Middle Relief Ruined Baseball: A Rant

There are probably friends of mine reading this post who may feel I have no right to comment on the state of baseball these days since I don’t follow the game as ardently as I did in my youth. I grew up with a fanatical devotion to the sport, owing in large part to my Dad’s influence, a man who lived and died with the Brooklyn Dodgers (and still does).

For various reasons I slipped away from baseball in my mid-teens. I returned much later as a much more passive fan, one who only finds time to watch during the playoffs and World Series (and only then if the match ups interest me). I follow the game mainly through reading the paper and online recaps. My love for baseball is rooted more in its’ past than in its’ present.

I grew up in the late 70s and early 80s and my baseball experience was one of burgeoning free agency, yet there was still a large contingent of players who played for only one team throughout their careers. Hitting 50 home runs was a major feat, and there were a number of pitchers on their way to 300 victories.

Perhaps most importantly, pitchers often went the distance and threw nine innings if they had their stuff. Closers were guys like Goose Gossage and Rollie Fingers, who came in as early as the 7th inning. You knew when these guys took the mound the game was over. There was no such thing as a “pitch count,” and certainly no formal concept of “middle relief.”

In the really old days, a reliever was someone who didn’t have the stuff to be a starter and basically threw nothing but junk. Slowly, beginning in the late 50s, the concept of relief pitching took hold with guys like Hoyt Wilhelm and Elroy Face. Still, relievers as a whole did not get a whole lot of love from the baseball establishment. However, in the 70s, men like Fingers and Gossage (and Rawley Eastwick, Mike Marshall, Kent Tekulve to name a few) became stars in that capacity and it became a viable, respected role.

In the mid-80s baseball and I parted ways. I had little interest in the game for many years, but I got sucked back when my hometown team, the New York Mets, reasserted themselves in the late 90s. My interest was piqued, but I soon learned that much had changed.

We all know great pitching trumps great hitting every time. It seems that since the golden age of pitching in the late 60s, the baseball establishment has been systematically eroding the dominance of good pitching in favor of the flashier and more exciting concept of good hitting. Lowering the mound was the first of many stabs the leagues took at watering down pitching.

Expansion has watered down the pool of available talent, and players who may never have made it past the minors now enjoy long careers at the major league level (especially pitchers).

For some reason that has not been adequately explained to me starting pitchers are now only expected to pitch 5-6 innings at most, and never expected to go beyond the almighty pitch count set for them. And they get 5-6 days rest to boot! Instead of four good starters (back in my day), today you have maybe one ace, two solid starters and three wildly unpredictable guys who can throw a no-hitter one day and be shelled the next start.

And don’t get me started about hitting. Balls (and players) have been juiced to the point of criminality. For my money, steroids have ruined the last 10-15 years of baseball and every hitting record attained by a steroid user is a tainted one. In the 60s Jim Bouton and his contemporaries used “greenies” to stay in the game after a night of carousing. As he put it, those were performance enablers, not performance enhancers.

The prevailing wisdom is that fans want to see home runs, and lots of them. I’d rather watch a pitcher’s duel than a slugfest.

My Dad and I love to watch old ballgames. For him, it’s a chance to revisit his youth and the players he grew up with. For me, it’s an opportunity to see the game as it was before it was sullied with all the changes of the present day.

I’ve seen Tom Seaver pitch ten innings to win a World Series game. I’ve seen Sandy Koufax pitch on two days rest and still blow guys away with his fastball. I’ve seen Bob Gibson bring the heat with as much ferocity in inning nine as he did in inning one. All these games occurred before I was born, but I saw them. I saw Roger Craig pitch 10 innings during a game in 1959. Craig was no superstar either! What the hell happened?

The Mets’ recent elimination from playoff contention is a perfect example of how bad pitching can destroy a team that, by all rights, should make the postseason every year. For the second time in three years, inconsistent starter Oliver Perez gave his team everything someone of his middling talent possibly could in a do or die situation. He eventually faltered, but the offense kept the team in the game.

To be fair, the Mets lost their closer Billy Wagner earlier in the month, and that is a devastating blow for any team. However, these middle relievers blew many games before Wagner even took the ball, so I often wonder what’s the point of having a great closer when your middle relievers lose the lead the starter has worked so hard to protect??

During Sunday’s game craptacular relievers Scott Schoenweis and Luis Ayala gave up back to back home runs and the Mets lost the game 4-2. I’m not saying the offense doesn’t deserve some blame either, as the Mets faced a guy who they’ve eaten for breakfast on several occasions, so what the hell, guys?

This game for me is the perfect illustration of how the concept of middle relief (along with the others I mentioned) has ruined the game. It’s not just a problem for the Mets, but every major league team that is forced to keep a stable of junkball pitchers who can’t start, can’t close, and most importantly, can’t hold the lead!

I know things will never go back to the way they used to be, and that’s tragic. I would rather watch Roberto Clemente face down Jim Palmer for nine innings during a game that occurred thirty years ago because that’s worth watching – not four guys with no stuff getting shelled.

Even if someone like Palmer wasn’t on his A game Earl Weaver wouldn’t necessarily yank him because he knew there was a good chance he’d regain his footing. Pitchers like Palmer weren’t rattled so easily, and if they gave up a run or two they still might very well win the game.

I envy my Dad for the era he grew up in, and I’m glad enough of those games survive so I can share it with him.

(For those of you receiving this blog as an e-mail be sure to check the site for some youtube clips of real pitchers!)