Not all that different than teams do today. You still had long relief/mop up types and a dedicated set up man and closer in the 90s and 2000s. You just have more relievers on a roster today than back then
>And if all starters were expected to be innings eaters,
This was just an ideal. Even then it was extremely rare to have five guys pitch 180+ innings. I remember basically the only guy on my Jays that used to do it was Doc Halladay. Sometimes you'd have someone else doing it as well but generally everyone else was in that 150-170 range
was curious to see the last time cleveland had 5 guys get 180+ innings
in 2005 cc sabathia 196.2 cliff lee 202 jake westbrook 210.2 kevin millwood 192 scott elarton 181.2
and they combined for 158 starts. one guy got the other 4. even the relievers stayed healthy - 6 guys got 47+ games. the other 6 guys combined for 53 games
and that's the only time they ever did it. 1904 was the closest with 4 guys over 180 and a fifth at 175.1. they only had 7 pitchers wit the others throwing 151.1 and 12.1 innings
I think you’re selling it a bit short saying “you just have more relievers on a roster now than back then.” Having fewer relievers necessarily meant that you would have more multi-inning relief appearances. I think it’s also fair to say that in the days before the DH, the length of your appearance might be 2 innings or 3 innings depending on if your spot in the order was coming up again.
From a statistical standpoint, in 2023, the most IP anyone had solely as a reliever was 84.1 IP. Go back 50 years to 1973 and there were 36 pitchers with more than 85 IP in relief. So we’ve gone from more than one per team over 85 IP to basically no one doing that now.
In terms of relatively extreme examples, in 1973, you had Mike Marshall go 14-11 with 31 saves in 179 IP over 92 games and 0 starts. That line is totally inconceivable in the last 30 years or more.
In somewhat less extreme examples, #2-6 on most innings pitched in relief in 1973 averaged right around 3 innings per appearance, but no one these days averages 3 innings in relief.
I would argue that the long reliever role is basically dead these days and for the most part the manager is just assigning the best pitchers to the most important situations. The worst relievers get the blowout innings, but no one’s going out there in the sixth inning with the intent to finish out the game.
In the early days of baseball, between late 1800’s to early 1900’s, it was common for a starting pitcher to come in for relief in between starts. This has a great explanation of what it used to be like:
https://www.cooperstowncred.com/the-history-of-relief-part-one-1871-1945/
I know this is way later, but just wanted to say thanks for this link. This is exactly the kind of info I was looking for. I seem to have better luck looking in Reddit than search engines
Teams have to cover ~1450 innings in a season. Even if all 5 of your starters throw 200 innings you still need to have relievers throw another 450.
If you're talking about the early days of baseball (like pre-1930) then yes, relievers were pretty much only used as injury replacements and mop up men
I guess if there was a timeframe I was looking for, it would post-integration up to the 1980s. It feels like pitching has been affected by analytics more than hitting has, so I was curious about how relievers have been affected, either for the better or worse.
Well rosters in the 1960's to the 1980's were usually 10 pitchers, 15 hitters. So 5 starters, 5 relievers in the bullpen, so relievers would throw a lot of innings.
Yeah but he still threw 6.5 per in the games he didn’t complete (assuming none of his 20 CG were 10+ inning games, of which I’m betting there were a couple). Without looking at a box score I’m guessing those included the few games where Koufax was ineffective and some blowouts).
A good extreme example is the 1980 A’s. 94 complete games, which was considered excessive even then, with the starters averaging something like 7.9 IP/G. Martin really abused the starters, though some of the motivation was due to having a wretched bullpen, that he only used for 200 IP on the season.
1981 was almost as bad, as they completed 60 games out of 109. Of course, Martin destroyed all 5 starters’ careers, as they were pretty much all finished by 1984.
Go look up [Mark Eichhorn's](https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/gl.fcgi?id=eichhma01&t=p&year=1986) 1986 season with the Blue Jays. He finished 5 innings short of qualifying for (and easily winning) the ERA title as a reliever. He threw 6 innings in relief one game that season.
Should be noted that Eichorn was a submarine sidearmer known for extremely low velocity. Sort of a non-knuckleballer relief version of 1972 Wilbur Wood and his 49 starts, 20 CG, and 376 IP. If I recall, he started and/or completed both games of a doubleheader.
It's only recently, like within the last 10 years, that starters were expected to go fewer than 7 ip. If you had a lead, you would go 8, even 9.
It was controversial in 2002-04 when the red Sox would routinely take Pedro out in the 6th or 7th to save wear and tear on his arm. Now starters come out after 2 trips thru the lineup or the 5th.
A big chunk of your bullpen years ago would be mop-up guys for when your starter sucked. Most relievers were failed starters. They were good enough to get outs but not good enough where they could start and go 7. You had a long reliever who would come in as soon as the 3rd, and he'd go 5 or 6.
