Boston Red Sox pitcher Rick Porcello throws to the Minnesota Twins in the first inning of a baseball game Monday, June 17, 2019 in Minneapolis. (AP Photo/Andy Clayton- King)

Red Sox fans were ecstatic after their team swept Baltimore last weekend, outscoring the hapless Orioles 28-10, while doing so. Prior to whipping up on the team with the worst record in baseball, they had taken the last two of three from the Texas Rangers, so the sweep of the O’s gave the Sox their first five-game winning streak of the season.

For some reason, which my friends who are Red Sox fans did not understand, I did not see this as a sign that the World Champions were back on the path to a repeat of their World Series victory. Many Red Sox fans, who, by the way, had given up on the Sox after they lost three of four to the first place Tampa Bay Rays the previous week, were already beginning to wonder who the third-place Red Sox would face in the World Series.

The Red Sox left Baltimore to head for Minnesota to play the Twins, who I talked about here last week. Dave Irwin, one of those Red Sox fans, who I happen to play golf with at Dutch Elm, was not as sure as the rest about the Red Sox future, and he jokingly remarked that the Red Sox were going to stay in Baltimore rather than face the Twins. A lot of fans thought the Sox were in for a rude awakening when they got to Minneapolis. 

Carl Johnson

The first game, Monday night, pitted Rick Porcello against the Twins ace, 25-year-old Jose Berrios, who was 8-2 with a 2.86 ERA. After the Sox jumped on Berrios for three quick singles and a run in the first inning, he and Porcello pitched one of the best games of the year.

After giving up the run in the first inning, Berrios got the next 19 batters in a row before giving up a single with two out in the seventh and another in the eighth, leaving behind 1-0. Porcello threw seven scoreless innings, giving up just four hits while striking out eight.

Colten Brewer and Ryan Brasier pitched scoreless eighth and ninth innings and Xander Bogaerts doubled in a run in the ninth to give the Sox the win, 2-0. The Red Sox had won six in a row.

To the baseball purists, this was a throwback game. Rarely do two pitchers today get past the sixth inning in a game never mind duel for seven and a half innings, giving up just one run between them.

It was not always this way. I have been closely following baseball, not only in the ballpark, but ever since they started televising games and, before that, listening to them on radio. Believe it or not, pitchers used to routinely pitch complete games. Almost exactly 45 years before this game, on June 14, 1974, the great Nolan Ryan of the California Angels and Boston’s Luis Tiant dueled each other for 13 innings until Ryan left after 13 and El Tiante continued through the 14^th into the 15^th. Ryan gave up three runs on eight hits, striking out 19 in his 13 innings and Tiant three runs on nine hits in the first 13.

Unfortunately for Tiant, in the 15^th, after getting the infamous Bobby Valentine to fly out to start the inning, he gave up a single to Mickey Rivers and a double to Denny Doyle, who would join the Sox the following year, and all Luis had to show for 14 1/3 innings was a 4-3 loss.

Of course, that was an exceptional game, but a look at pitching records over the years since this game makes you wonder what happened. For example, in 1974, eight pitchers pitched 20 or more compete games, with Fergie Jenkins leading all with 29. Since 1974, the numbers of complete games have declined steadily. In 1989, just 15 years later, Brett Saberhagen led all of baseball with 12 complete games. In 1999, Randy Johnson led with 12 and, in 2009, Roy Halladay came in with a high of nine.

Last year, eight pitchers tied for the highest number of complete games with just two apiece. So far this year, only two pitchers, the White Sox’ Luis Giolito and the Phillies’ Zach Effin, have thrown two complete games and a total of 20 more have one complete game each, a total of just 24 complete games in all of baseball and we are almost half way through the season.

Why, when the Major League baseball teams are providing more assistance to players in maintaining their fitness levels and most teams have almost as many doctors, physical therapists, conditioning coaches, trainers and other personnel devoted to keeping their players healthy as they do, are we seeing such a decline in the length of time pitchers can typically last in an outing?

Why, with all these services and programs available to them do we find such an increased incidence of injuries among pitchers and a reduction in their ability to perform as far into a game as they did before?

There are dietitians available to them to help improve their eating habits. Some pitchers use a service called Inside Tracker, a nutrition training service to monitor their food intake. Trevor May, a pitcher with the Twins, and others, use a company named Beddit, to monitor their sleep and give them a “nightly sleep score” to improve their sleeping.

The weightlifting programs include exercises with such exotic names as “the single legged inverted Romanian, eccentric Nordic hamstring curls, and the rear foot elevated split squat” to improve their conditioning.

All these services, staff and programs are designed to make them perform better, avoid injury and this increase their value to their teams and yet they seem to pitch less and innings every year. In 2018, Max Scherzer led all of baseball with 220 innings pitched. The leader in 2008, C. C. Sabathia, threw 253 innings; in 1998 Curt Schilling, with 268; and, in 1988 Dave Stewart led with 275.

An article on Feb. 10 in the Strength and Conditioning Coaches Society web site traced the Houston Astros conditioning system from the arrival of Nolan Ryan as an Astro in 1980. Ryan came with his own plan for conditioning that apparently worked for him.

According to the article, when Ryan arrived, the team’s conditioning equipment consisted of one exercise bike, a couple of medicine balls and some 3-5-pound dumbbells. Partly because of Ryan’s influence, in the 1980s, the Astros went to free weights and added a hill to exercise in their clubhouse and a swimming pool. The Astros and the other teams in baseball have continually expanded the exercise and conditioning equipment and staff since then.

Pitcher’s conditioning used to center on throwing for their arms and running and calisthenics for their legs and the rest of the package. The teams play the same number of games, 162, in 2019 as they did in 1974 each team has more, sometimes twice as many pitchers as they did then, starting pitchers throw, on average, every five days, and there are still 25 players on each team’s roster and their innings and depth they go into games continues to decrease.

Timewise, the increase in injures and reduction in the length of a pitcher’s ability to pitch appears to have occurred in direct proportion to the increases in services and equipment available to them. It seems as if we are developing generations of pitchers who are healthier and stronger than their predecessors but lack the stamina and are more prone to injury than previous generations. It would be hard not to consider that the increased emphasis on strength and conditioning is at least a part of the problems.

Could it be that this is another example of that old saying “the operation was a success, but the patient died”?

Carl Johnson is a noted baseball lecturer and author. His books include the popular series “THE BASEBALL BUFF’S BATHROOM BOOKS” and “THE BEST TEAM EVER?” which chronicles the Red Sox 2018 World Series win.