The Baseball Time Quandary

Ken Raffensberger, member of the 1950 Cincinatti Reds pitching staff

For many years, leading up to a 2023 season rule change creating a pitch clock, there was much "sturm und drang" about how Major League Baseball games just take too darn long to play. Personally, I never quite got what all of the fuss was about, and of course, it was always the outlier games that were cited as proof. Yes, when the Yankees vs. Red Sox are playing into their 5th hour, it can be a bit of a bore, but that is the exception and not the rule.

MLB Games in 2022, the year before the pitch clock rule, lasted, on average, about 3:07. The "3 batter rule" of 2019, despite attempting to limit pitching changes, did not markedly affect the game time, which, I might add, is very similar in overall game time to an NFL game. And the NFL (and football in general) is a sport which is rigidly timed and is far more popular than baseball despite the length of the games. To be fair, an average MLB team plays 6 to 7 games a week, whereas the NFL teams play one game a week. It is much easier to dedicate 3 hours a week to your team, especially with the team playing on a day when the fan is likely off from work and with an afternoon start time for 75% or more of the games. 

As an aside, with all of the talk of game length, it is interesting to note that the least popular major league sports in America, soccer and hockey, are the two sports that have almost continuous action and that they have much shorter average games times, under 2:30 for hockey and just a little above 2 hours for soccer. And soccer, I might add, has the longest actual game play time for any timed sport at 90 minutes, divided into two 45-minute halves. 

But, back to baseball, which is the subject of this essay. The pitch clock served its purpose well, as game times dropped by 25 minutes in 2023 versus 2022. The average game time of 2:42 had not been so low since 1980. But what I am wanting to look into here is what caused the game times to expand over the last 75 years of baseball in the first place, from around 2 hours and 20 minutes in 1950 all the way up to that 3:07 mark. That represents a 33% increase in game time over the span.

And I think I know why. The finances of the game are the main culprit. 

There were three main factors that drastically changed the financial landscape of the MLB: Expansion, the forming of the MLBPA (the player's union) and the eventual offshoot of that union formation, free agency. Eight teams were added to the league in two phases in 1961/62 and again in 1969. The remaining 6 teams (bringing the league total to 30) were added 2 by 2 in 1977, 1993 and 1998.

Expansion changed the finances in a much more subtle way than the other two but has long term repercussions on the way the game is played and paid. If you look back to the early 1950s, you will find two 8 team leagues. Many of those teams are still somewhat family owned, mom and pop type concerns, except that mom and pop were pretty wealthy people. Even in cases where they were not, however, the teams seemed to still have that feel about them. 

Because baseball was such a hugely popular sport in that era (far and away, America's game), it was played by far larger proportion of youth and recreationally as young adults. And while there weren't as many options at the very top for the most talented players, there seemed to be millions of Minor league affiliates of the 16 MLB teams. Okay, not millions, but there were 214 divided among the 16 major league squads. That is an average of over 13 minor league clubs affiliated per each MLB team. The Chicago White Sox and Boston Red Sox tied for fewest in 1950 with 8 teams each, while the Dodgers (then in Brooklyn), had 24(!), the NY Giants had 20 and the St. Louis Cardinals had 21.

By 1970, after the first round of expansion had increased the league size by one and a half times and after the MLBPA had formed, the typical team had 5 minor league affiliates and an instructional league team. Only the Red Sox came close to the 1950 level, with 6 affiliates plus the ubiquitous instructional league team. In the 20 years from 1950 to 1970, the Dodgers moved across country and divested themselves of 17 minor league affiliate teams!

Of course, one of my theories about why, in particular, the nature of how players were treated by ownership, takes a bit of a dent. Yes, teams in the 1950s had a lot of minor league teams, but only 4 of the 16 teams had more than one AAA team (then and now, the highest level of the minors) and one team, the Washington Nationals, didn't even have a AAA team at all. So, my notion that perhaps owners were less inclined to protect their players because they had plenty of AAA players available with a similar talent level as their major league counterparts takes a bit of a hit. 

However, I feel that many major league owners of that era BELIEVED that they had plenty of minor league talent that could be used to replace their MLB players for less money, and thus were more inclined to use (read abuse) their big leaguers, especially the pitchers.

