LIFE BEGINS AT !!!!!!!
# 1 > Tim Stoddard ov ercame some pretty big odds by pitching professionally until he was 36 years old. "I was like a freak back then," recalls Stoddard, a 13-year veteran of major league bullpens who is now a pitching coach at Northwestern University. Stoddard, who was 6-foot-7 and 250 pounds in his playing days, marvels at the number of pitchers in the game today who are throwing way past the age at which he retired. He says there's no doubt that today's big league pitchers take much better care of themselves than his contemporaries and are thus able to extend careers into their 40s.
# 2 > Stoddard points to last season's playoffs, which featured five oldies but goodies who are still thriving:Detroit's Kenny Rogers ( now 42 years old ), the New York Yankkee's Rany Johnson ( 43 and now with Arizona ), the New York Mets Tom Glavine ( 40 ) and Reberto Hernandez ( 41 ) and San Diego's David Wells ( 42 ).
Of course, the list of golden arms doesn't end there. Three weeks shy of his 44th birthday, Jamie Moyer agreed to a two-year contract extension with the Phillies last October. "Is there an [ age ] where you're supposed to stop?" Moyer asked Philadelphia reporters in late October. "I don't think so." Greg Maffux, still going strong at age 40, feels the same way. And so do a trio of 40-year old Boston hurlers__starters Curt Schilling and Tim Wakefield and reliever Mike Timlin. Looking ahead to this season, Atlanta's John Smoltz, San Francisco's Tim Worrell and Cincinnati's Rheal Cormier will all celebrate their 40th birthdays.
# 3 > Major league pitchers may not be winning 20 games a year as much as they used to, but they are undoubtedly staying on the mound much longer. Stoddard would have liked to pitch until he was 40, but a knee injury ultimately led to an arm injury, and his career ended somewhat prematurely. "In all aspects, things are better for pitchers in today's game," says Stoddard, who also played on North Carolina State's 1974 NCAA championship basketball team. "Pitchers are taught better, they have better mechanics, they're in better shape and they have better use of videos. The biggest thing is probably medicine [ has advanced ]. Back when I was playing, if you gad a rotator-cuff injury, you were done. If you had an elbow [ injury ], you were done." Stoddard was with the Orioles organization in 1977, and he still remembers the landmark 10-year, $2.3 million free-agent contract Baltimore pitcher Wayne Garland signed with Cleveland before that season. A year later, Garland went down with a bad rotator cuff and never made it all the way back. "That wouldn't happen today," Stoddard says. "Now, guys have surgery and come right back. They have their elbow tightened up and come back throwing even harder."
# 4 > There's little doubt that veteran pitches like Johnson, Roger Clemens and Schilling can still bring it, but power doesn't necessarily guarantee perseverance. "I think if you look at each and every guy that is ... 40 or older, you'll find that they are so solid, both fundamentally and mechanically," says new San Diego Manager Bud Black. "They've all been able to extend their careers so long because they haven't taxed their arms. That's just knowing how to pitch, and what pitches to throw." Maddux has been a master at painting the corners for years, and his ability to change speeds still baffles hitters who were wearing diapers back in 1986, when the crafty right-hander broke in with the Cubs. The same can be said for Rogers, who went 17-8 for the upstart Detroit Tigers last year and added three more wins in the postseason.
# 5 > "I think the success is just from the past experience," Rogers says. "I try to learn from them as much as possible and make me better in whatever ways I can." There are plenty of quality young pitchers in baseball, including Justin Verlander, Rogers hard-throwing teammate and last seasons's American League Rookie of the Year. But for as good as the 23-year-old Verlander is, he had a long way to go before catching up to legendary talents like Rogers, Johnson and Maddux. "I think you'll be seening more and more pitchers staying in the game into their 40s," Black says. "The resources for longevity are there__the medical staff, better nutrition and just a lot more knowledge to keep them pitching. But really, the key thing might be that the guys that are staying around so long are just really talented. I don't think you can ever overlook how important that is."
DEATH OF THE 20-GAME WINNER ? !!!!!!!!!!
# 1 > True winning 20 games in a season has always been the ultimate badge of honor for a major league pitcher. But a look through baseball history shows plenty of players have sewn the patch on their uniform. Cy Young won 20 or more games a record 16 times. Christy Mathewson and Warren Spahn each reached 20 wins on 13 occasions. Creeping closer to the modern era, who can forget about the 1971 Baltimore Orioles? Dave McNally sparked their run to the World Seeries with 21 wins, while rotation mates Jim Palmer, Mike Cuellar and Pat Dobson each won 20.
# 2 > All in all, there has been at least one 20-game winner per season in baseball's modern era, not including 1981, 1994 and 95, which were shortened by work stoppages. The trend appeared to strengthen itself in 2005, when Florida's Dontrelle Willis ( 22 wins ), St. Louis Chris Carpenter ( 21 ) and Houston's Roy Oswalt ( 20 ) all reached the coveted plateau in the National League while the Angel's Bartolo Colon won 21 games in the American League. But in 2006, baseball's long running streak of producing 20-game winners finally came to an end. Minnesota's John Santana and New York's Chien-Ming Wang came close in the A.L., winning 19 apiece.
