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Frostcrest t1_j0ytf5z wrote

Reply to comment by Rameez_Raja in Rafael Nadal hits 900 consecutive weeks (almost 18 years) in tennis top 10 by SoggyConclusion4674

Baseball has also seen a Renaissance in pitchers like Verlander and Scherzer still dominating well past their prime

For all the talk of blown out arms, we're seeing a lot more longevity when you take into account that throwing 100+ mph isn't a big deal anymore

Just a decade ago 95 was "fast"

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bandofgypsies t1_j0yupme wrote

For me, Justin Verlander is the current example of how far sports science has come. To have pitched the way he pitched for 15 plus years, fast and hard, and often doing it very quickly (and that he doesn't spend a lot of time between pitches compared to the rest of League), and to have then had Tommy John surgery at 37/38 years old, miss nearly two years of baseball, only to immediately come back from that and win a cy Young by dominating the league and throwing the third highest average fastball velocity of its entire career? Absolutely unbelievable.

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OHTHNAP t1_j0zbjjf wrote

Just don't say the word that rhymes with "hair noids".

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ICanAnswerThatFriend t1_j0yv0w5 wrote

Yeah Dennis Quaid throwing a 96mph fastball on the side of a highway back in 2002 got him signed to the big leagues.

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jai_kasavin t1_j13xgm4 wrote

Which movie is this? Also which is the best baseball movie in your opinion?

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ICanAnswerThatFriend t1_j13xv9t wrote

My joke refers to The Rookie

Best baseball Movie? : Well my friend. Nothing beats the Great Bambino. (The Sandlot)

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wanderlustcub t1_j0z7t04 wrote

Could you also say that the number of pitches for a pitcher has gone down, allowing them to pitch longer overall? (I’m not sure if pitchers are pitching more or less compared to decades ago so I’m unsure.)

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AlsoIHaveAGroupon t1_j0zi5di wrote

They definitely pitch less. The belief is that when a pitcher begins to tire, they stop using proper mechanics to compensate, so the biggest injury risk is pitching while tired. They now count the number of pitches thrown and pull a starter quickly when they're near a predetermined maximum. They used to view off-days as chances to skip the worst pitcher in the rotation and start the best pitcher sooner, but now it's generally an opportunity to give every starter in the rotation an extra day of rest. And they now put pitchers on the disabled list at the slightest indication of a problem. But are Verlander and Scherzer's dominance at an older age a result of that?

It's hard to say.

There have always been occasional pitchers who are still effective at an old age. Just from my lifetime, Perry, Kaat, Sutton, Niekro, Ryan, Clemens, Wells, Johnson, Moyer, Colon come to mind. Scherzer and Verlander are just two guys and not a representative sample of anything and could just be random chance, and they're not even that old yet. 37 and 39, while Perry and Clemens won Cy Young awards in their 40s, Ryan lead the league in strikeouts at 43, Colon was an All-Star at 43, and Niekro was an All-Star at 45. And for all the talk of Scherzer still pitching well at 37 and Verlander winning the Cy at 39, it's still a young man's game. The top 7 finishers in the NL Cy Young vote were all in their 20s, and 2nd through 8th place in the AL were also in their 20s. The young are still dominating, and being a good, old pitcher still makes you an outlier.

And even if we could say for sure that pitchers are aging better, there are lots of potential explanations: pitch counts, extra rest, improved medicine, something nefarious like PEDs, or I once read a study when Clemens and Wells were still going in their 40s suggesting that fat pitchers age the best and it successfully predicted Bartolo Colon's longevity (and while neither is fat, Verlander definitely looks heavier than when he was young).

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frankyseven t1_j0zcwim wrote

Less, like a lot less. Probably 25% less for a starting pitcher. It's rare for a pitcher to pitch into the seventh inning now.

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squidmanwillie t1_j0zfnba wrote

Nowadays if you don’t rip your arm out of the socket at least once a season they bench you

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BarristanSelfie t1_j103kdl wrote

The average pitch, of any type, is 5 mph faster than it was 20 years ago.

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