I decided to dive into the pitching stats for each decade's first year, starting in 1950. I picked a team whose average game time fell right on or closest to the league average game time for that year and looked at how their pitchers were used, based on the stats. The obvious reason that I focus on pitchers is because pitching changes in the middle of a given half inning do more to add to game time than any other part of the game that isn't "action".

In 1950, the Cincinnati Reds average game time was 2:20, exactly at league average. The Reds were not particularly good in 1950, finishing 6th out of 8 teams in the NL with a 66-87 record. They had 5 regular starters, but the numbers suggest they played like they only had 4 for portions of the season, as the top three starters all made 32 or more starts while the other 2 both made only 22 starts each. In addition, all 5 of the regular starters made relief appearances, totaling 37 between them. The starters even finished 23 games that they hadn't started, tallying 9 saves in the process.

The top three starters, Ewell Blackwell, Ken Raffensberger and Herm Wehmeier had lengthy, if not notable, MLB careers. In other words, they were not the kind of pitchers whose individual prowess would warrant them staying long into a given start, even if they usually did, as was the norm in those days. The rest of the pitching staff consisted of 4 regular relievers, all pitching in at least 22 games and three others who pitched a grand total of 35 innings in 9 games, with three starts. So, basically, this was a 9-man staff. They pitched 77 complete games out of 153 played, a tiny bit above 50% of the total.

Those five starters, if you include their relief appearances, pitched 1074 and 2/3rds innings, 79% of the team's yearly total of 1357 and 2/3rds. What all of this means is that the 5 starters did the bulk of the work and that there were not a whole lot of in game pitching changes, which could partially explain their average game times. 

Picture the typical in game pitching change scenario in today's baseball until just very recently: Catcher, infielders and the pitching coach converge on the mound for the first "mound visit". Two to three minutes used there. Then a 6-pitch walk, followed by a single on a 3-1 count. Then the second visit, which, by rule, precipitates a pitcher change. Another 4 to five minutes pass as the new guy comes in from the pen and throws his 8 allotted warm up throws before facing the first batter. One pitching change adds 7 to 8 minutes to the game time in which, essentially, nothing happens. If both teams end up with a combined total of 6 changes, which is entirely possible in a tight game, that could cover the entire time difference between the average game time of 1950 versus 2022. And, as we can see from the Reds' example above, there simply weren't very many pitching changes made during those days.  

And did those 5 Reds' starting pitchers get paid a fortune for their efforts? Hardly. The only one of the starters that I could find 1950 contract figures for was Ewell Blackwell, who was paid $10,000 in that year, the equivalent of $107,801 in 2024. The other 4 starters all had info for the 1951 season, in which they were paid a 2024 equivalent dollar average of $111,164. Basically, they were paid a typical upper middle-class income. Can you imagine a 2024 ballplayer being paid that way? The league MINIMUM in 2023 was $720,000.

Now, we move on to the next decade. In 1960, the San Francisco Giants, with an average game time of 2:39 (note that increase in just 10 years), were the team closest to the league average of 2:38 per game. The Giants were better than the 1950 Reds, too, finishing 5th with a 79-75 record, 16 games out of first. Much like the 1950 Reds, they really had only 4 regular starters, plus Juan Marichal, who showed his future HOF potential by going 6-2 in 11 starts in 1960, his rookie campaign.

While, ultimately, 15 different men pitched for the 1960 Giants, much like the 1950 Reds, it was really more of a 9 man staff. The 4 main starters, Mike McCormick, Sam Jones, Jack Sanford and Billy O'Dell all started at least 37 games. Marichal had 11 starts, beginning with his July 19th major league debut. Eighteen other starts were made by a combo of 4 different relievers, including the "closer" Johnny Antonelli, who had only one more save (11) than he had starts. He and Stu Miller each had over 100 innings pitched. None of the other 8 "relief" pitchers threw more than 32 innings in that season. 

The 1950 Reds and 1960 Giants shared one pitcher, Bud Byerly, who was 40 years old in 1960 and pitched the last of his 22 innings that year (and the last of his MLB career) on July 21st, ostensibly being replaced by Marichal. 