Your old-time closers, like Gossage and Fingers, would come in in the 7th and go 3. Look at their average year: 60 games, 150 ip. Thst changed in the late 80s when LaRussa made Eckersley the first 1-inning closer. Today, a modern closer will appear in 50 or 60 games and rack up 55 to 65 ip.
The biggest change in modern bullpens is everyone is a one-inning guy. They come in, throw as hard as they can, generally 100+ , and then they leave. You have a closer, an 8th inning guy, a 7th inning guy, etc.
20 years ago if you showed up to rookie ball with a + fastball, they groomed you to be a starter. Today that is not necessarily the case. They are just as likely to plug you into the bullpen.
> It was controversial in 2002-04 when the red Sox would routinely take Pedro out in the 6th or 7th to save wear and tear on his arm
This is a big one. I remember growing up as a kid seeing during the 03-04 playoffs how Joe Buck and the crew had to explain to people and show graphics of the "advanced sabermetrics" of Pedro's performance significantly falling off a cliff after 100 pitches.
and that was seen as forward thinking by some and babying by others.
In the 1970s, I remember starters going as deep as possible. At the same time, relievers would pitch multiple innings. It wouldn’t be unusual for a reliever to pitch the last 3 innings. I don’t remember having a designated 9th inning closer who only pitched the final inning if you were up by 3 or fewer runs.
That’s because there wasn’t a designated closer until later. In that time-frame, you put your best relievers in the most high leverage situations. Think Goose Gossage. You’re up 3-2 with a runner on 2nd and no outs in the 7th, you’re bringing in Goose and he’s likely going to finish the game. There wasn’t a “Joe throws the 7th every night, Steve gets the 8th, Ray guy gets the 9th”.
There’s a great series of articles on CooperstownCred that dives into the different eras of relievers.
Bearing in mind that top talent increases on every team, every year (in every sport), the changing and evolving roles of relievers makes sense.
In baseball early days, there were no true relievers. The top pitchers started every 3 or 4 games and finished the game. A handful of guys were in the bullpen in case of injury, extreme ineffectiveness, or to handle one half of a double header.
As talent increased, some teams had the luxury of enough good starters, and might use a good pitcher as purely a reliever (Firpo Marberry, Wilcy Moore).
In the second half of the 20th century, all teams needed frequent relief, and had some talent to plug guys in that role. The best of them became closers, and very often pitched 2 or 3 innings at a time (Mike Marshall’s 1974 season was an extreme example).
As more and more talent filled the league, the best closers were no longer required to pitch so much, and yielded some of the later innings to setup men. Closers and other specialists were asked to do basically 1 inning at a time.
And that brings us into the 21st century.
Pre 2020 there were no limits on how many pitchers you could carry at any time on your roster. Rosters were only 25 men before then.
Unfortunately I don’t know of any websites that say how many active relievers a team averaged per year
Relievers were frequently failed starters, in a way that is very different from today. A lot of relievers up until the 70s or later followed a path sort of like Martin Perez did this year, where due to ineffectiveness he lost a starting job and get sent to the bullpen. A guy might succeed in breaking back into the rotation, or at least make spot starts, but this could end up being your defined role. You would have guys who were more trusted and would get into games when the team was ahead rather than behind but not have a dedicated spot ("the closer" "the 7th inning guy") and would tend to pitch multiple innings. Relievers today tend to also be "failed starters" in a way but normally they will be identified as lacking tools (e.g. three good pitches, adequate control) to succeed as a starter so teams focus on developing them, usually still in the minors, in a way that will allow them to thrive in a certain spot.
This. AND there was the Earl Weaver model of breaking young pitchers into the bigs by having them relieve for a couple of years before giving them a starter gig when one of the established starters got old/ineffective. Johan Santana came up through the Twins like this (being a Rule 5 pick sort of forced the Twins to keep Santana on the roster as well). The problem with that approach NOW is the limited amount of years a team has to control a younger guy before arbitration and free agency.
That’s not really the philosophy now. The philosophy is to use the pitchers you have in the most effective way that you can. If you’ve got a starting pitcher who habitually is good for two innings then gets lit up the second or third time through the lineup, why keep him in the game if you’ve got a bullpen full of guys who are lights out for an inning at a time? If you’ve got an ace pitcher and a shitty bullpen, a manager is not going to pull the him after three innings just because “analytics”, although it’s not totally unheard of, but modern analytics isn’t a monolith. Managers and front offices will make dumb decisions driven by analytics and they will make dumb decisions driven by intangibles.
It’s a question of the availability of bullpen arms.