# 3 > Compared with their N.L. counterparts. Santana and Wang were classic overachievers. It took only 16 wins to claim the N.L. victory title, a decidedly underwhelming feat accomplished by Arizona's Brandon Webb, who won the Cy Young Award, along with Cincinnati's Aaron Harang, Chicago's Carlos Zambrano, Atlanta's John Smoltz and Los Angels Brad Penny and Derek Lowe. "Kind of hard to explain," Says Chicago White Sox starter John Garland, who finished just behind Santana and Wang with 18 wins. "I think you have to have a lot of luck to win 20 games. You have to stay healthy, you have to be able to go deep into games and you've got to be lucky enough to get enough run support night-in and night-out."
# 4 > Garland touches on several key points when asked about the absence of a 20-game winner, and health is certainly near the top of the list. A partially torn rotator cuff limited Colon to just 10 starts last year, and the burly right-hander managed just one win. The Yankees Randy Johnson managed 17 wins, but a sore back limited his effectiveness and left the Big Unit with the highest ERA ( 5.00 )of his Hall-of-Fame career. In the N.L., typically big winners like Oswalt ( back ), Pedro Martinez ( calf, hip ) and Mark Prior ( shoulder ) were slowed by injury. Another proven ace, Roger Clemens, pitched only half the season after coming out of retirement and signing with the Astros.
# 5 > "who knows, it could just be a fluke," Mets pitching Coach Rick Peterson says when asked about the absence of even one 20-game winner in 2006. "But there were an enormous number of premier pitchers on the D.L., or they were missing starts. I think that's the first place you'd have to look." Plenty of big-time winners stayed out of the trainer's room and made their expected 30-plus starts last season. Still, none was able to reach 20 wins. To offer another explanation, maybe you have to look at how the game has changed in relation to the bullpen.
# 6 > Back in 1971, Cuellar, Dobson and Palmer all threw 280-plus innings and combined for a mind-boggling 59 complete games. McNally, the slacker of the bunch, managed "only" 224 innings while throwing 11 complete games. It's worth noting that Eddie Watt, Baltimore's closer in 71 finished the season with 11 saves. In today's game, 11 saves is just about an average month's work for most of the top closers. And forget about 280 innings for a starter, or double-digit totals in complete games for that matter.
# 7 > Bud Black, the new manager of the San Diego Padres, has seen the transformation first-hand. After spending 15 seasons in the major leagues as a pitcher, Black served as the Angels pitching coach for seven years before taking over the Padres. "The whole philiosophy of how the bullpen is used has changed," Black says. "Starting pitchers are out of the game a lot earlier now, and they're not throwing the number of pitchers they used to in a game. When starters are not going as deep into games as they used to, I think it's only natural the win total is going to decline. And it's just not in major league baseball. In college and the minor leagues, the same thing is happening." Closers have certainly become high-paid fixtures on just about every big-league club's staff. But there is also a long list of setup relievers earning a very nice living in the game these days, and most teams have right-and left-handed specialists.
# 8 > "Guys in the bullpen are making a lot of money now," says Don Cooper, the White Sox's pitching coach. "And as I've been saying, the skill of a starting pitcher in this era is to keep his team in the game and then turn it over to the bullpen. You're seeing a lot of starters leaving in the sixth inning, maybe the seventh, when the game is tied. That's something you never used to see." Naturally, money can also be blamed for the lack of a 20-game winner last season, workloads continue to be monitored more and more closely. That means fewer starters are staying on the mound past 100 pitches. As a result, fewer starting pitchers are racking up 20 wins.
# 9 > "You just don't want to tax a guy too much now," Cooper says. "The No. 1 goal nowadays is winning the game. But you want to keep your horses ready for their next start, and the start after that, and so on. So it's the end of the sixth inning, and your starter has thrown 96 pitches. Well, it's probably time to get him out of there. When you're paying a guy $10 million to pitch, the last thing you want is to have them go on the shelf." Major League Baseball has come down hard on steroid use, and that seemed to turn the game back in favor of the pitchers two seasons ago.The Boston Red Sox (.281 ) were the only team in baseball to bat .280 as a team that year, but overall offense picked up again in 2006. In 05, there were a total of 5,017 home runs hit in the major leagues. Last season, the number jumped to 5,386. "It's an offense game now, and it has been an offensive game for a long time," Cooper says.
# 10 > "Years ago, teams were using four-man starting rotations. That's gone to five-man rotations for a long time, and there's more and more talk about increasing that to six. Somewhere along tne line, the number of guys you see winning 20 games is going to decline." Add it all up__the injury factor, the increased importance of having a strong bullpen and offensive firepower__and it looks like 20-game winners might be going the way of 100 stolen bases in a season. It has been 20 years since Vince Coleman was the last to achieve that feat. "I think every starting pitcher goes into a season wanting to win 20 games," Garland says. "But going out there and taking the ball every fifth day and giving your team a chance to win, it doesn't matter which pitcher gets it. That's the most important thing.
