was pretty much the only pitcher who could strike out as many as 9 batters every 9 innings. Today, every pitcher has to be Koufax.
Three teams won pennants in the NL from 1962-1968: the Giants, the Dodgers, and the Cardinals. Although the Giants only won in 1962, they were overall the best team during this period. From 1964-1968, the Cardinals won titles the years that the Dodgers fell to mediocrity, and vice-versa.
The Giants had homerun leaders, notably Mays, Willie McCovey, and Orlando Cepeda. But they could not figure out how to put McCovey and Cepeda on the field at the same time. The Cardinals and Dodgers did not have power, instead relying on speed and pitching. The Dodgers played in a ballpark that favored pitching, and starting in 1966 so did the Cardinals.
If you wanted to get back to the 1960s, I think you would make the baseball just a little bit larger, or otherwise give it more drag. You would move the fences a few feet farther back, to compensate for the increase in hitters’ size. You would eliminate the designated hitter. Those changes, taken together, would take a lot of the homeruns out of the game, allowing pitchers to be more relaxed. To be fair, I think you would move the pitching rubber one or two inches back, to compensate for the increase in pitchers’ size.
Not that there is something sacred about baseball in the 1960s (other than to people of my age.) But such changes would enable pitchers to put less strain on their arms. Which everyone should appreciate.
Your question is one I have been thinking about for quite some time (I grew up in the 1960s and 1970s). My theory is that these athletes are no longer playing multiple sports. Different sports use different muscle groups in different ways. I believe athletes who became pitchers in the 1960s were stronger for playing more kinds of sports. Today, baseball players are playing baseball year round with few exceptions. This decision to specialize in baseball has had adverse consequences on their ability to throw a baseball more than a prescribed amount of pitches per game.
Since you mentioned Sandy Koufax, most people don’t know that his primary sport was basketball. He attended Lafayette High School in Brooklyn, New York, where he did not even play varsity baseball until his senior year.
Koufax finished his final high school season as the second-highest scorer in his division, averaging 16.5 points per game. This performance earned him a spot on the sportswriter-selected All-City team.
His basketball prowess earned him a college roster spot, and he enrolled at the University of Cincinnati on a basketball scholarship.
Playing for the freshman basketball team under coach Ed Jucker, Koufax was a highly productive forward, averaging 9.7 points per game.
In the spring of 1954, Koufax overheard Coach Jucker (who doubled as the university's baseball coach) planning a spring break baseball road trip to New Orleans. Wanting to join the trip, Koufax walked into Jucker's office, stated "I'm a pitcher," and tried out for the baseball team. He went 3–1 with 51 strikeouts in 32 innings that spring, catching the attention of the Brooklyn Dodgers, who signed him to a professional contract later that year.
Christy Mathewson explained in his book on pitching during the Dead Ball era that you shouldn't throw near full velocity until a runner gets to second base. How is a hitter with nobody on base going to hurt you? Hit a home run? Yeah, like that happens often.
Babe Ruth changed that, so pitchers stopped throwing 400 innings per season. You had to pitch your best to Ruth every time he came up. Soon every team had 2 or 3 guys who could homer regularly.
The 300 inning season was fairly rare by the 1950s, although the success of Koufax and Drysdale seems to have made it fashionable again in the later 1960s and early 1970s. But they both burned out young.
The last 300 season inning was Steve Carlton in 1980. Then 250 inning seasons became the new 300 inning season as teams universally switched from 4 man to 5 man starting rotations and developed reliable relievers to handle the 8th inning and then the closer to pitch the ninth.
Baseball players seldom lifted weights until the very late 20th Century. Nolan Ryan started lifting in 1973 but despite his huge success, couldn't get a teammate to lift with him until Brian Downing in 1979.
But now, 20 homers per season is pretty standard for catchers, middle infielders, and centerfielders, whereas 8 would be a decent number for half the guys in your line-up a half century ago.
So, pitchers have to throw hard to maybe 8 out of 9 hitters.
In recent years, new techniques have been developed to add 2 or 3 mph to fastballs. But they seem to take their toll physically. Plus, teams have gotten better and finding and using guys who can throw very hard for one inning twice a week, but no more than that.