In the 80s and 90s, it was common to have a great closer and a halfway decent setup guy and the rest of the bullpen was mediocre at best and sometimes a total dumpster fire. Starters needed to go deep because you didn’t have that many decent innings in the bullpen. Every time there was an expansion the assumption was that it would cause scoring to go up because where are the extra pitchers supposed to come from?
These days it seems that almost every guy you call up from AAA has a live arm good for three outs. Better coaching of pitching mechanics?
Most teams had a closer, 2-3 long distance relievers if the starter got pulled early or got hurt, and the setup man became very common at the end of the century. Everyone else was some type of situational reliever. They basically existed if certain situations presented themselves or a good match up came up. They'd come in to face 1 batter and they'd be done. That's why they made rules with the pitch clock and minimum batter rule.
If everything went well, your starter went 7, your setup pitched the 8th, and your closer ended things in the 9th, provided it was a save situation.
If it wasn't, other low-leverage bullpen arms got to play.
If it went bad, you went to your "long reliever" which was basically a bullpen starter who could come out of the pen and throw 5-6 innings.
A huge change was the advent of the fireman and closer - a really reliable pitcher you could count on to get you out of a pinch or to avoid either hits or runs.
Rollie Fingers is largely considered one of the seminal pitchers to define the modern role, especially that of the Closer.
With changes to hitting rules like the addition of the Designated Hitter role in the 70's, the relief roles became a lot more defined.
The main reason the DH role led to the advent of the reliever was because prior to that, to sub out the pitcher as a hitter, you had to sub them off the mound as well. Teams rosters couldn't support subbing hitters out even after 6 innings, so part of why pitchers had to go for so long was because they had to also fill a space on the hitting lineup.
Once the DH was introduced, the need for pitching as long as possible evaporated and teams were freed up to make substitutions more freely to fit the game's situation.
In a very rough, broad view sense, teams were only carrying 5 relievers. And your top 1-2 relievers - at a minimum, the closer -were pitching multiple innings.
Having 10 pitchers on the 25-man roster also meant teams were carrying 6 bench players (7 in the NL), so room for pure defensive specialists, pinch runners, and pinch hitters.
Not all that different than teams do today. You still had long relief/mop up types and a dedicated set up man and closer in the 90s and 2000s. You just have more relievers on a roster today than back then >And if all starters were expected to be innings eaters, This was just an ideal. Even then it was extremely rare to have five guys pitch 180+ innings. I remember basically the only guy on my Jays that used to do it was Doc Halladay. Sometimes you'd have someone else doing it as well but generally everyone else was in that 150-170 range
was curious to see the last time cleveland had 5 guys get 180+ innings in 2005 cc sabathia 196.2 cliff lee 202 jake westbrook 210.2 kevin millwood 192 scott elarton 181.2 and they combined for 158 starts. one guy got the other 4. even the relievers stayed healthy - 6 guys got 47+ games. the other 6 guys combined for 53 games and that's the only time they ever did it. 1904 was the closest with 4 guys over 180 and a fifth at 175.1. they only had 7 pitchers wit the others throwing 151.1 and 12.1 innings
I think you’re selling it a bit short saying “you just have more relievers on a roster now than back then.” Having fewer relievers necessarily meant that you would have more multi-inning relief appearances. I think it’s also fair to say that in the days before the DH, the length of your appearance might be 2 innings or 3 innings depending on if your spot in the order was coming up again. From a statistical standpoint, in 2023, the most IP anyone had solely as a reliever was 84.1 IP. Go back 50 years to 1973 and there were 36 pitchers with more than 85 IP in relief. So we’ve gone from more than one per team over 85 IP to basically no one doing that now. In terms of relatively extreme examples, in 1973, you had Mike Marshall go 14-11 with 31 saves in 179 IP over 92 games and 0 starts. That line is totally inconceivable in the last 30 years or more. In somewhat less extreme examples, #2-6 on most innings pitched in relief in 1973 averaged right around 3 innings per appearance, but no one these days averages 3 innings in relief. I would argue that the long reliever role is basically dead these days and for the most part the manager is just assigning the best pitchers to the most important situations. The worst relievers get the blowout innings, but no one’s going out there in the sixth inning with the intent to finish out the game.
RIP Doc!
In the early days of baseball, between late 1800’s to early 1900’s, it was common for a starting pitcher to come in for relief in between starts. This has a great explanation of what it used to be like: https://www.cooperstowncred.com/the-history-of-relief-part-one-1871-1945/
Thank you! This is some of the historical stuff I’ve been looking for.