As a side note, Byerly had a very interesting baseball story. After being demoted during 1960, he hung on for an additional 34 appearances at triple A Tacoma in '60 and '61 before finally hanging them up. He had started in the majors in 1943 as a 23-year-old who was, for unknown reasons, 4-F and not eligible for military service in WWII. His career stalled in 1945 when the regular MLB players returned from service and picked up where their baseball careers had been interrupted. Byerly didn't reappear in the majors until that 1950 Reds' season and somehow managed to hang on and have an 11-year major league career, having 237 appearances and 17 career starts in that time, averaging only 44 innings pitched per season. He was the truest of the so called 4A players, having only managed 4 seasons in the majors in which he spent the entire season with a big-league club. In addition, he had both four- and three-year mid-career stints in which he never made an MLB roster. He also played for 16 different minor and major league teams in 22 professional seasons. Whew, but I do damn digress!

In comparing the 1950 Reds and 1960 Giants, ostensibly, things looked basically the same in terms of pitching staff usage. The starters in 1960 pitched 70% of the total innings pitched versus 79% in 1950. The percentage of complete games dropped from just a bit over 50% for the 1950's Reds down to 35% for the 1960 Giants' staff, which meant more pitching changes, possibly accounting for the extra 19 minutes it took the '60 Giants to play their games. 

The Giants pitchers got a better relative paycheck, but nothing like what is made today, and, truth be told, that is only speculation, because the only contract info that I could find for any of the 5 starters (including Marichal) were figures from later in the 1960s. Marichal's 2024 equivalent salary from 1961 was $123,480. Sanford made an equivalent $377,340 in 1964, the same year that Jones was paid an embarrassing equivalent amount of $84,405 in 2024 money. I never found any contract information for O'Dell. And McCormick was paid an equivalent $235,920 in 1965.

Now, as 1960 was the last year I will survey before expansion and the player's union was formed, it will be interesting to see the changes that 1970 will bring to staff usage.

For 1970, I found that all of the average game times fell between 2:29 and 2:39 with one exception, the Giants, who, inexplicably, had an average game time a full 9 minutes longer than any other team in the league. So, proving that I know the difference between average and median, I tossed the outlier time and made the average game 2:34 long, which puts our first AL team, the 1970 Boston Red Sox in the pitching usage crosshairs. 

The 1970 "Sawx" were a pretty good team (87-75, 3rd in the AL East) with a lot of well-known and well-respected players, most of whom were on the batter side of the equation. Carl Yastrzemski, Reggie Smith, Tony Conigliaro, George Scott and Rico Petricelli were the standouts. The pitching staff was configured much like the 1950 Reds and the 1960 Giants. Four regular starters and 5 main relievers with a closer, who happened to be future Yankee star Sparky Lyle. The five main relievers did combine for 32 starts, but unlike the aforementioned teams' closers, Lyle was strictly a game finisher, with 63 total appearances, of which 40 were games finished, with 20 saves and an ugly 1-7 record.

Three of the starters, Ray Culp, Sonny Seibert and Gary Peters had 33, 33 and 34 starts respectively. The 4th starter, Mike Nagy, had 20 starts. The remaining starts (42) were scattered among three of the 5 regular relievers and 10 more from 3 of the other 11 relievers that were in and out of Boston during the season, including 5 starts from Bill "Spaceman" Lee.

Still, as things look very similar in terms of staff makeup, the pitcher usage has evolved some from 1950 and 1960. The 1970 Red Sox got only 56% of their total innings pitched from their 4 regular starters, although when you add in the total innings pitched the 3 main relief spot starters threw in their starts, that total bumps up to 70% of the total IPs being pitched by game starters. And that doesn't include the 10 starts made by the irregular relievers. 

As far as complete games are concerned, 38 of the 162 starts made that season ended as complete games. That is only 23% of the games for the 1970 Sox, versus a little above 50% in 1950 and 35% in 1960 for the Reds and Giants, respectively. So, there were obviously more relief appearances for the 1970 Red Sox but with relatively little change in game times. My guess is that pitching changes were made more frequently between innings instead of within an inning, and I noted that of the 32 starts made by the main 3 relievers, only 14 featured a pitching change that took place during an inning. If you add the other 18 starts to the 36 complete games thrown by the starters, that is 54 starts in which a starting pitcher was not replaced "in game", thus not affecting game time. And that does not even include all of the other starts made by the regular starters, so that would seem to bear out as a somewhat correct assumption on my part.

