The game of baseball has some of the richest history in sports. I've talked about it before in previous posts, but that history is what makes baseball fans so passionate about the game itself. Coupled with that great history come some incredibly overrated pieces of the game. It's not so much the history, but more the day-to-day aspects of the game that tend to be read into a little too much, mostly by managers.
I know I'm not the only who believes this, but to me, the most overrated aspect of baseball is...the pitch count. The pitch count is that imaginary line that manager's have where they believe their pitchers can't pitch past. It's gotten so bad in some cases that some managers have even pulled their starting pitchers in the seventh inning of a no-hitter, all because the pitcher had already thrown 100 pitches. We have bullpens that are "spent" because they had to use a set-up man for two innings and 30 pitches. For God's sake, we have kids in Little League throwing 75 pitches in six inning games, but we can't throw a relief pitcher more than two innings before he gets tired? Seriously?
The pitch count came about some time during the '90's. I honestly don't know that anyone can really trace back it's true beginning, but I would have to believe it was first put into place to keep a pitcher recovering from injury from re-aggravating that injury. Somewhere along the line, managers began using it for every pitcher, both starters and relievers. If you were to ask any manager, they would probably tell you that they monitor the pitch count to keep their pitchers healthy and prevent stress to their arms. But, let's be realistic here. The main reason managers are monitoring the pitch count is to protect the team's investment in those pitchers, and that's the sad truth. When you look back into the history of the game, you had maybe two or three pitchers appear in any one game. Nowadays, you have the starting pitcher, the middle relief pitcher, the specialist pitchers for your late inning righty/lefty match-ups, your set-up pitcher, and your closer. Around the time you started to see this phantom pitch count number start to become more prominent, you also started to see teams paying relief pitchers more money. What this caused was a bigger market for those relief pitchers. Now, as opposed to letting a pitcher pitch himself out of a jam, the manager is almost obligated to bring in the team's $4 million "investment" to get them out of the inning. That, my friends, has degraded the quality of pitching in baseball. You now have pitchers who shouldn't be making that kind of money, making $3-$6 million a season, and pitching far more significant innings than they probably should be, all because the team has spent the money on them...you may as well use them.
Similar to the pitch count problem, another aspect of the game that has become a more annoying issue than an effective one, is the righty vs. righty/lefty vs. lefty match-up situation. Starting pitchers will go six or seven innings just fine, and the closer will pitch the ninth inning without question...but, for some reason, between the seventh and eighth innings, managers have decided that a right-handed pitcher throwing to a right-handed batter is far more effective than anything else. To me, this is the most absurd concept in baseball, and one of the most over-used and over-valued decisions a manager can make. Managers will stroll to the mound in the seventh inning to pull their starter, and bring in the left-handed "specialist" to face the left-handed hitter coming up. The hitter coming up is hitting .326 against right-handers, but only .301 against left-handers...so, based on that .025 difference, we've got a better chance of getting him out with the lefty than the right-handed starter. Really? What's worse is that when that left-handed pitcher comes in and throws one-pitch to the left-handed hitter and gets him to pop of to the shortstop...out comes the manager to take him out of the game because the guy on deck is right-handed. Are you kidding me? That left-handed pitcher you took out is making $4.6 million. For $4.6 million dollars, he should be able to strike out the left-handed hitter he just faced, the right-handed hitter on deck, and then pitch the next two innings without question!
What irritates me about the match-up situation is that, again, modern day baseball did itself a disservice by creating a market for those pitchers. Now, you can't go away from it because you have to get the value out of what you've spent. It should be embarrassing for a pitcher to come into a game, throw one pitch, and then be pulled from the game. Unfortunately for the fans, it's not embarrassing for that pitcher because he's getting paid regardless. What's worse is that when that pitcher comes into two straight games, throws a total of five pitches in that same situation, he's considered "used up" for the next game. Now, you've really got to be joking, right? He's not able to pitch a third game in a row because he threw five pitches in two games? Does anyone else find this ridiculous?
There's a reason why there are only a handful of relief pitchers or closers in the Hall of Fame. That reason is because, back when baseball was at it's peak, these positions were incredibly overrated themselves. The reason these positions have been developed is because teams have failed to develop better starting pitching. You can attribute that to what you want to, whether it be expansion and having too many teams in baseball, or whether it be because teams became so fixated on offense in the '90's that they let the pitching part just pass by the wayside. Either way, the quality of starting pitching in baseball has diminished a great deal over the last two decades. Sure, we've had the Greg Madduxes, Randy Johnsons, and Curt Schillings of the game over that time frame, but we've had far more of the mediocre, nameless pitchers than anything, and that has, in turn, led to a greater need for middle relief pitching to compensate.
Why can't we just go back to the way baseball used to be?
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