The days of starting pitchers regularly pitching late into games are over. Only five pitchers (Logan Webb, Zac Gallen, Gerrit Cole, Miles Mikolas, and Chris Bassitt) threw at least 200 innings in 2023. This has been a declining trend over the past few decades as teams focus more on matchups and high-leverage relievers out of the bullpen.
Randy Johnson spent 22 years in the majors and pitched over 200 innings in 14, including in his age-41 and age-42 seasons in New York. He also surpassed 250 innings three times in his career.
Johnson sounded off on pitch counts and the starting pitching mindset in today’s game while appearing on Audacy’s “The Bret Boone Podcast” this week.
“It’s not where the game is today but as a pitcher that played 26 years, 22 in the majors, four in the minor leagues, it’s all I knew, it’s all I wanted to do was go as deep in the game as I could. It wasn’t unheard of to throw 130, 140 pitches,” Johnson said. “I might have 15 strikeouts in a game and I might have a high pitch count, but I always thought that’s the starting pitcher’s job to go as long and as far as he can on that day, and then five days later do it again.
“The fact that organizations today don’t ask their starting pitcher to do the same things that my generation and generations before me were doing, they tend to ask the bullpen to pick up the slack, if you will, I just don’t understand that.”
Johnson is one of the best pitchers of all time and won four straight NL Cy Young Awards from 1999 to 2002 in Arizona, throwing a total of 1,030 innings in those four seasons. That’s unheard of nowadays, and Johnson believes pitchers in today’s game are being held back from their true potential.
“The biggest problem I have with it is that I don’t think that pitchers today will ever realize how good they could’ve been if they were getting those extra two or three innings per start. Because now you’re not put out there,” he said. “We played for Lou Pinella, and after a while, when I was pitching really good up there and he became the manager we kind of talked and he said ‘If you just be honest with me and you tell me when you want to come out then I’m never going to ask you if you want to come out. Just be honest.’
“That was a lot of respect he had for me but it became because I was proving that I was capable of doing that there for that team at the time and I think that pitching all those extra pitches in a game, going through some tight situations and getting out of them – not all the time, but you learn when you did the mistakes you did so you don’t repeat those. But in today’s game, I don’t think pitchers mentally or physically will grow as much as they could if they’re taken out of a situation and a bullpen pitcher is being brought in to try to bail them out.”
There are still a few pitchers with that mindset as Johnson mentioned veterans like Justin Verlander, Max Scherzer, and Clayton Kershaw as a few pitchers who were rookies during the Big Unit’s final years in the league.
“They saw what was happening and they wanted to do that and they earned the right to do that based on the pitcher that they were. But as the game has gone on, they’ve gotten older, that’s still their mindset and it was still my mindset at age 46 the year I retired. I still wanted to go out and pitch seven or eight innings, but physically I may not be able to do that, but that didn’t mean that wasn’t my mindset,” Johnson said. “But the pitchers of this generation – it may even start in the minor leagues. They’re not trained to go six, seven innings so they’re not as durable and their mindset is just to pitch five or six innings and then you’ve done your job and then the bullpen comes in.”
Johnson believes it’s an issue across the organization with how teams are handling starting pitchers in today’s day and age.
“But it all starts in the minor leagues and it’s not their fault, it’s just the organization’s thought process, all 30 teams think that same way, but the biggest problem I have was you get a pitcher and he’s borderline superstar over the next 10 years because he has the ability and the mindset to go out there and succeed by pitching two more innings and throwing 10 more pitches,” he continued. “You have to have the mindset to really dig down deep and get out of that inning. It’s a physical thing, it’s a mental thing. You grow that way.”
Johnson had his fair share of struggles early on in his career but he was ultimately better because of them.
“I grew that way in Seattle and the teams that I played for after Seattle – and even while I was in Seattle – paid the dividends because I had learned how to do that through failing and through succeeding. But I was given the opportunity – like a lot of other pitchers,” he said. “If you’re capable of going out there and continuing to do something they’re going to let you do it.
“In today’s game, the leash is a little shorter and you don’t get that opportunity. I just think because you’re not allowing a pitcher to go out there and extend himself, he’s not doing anything that pitchers haven’t done for 100 years before him. I just think you’re handcuffing him and he’ll never know how many innings he could’ve thrown in a year or how good he could’ve been. I truly feel that, and that’s based on experience.”
Johnson credits Pinella with giving him the confidence and opportunity to grow himself and his game.
“If I had never gotten that opportunity to pitch for Lou and go out there and Lou’s saying ‘You right now are better than anybody I got out in the bullpen so just stay out there and get it done.’ That’s a mindset,” he said. “When a manager tells you that, I would run through a brick wall for Lou because he gave me that opportunity to grow as a pitcher. There was no other manager that I played for that I wanted to win for more because he was the first manager that really allowed me to grow as a pitcher.”
With the increase in training and technology in today’s game, it does make a bit of sense for teams to use all the weapons in their arsenal. However, it’s fair to wonder just how good some of these pitchers could be if they were given a longer leash.