The one other change to note is that the number of pitchers making appearances has been going up for each team observed from 1950, 1960 and 1970. The Reds of 1950 basically had a true 9-man staff, with only 3 other pitchers making a game appearance that season beyond the core 9. And three other pitchers only amassed 40 innings in a total of 15 appearances. By 1960, the Giants still had what was, essentially, only a 10-man staff, but had 5 additional pitchers, who threw 73 and 2/3s innings in 39 appearances. By 1970, the Red Sox were back to the 9-man staff, but had an additional eleven pitchers make appearances, for a total of 20 for the year. Those additional eleven (a number still smaller than today's regular staff) pitched 182 and 2/3s innings in 110 appearances.

 

Lastly, as we have with each year, we will take a look at comparative salaries as expressed in 2024 dollars for the starters. Of the four regular starters, only Gary Peters has a 1970 salary figure that I could find. He was paid the 2024 equivalent of $331,918 to pitch for the '70 Sox. Sonny Siebert's 1973 salary, the closest year to 1970 and WITH the Red Sox was an equivalent of $522,220. In 1969, when he played in Cleveland, Siebert's equivalent salary was barely half of that amount, at $278,455. Siebert and Peters were both veterans in their 30s by 1970, thus their higher salaries. Twenty-three-year-old (in 1970) Mike Nagy, the 4th starter, made an equivalent of $152,100 in 1972. Lastly, number 1 starter Ray Culp was also a veteran, one who made a 1972 salary equal to $398,358 in 2024. These were their closest years for comparison. 

For the 1980 season, we start to see the first vestiges of the modern pitching staff, basically 5 regular starters and 5 regular relievers, including the closer. And the lines between are much more delineated, although our 1980 team, the Pittsburgh Pirates, with their league average game time of 2:38, had five starters who all made at least one and as many as five relief appearances. In addition, a reliever, Eddie Solomon, had twelve starts with 2(!) complete games. He and Enrique Romo both pitched over 100 innings, as well. 

In fact, the 1980 Pirates had fewer pitchers make appearances than the 1970 Red Sox and only 2 more than the 1960 Giants. Three of the five starters, Jim Bibby, John Candeleria and Bert Blyleven, made 34, 34 and 32 starts, respectively, with the 4th starter, Don Robinson, chipping in 24 starts. Fifth starter Rick Rhoden made 19 starts and with the aforementioned Solomon making 12 of the remaining 17 starts that were made by relievers, it effectively made Rhoden/Solomon a virtual 5th starter as a tandem. Plus, just plain old injury good luck probably played a factor, as well. However, the complete game statistics are continuing to trend down as salaries rise. The 1980 Pirates' pitchers only completed 25 games, with Solomon pitching in with 2 complete games in his 12 starts. Weirdly, in a statistical quirk, apparently complete games don't count in the Games Finished stats, as Solomon only had one of those!

Again, salary figures are a bit hard to come by for the pitchers. Jim Bibby only has a listed salary for 1975 and 1984. John Candelaria's 1985 salary of $612,500 was equivalent to $469,000 in 1980, which further translates to $1,790,000 in 2024. Confused yet? So am I! Bert Blyleven has a listed 1980 salary (hooray!) of $310,000, the equivalent of $1,183,000 today. Don Robinson made $21,000 as a Pirates' rookie in 1978 and $520,000 in 1985 with the team, which is an approximately $1.5 million 2024 salary. Rick Rhoden was also a 1978/1985 salary guy. The point, however, is that the salaries are going up by 1980, but they are still not at the level they are in the modern game. 

A typical example of the pitching staff use and also of WHEN pitching changes were made is a sample game from 9/17/80, in which the Pirates lost to the Phillies at home, 5-4 in 11 innings. This 2 hour and 35-minute game featured 4 pitching changes between the two teams, none of which were made mid-inning. The stellar pitching matchup of Bert Blyleven and the Phillies starter, Steve Carlton, didn't seem so stellar as Carlton had given up 4 runs by the 6th, only to see Blyleven give up 3 in the seventh, thus blowing the 4-1 Pirates lead. That seventh was Blyleven's last of the game and Carlton went 8 full innings. Enrique Romo pitched the 8th, 9th and 10th innings for Pittsburgh before giving way to Kent Tekulve, who gave up a run in the top of the 11th and took the loss. Tug McGraw pitched the 9th and 10th for the Phillies and got the win, with Sparky Lyle closing out the Pirates in the bottom of the 11th for the save.

Romo and Tekulve were the most used relievers, with 123.2 innings in 74 appearances for the former and 93 innings in 78 appearances for the latter. Grant Jackson chipped in 61 appearances for 71 innings. Outside of those, the other 9 relievers the Pirates used in 1980 combined for only 67 appearances, of which 19 were starts. 

Moving on now to 1990, we are going to look at the Seattle Mariners, who's average 1990 game time was 2 hours and 52 minutes. I could have picked the Phillies, and I could have picked the Mets, who had the same game times, but the Mets, in particular, would not have been particularly informing, as they had probably the best starting pitching staff in baseball, as well as having the 4th largest payroll in the league and thus would likely have skewed the numbers slightly. The starters were Frank Viola, Doc Gooden, Ron Darling, David Cone and Sid Fernandez, with Bobby Ojeda picking up 12 starts, also! 

Seattle's staff was also pretty good, although a bit less proven at the time, but it also didn't have a true 5th starter, instead getting 35 starts from 7 different from pitchers, a variety of relievers and minor league call-ups. The youngsters on the staff, Randy Johnson (26) and two 25-year-olds, Brian Holman and Erik Hanson, were pretty solid, each with a record at .500 or better and none with an ERA over Holman's 4.03. Hanson was the ace, having arguably his best career season in his first full-time major-league season after having been up and down the prior two seasons. The old man of the 4-man rotation, Matt Young, had a good ERA, at 3.51, but pitched with no luck, finishing with an 8-18 record. Holman was more unfortunate, as what looked like it could be a promising career was cut short by arm injuries after the 1991 season. And we all know what became of HOFer Randy Johnson...he's become a major sports photographer, of course!

Those four started 127 of Seattle's 162 games that season. Bill Swift, who yo-yoed between starting and relieving for most of his career, and Russ Swan, who was more of a pure reliever, each started 8 games. Five other relievers/call ups had 5 or less starts each to cover the remaining 19 Mariner starts that season. This was still largely a 10-man staff, with 4 relievers and a closer, 4 regular starters and the contingent of 6 call-ups plus Swift becoming the de facto 5th starter.

As for the money, 1990 was Erik Hanson's 3rd season and he made a 2024 equivalent of $361,000. By two years later, with his career trajectory going up, his salary was a 2024 equivalent of a little over $3 million. Matt Young made an equivalent of $1.4 million in 1990, his last year before free agency. Being a free agent allowed him to sign with the Red Sox for the equivalent of $6.165 million in 1991. Randy Johnson made the same salary as Hanson had in 1990. By 1997, his peak Mariner's salary year, he was a $12.4 million pitcher in 2024 money! Lastly, Holman made a 2024 equivalent of $465,000 in 1990. As 1991 was his last year in the major leagues, his salaries never increased much, although he was signed for 1993 to a $950,000 contract, which would be $2.07 million in 2024. 

What we are seeing here is the first real inkling of the salary explosions of modern baseball, which I believe play a large role in how pitching staffs are used (and no longer abused) today, which trickles down to more pitching changes and longer game times. Look at the Holman salary paid for 1993, when he had missed the entire 1992 season with rotator cuff surgery. The money was increasing, and the owners were beginning to see the value in treating the players like investments. Holman, by the way, was still attempting a comeback in spring training in 1994 when he was cut by the Reds, effectively ending his MLB career.

Now we move on to this century and the 2000 MLB season. The game times of the thirty MLB teams fell across a range of 21 minutes, from Montreal's two hours, 51 minutes up to Cleveland's 3:12 average game time. The league average is at three hours, one and a half minutes. Eight teams gather in this range, making for plenty of choice. I settled on the St. Louis Cardinals, a good team who made it to the NLCS that year and had a slightly above median payroll. 

It is interesting to note that Tony LaRussa, the manager of the Cardinals, is sort of the guru of the modern pitching staff...5 starters, a closer that basically does nothing BUT close games and a whole passel of relief appearances. None of the 5 starters had less than 27 starts, starting 155 of the 162 games that season, with Britt Reames, a minor league call-up, getting the other 7 starts. But the entire staff pitched only 10 complete games. The 967 innings pitched were 67% of the team's total for the season, down from Cincinnati's 79% in 1950. None of the starters averaged even 7 innings per start, with one at 6 per game and two, Ankiel and Hentgen averaging less than 6 pitched per game.

Twenty-four pitchers made game appearances for the Cards, although in reality, it is really 23, as Scott Radinsky only faced 1 batter, who he walked, in his single appearance. Six of those 23 didn't even pitch enough innings to total a full 9 inning game. Despite my previous statement about the closer, who was Dave Veres (71 games, 61 Games Finished, 27 Saves), 91 games were finished by 15 other pitchers, including one game finished by starter Andy Benes that WASN'T a complete game (he had one of those, too). The five regular relievers all had at least 30 appearances, but an additional 5 had at least 20, as well. What all of this adds up to is a LOT of relief appearances made by a passel of pitchers. And, admittedly, much of this could be attributed to a somewhat unimpressive staff. 

Only two of the regular 5 starters, Daryl Kile and Rick Ankiel, had ERAs under 4.00. Britt Reames also clocked in with a 2.88 ERA, but the only made 7 starts. Three of the 5 regular relievers achieved this mark, as well, but 6 of the other 7 relievers that had at least 20 appearances had ERAs over 5.00. So this team was winning with offense, scoring 5.5 runs per game while giving up an average of 4.75 runs per game.

In terms of pay, the reality of modern baseball had arrived. Daryl Kile made a $7.4 million salary in 2000, down from his previous high the year before, when he made a million more than that pitching for the Rockies in 1999. Kile's 2024 dollars would have been $13.56 million. Hentgen's 2024 equivalency salary was $11 million (a $6 million salary in 2000). Ankiel was, essentially, a rookie, thus he only made a 2024 equivalent salary of $370,000. Garrett Stephenson had been in the league for 4 seasons but had only made 47 career appearances before 2000. His 2024 salary equivalent would have been $1.04 million, but he was rewarded for his 16-9 record in 2000 and his salary almost doubled for 2001. 

Three more final notes on the 2000 Cardinals staff. First, starter Andy Benes was joined on the staff by his younger brother, reliver Alan Benes. Second, 2000 was the final year of reliever Heathcliff Slocumb's career. And lastly, part of the reliever corps that season was Mike Timlin, who was the same age as Slocumb but only HALFWAY through his remarkable career that saw him pitch until the age of 42 for the 2008 Boston Red Sox and which netted him two late career titles in Beantown. And while no one reading this will care, Timlin also shares The Sports Thinker's exact birthdate, 3/10/1966!

Now, on to the last year of the survey, the 2010 Florida Marlins. The average game times per team in 2010 had two outliers, not surprisingly the Yankees and the Red Sox, whose average game times were 6 and 7 minutes per game higher than the next team below them on the list. All but four teams in the league fell into a game time window between 2:47 and 3:03. I left out the 4 outliers and took the Marlins from the middle of that pile, with game times at 2:55, the only team in the exact center of the group, time wise.

The 2010 Marlins featured sort of a prototypical modern staff, as most major league teams now have 13 regular pitchers, 5 of whom are typically starters. The Marlins had 4 main starters who each averaged 29 starts and two additional starters who chipped in an additional 30 starts between them. The relief corps had a closer and 7 other relievers who had at least 22 appearances on the season. In addition to those regular 13 pitchers, 18 others made appearances that year, from Andrew Miller and his 7 starts and 32.2 ineffective innings (8.54 ERA) down to James Houser and his 1.1 innings in one appearance. 

The starters, including the core 4 plus the 2-man 5th starter combo of Nate Robertson and Alex Sanabria made 146 of the team's 162 starts (90%), but only pitched 61% of the total innings pitched and there were only 5 complete games pitched by the entirety of the staff, all by the main 4 starters.

Of the 8 relievers, those outside of the core 5, which was the closer, Juan Carlos Oviedo and the 4 main relievers who had 48 or more appearances, the performance was pretty terrible. The WORST ERA in the group of 5 was the 3.99 posted by Burke Badenhop, while the best among the other 3 was Jorge Sosa's 4.66. Only two of all of the remaining pitchers beyond those regular 8 had decent (if abbreviated) years. Will Ohman was traded to the Marlins from Baltimore and pitched to a 3.00 ERA in Miami in what was the second-best year of his career and Renyel Pinto had a 2.70 ERA in what was his last year in the majors. After that, Pinto played 2 seasons in Japan and then kicked around the Mexican and Caribbean leagues for 4 more seasons. Considering how bad the Marlins' spare relivers were that year, I feel like these two should have gotten more of a look. Especially Pinto, who was a funny one, as his career stats show he was usually a slightly better pitcher the more difficult the competition was. In other words, he would normally be more effective in the National League than he would be in the Mexican League. 

As for the staff salaries, as was typical of the Marlins of that era, it was a young and relatively low paid staff. Nate Robertson was the senior member of the staff, at 32 and in his last year in the majors. His $10 million salary (equivalent to $14.56 million in 2024 dollars) came with him in a preseason trade from Detroit, who was paying all but $400,000 of the total. He was released by the Marlins in late July 2010 and kicked around the periphery of the majors for another 4 years, never again making and MLB roster. 

Ricky Nolasco and Josh Johnson were in their 5th and 6th seasons, respectively, and were paid like mid-level starters, with equivalent 2024 salaries both in the $5.5 million range. Anibal Sanchez was also in his 5th season, but only his first full season with the club, so he was paid more like a rookie, with a 2024 equivalency salary of $1.8 million. Chris Volstad was also in his first season as a starter, but since it was only his 3rd season in the organization, his pay was only equivalent to $612,000 2024 dollars. Alex Sanabia, who took up the 5th starter mantle after Robertson was released, had no salary data I could find, but as he was a 21-year-old rookie, his pay was likely not much. His career arc is much like Renyel Pinto's, much more of it spent in other professional leagues worldwide with only parts of 3 major league seasons kicked in. Most recently, he went 4-6 for the 2024 Saraperos de Saltillo of the Mexican League. 

Overall, the 2010 Marlins got pretty good value for the money from their staff. They used 31 pitchers, tops in the major leagues that year, but their overall staff pay was only 21st in the league. Despite the low average salary price per pitcher, the pitching WAR ranked 11th in MLB for that season. Which is exactly the necessary type of value performance that a team who traditionally doesn't draw a lot of fans needs to be competitive with the big spenders. 

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In the "old-time" MLB, player movement was very limited and almost entirely controlled by ownership. Players were their own agents and were often negotiating contracts with their bosses on a year-to-year basis. Honestly, it is somewhat of a miracle that no other team's players ever became as severely compromised as those of the 1919 White Sox by the corrupting influence of illegal gambling money. Even during that era of poor working conditions for players, Sox owner Charles Comiskey was known as being a particularly parsimonious payer of salaries, which is the largest likely contributing factor to the player's indiscretions. In modern terms, however, it is very easy to understand why they threw that series. Plus, in those early days of the World Series, winning that title was important, but it is a much bigger deal in the modern era. The 1919 Series was, after all, only the 14th ever played, the series having been established in 1906.

More of a miracle was that MLB managed to operate in essentially the same financial manner for another 52 years after the Black Sox scandal without ever seeming to understand the perilous potential for another scandal of that type in any given year. 

What this all boils down to is that major league owners of earlier eras looked at their players as COMMODITIES and not as investments, as they do today. Commodities imply something that you pay for and then use and exhaust, like wheat or oil. An investment implies future value for something that is kept, at least for an indefinite period of time. Some of that attitude changed with expansion, but more so with the advent of the union and its following free agency, which drastically increased the salaries paid to players. Pitchers, in particular, knew how they were viewed in the commodities era and their game mentality was very different than it is today. 

It wasn't just the salary increase after unionization and free agency that changed the owner's viewpoint on players and particularly pitchers, it was the RELATIVE increase of salaries for equivalent players over the years. That journeyman starter, like Ken Raffensberger in the 50s, who made the 2024 equivalent of $110,000 per season, would be paid $4-5 million a year in today's actuality for the same talent and stats. And when you are paying millions for anything, even when you (or the ownership group) are worth billions, there has to be a modicum of caretaking involved with that investment. You can't just use up and jettison items, be they inanimate or very animate, at that kind of expense and expect to survive financially. So, players and, in particular, pitchers, are what the old timers would call "coddled" today.

The closest I have seen in the modern MLB of that old style of pitching was Greg Maddux. He didn't throw "gas" and pitched to the bat, meaning he wanted to induce hitters to hit the ball, as long as he could have some control over WHERE they hit the ball. One of Maddux's most famous accomplishments was a 1997 complete game against the Cubs in which he threw only 78 pitches. However, just a few starts before that, he had an 84-pitch complete game shutout and had another earlier in the season completed with just 90 pitches. He also had 8 other games that season in which he threw 7 plus innings with only 91 pitches or fewer in those games.

Maddux did accumulate enough strikeouts over his career to be at number 10 on the career list, but he also pitched 23 years and 5000 plus innings. His career total was only 4 more than contemporary pitcher Max Scherzer, but Scherzer has only pitched, to date, 2834 innings. Also, currently pitching and high on the list are Justin Verlander and Clayton Kershaw. Verlander has pitched 1600+ fewer innings and Kershaw has pitched just under 2300 fewer innings than Maddux. And both are within 427 career Ks of Maddux's total.

On the other side of minimizing pitches, Maddux lands all the way down at number 118 on the career Bases on Balls list, his 999 total being an average of just 43 thrown per season. Basically, Maddux pitched like a guy from much earlier in the 20th century. He may have had career longevity in mind, but I think in his case it was more a style that just suited his prodigious talents and his strategic intelligence for the game. But, for whatever reasons, this is how many pitchers managed their games and workloads earlier in the century. I think there was definitely some career preservation going on, with a dose of expectations from management and peers as to what was expected of a major league pitcher at that time. 

And, traditionalist griping aside, what is expected from today's starters is 6 innings a start with maximum effort, especially emphasizing keeping men off base via the strike out. And since the batters play right into that with the "home run or nothing" mindset, we will keep having that style of pitching being the pervasive type. And that type of pitching tends to slow the game down with deep pitch counts leading to strikeouts and/or walks and 2-minute home run trots following the inevitable 5 or 6 homers per game.

Interestingly, the pitcher often lauded during the semi-modern era as a "throwback" is Nolan Ryan, who, outside of innings pitched, actually tended to pitch far more like the pitchers of today. His game was all about velocity and strikeouts. In 25 seasons, he was far and away the career strikeout leader, with his total of 5714 being almost 900 more K's in his career than runner up, Randy Johnson. Johnson's strikeouts per inning was higher, however, at 1.17 K per inning pitched versus Ryan's 1.06 ratio. 

In addition, Nolan Ryan is the career leader in walks, as well. And again, his total of 2795 is more than 900 more than Steve Carlton's runner up total of 1833, which is only two thirds of Ryan's number. Also, Nolan Ryan is fifth all time in innings pitched, 5386, with Phil Niekro being his only career contemporary with more. 

So, while Ryan pitched in the way of today's pitchers, eschewing contact in favor of high velocity and strikeouts, he also pitched a ton of innings and threw a lot of pitches in those innings, which was the throwback portion that people see in his repertoire. Essentially, Ryan was a freak of nature, with the right combo of mechanics, physical fitness and just plain old genetics to endure what would be, to the mortal pitcher, untold damage to his arm. In addition to the fact that he threw largely fastballs, which are less taxing on a pitcher's arm. Ryan pitched a full 25 season career in which only two seasons, his first and last, had him starting less than 25 games. And in one last amazing stat, in his record setting 383 strike out season of 1973, 39% of all of the total outs he recorded that year were via the "K"!