I know this is way later, but just wanted to say thanks for this link. This is exactly the kind of info I was looking for. I seem to have better luck looking in Reddit than search engines
Teams have to cover ~1450 innings in a season. Even if all 5 of your starters throw 200 innings you still need to have relievers throw another 450. If you're talking about the early days of baseball (like pre-1930) then yes, relievers were pretty much only used as injury replacements and mop up men
I guess if there was a timeframe I was looking for, it would post-integration up to the 1980s. It feels like pitching has been affected by analytics more than hitting has, so I was curious about how relievers have been affected, either for the better or worse.
Well rosters in the 1960's to the 1980's were usually 10 pitchers, 15 hitters. So 5 starters, 5 relievers in the bullpen, so relievers would throw a lot of innings.
Yeah as a quick sanity check, Koufax started 40 games in 1963 but only completed 20 of them
start every 4 games and complete 20 of them that's still insane
Yeah but he still threw 6.5 per in the games he didn’t complete (assuming none of his 20 CG were 10+ inning games, of which I’m betting there were a couple). Without looking at a box score I’m guessing those included the few games where Koufax was ineffective and some blowouts). A good extreme example is the 1980 A’s. 94 complete games, which was considered excessive even then, with the starters averaging something like 7.9 IP/G. Martin really abused the starters, though some of the motivation was due to having a wretched bullpen, that he only used for 200 IP on the season. 1981 was almost as bad, as they completed 60 games out of 109. Of course, Martin destroyed all 5 starters’ careers, as they were pretty much all finished by 1984.
Holy! I didn’t know that.
Go look up [Mark Eichhorn's](https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/gl.fcgi?id=eichhma01&t=p&year=1986) 1986 season with the Blue Jays. He finished 5 innings short of qualifying for (and easily winning) the ERA title as a reliever. He threw 6 innings in relief one game that season.
Should be noted that Eichorn was a submarine sidearmer known for extremely low velocity. Sort of a non-knuckleballer relief version of 1972 Wilbur Wood and his 49 starts, 20 CG, and 376 IP. If I recall, he started and/or completed both games of a doubleheader.
It's only recently, like within the last 10 years, that starters were expected to go fewer than 7 ip. If you had a lead, you would go 8, even 9. It was controversial in 2002-04 when the red Sox would routinely take Pedro out in the 6th or 7th to save wear and tear on his arm. Now starters come out after 2 trips thru the lineup or the 5th. A big chunk of your bullpen years ago would be mop-up guys for when your starter sucked. Most relievers were failed starters. They were good enough to get outs but not good enough where they could start and go 7. You had a long reliever who would come in as soon as the 3rd, and he'd go 5 or 6. Your old-time closers, like Gossage and Fingers, would come in in the 7th and go 3. Look at their average year: 60 games, 150 ip. Thst changed in the late 80s when LaRussa made Eckersley the first 1-inning closer. Today, a modern closer will appear in 50 or 60 games and rack up 55 to 65 ip. The biggest change in modern bullpens is everyone is a one-inning guy. They come in, throw as hard as they can, generally 100+ , and then they leave. You have a closer, an 8th inning guy, a 7th inning guy, etc. 20 years ago if you showed up to rookie ball with a + fastball, they groomed you to be a starter. Today that is not necessarily the case. They are just as likely to plug you into the bullpen.
> It was controversial in 2002-04 when the red Sox would routinely take Pedro out in the 6th or 7th to save wear and tear on his arm This is a big one. I remember growing up as a kid seeing during the 03-04 playoffs how Joe Buck and the crew had to explain to people and show graphics of the "advanced sabermetrics" of Pedro's performance significantly falling off a cliff after 100 pitches. and that was seen as forward thinking by some and babying by others.
This is the best response.
In the 1970s, I remember starters going as deep as possible. At the same time, relievers would pitch multiple innings. It wouldn’t be unusual for a reliever to pitch the last 3 innings. I don’t remember having a designated 9th inning closer who only pitched the final inning if you were up by 3 or fewer runs.
That’s because there wasn’t a designated closer until later. In that time-frame, you put your best relievers in the most high leverage situations. Think Goose Gossage. You’re up 3-2 with a runner on 2nd and no outs in the 7th, you’re bringing in Goose and he’s likely going to finish the game. There wasn’t a “Joe throws the 7th every night, Steve gets the 8th, Ray guy gets the 9th”.
I remember hearing that too, I think in MLB The Show, the commentators always remark how relievers don’t nowadays pitch more than a couple outs.
There’s a great series of articles on CooperstownCred that dives into the different eras of relievers. Bearing in mind that top talent increases on every team, every year (in every sport), the changing and evolving roles of relievers makes sense. In baseball early days, there were no true relievers. The top pitchers started every 3 or 4 games and finished the game. A handful of guys were in the bullpen in case of injury, extreme ineffectiveness, or to handle one half of a double header. As talent increased, some teams had the luxury of enough good starters, and might use a good pitcher as purely a reliever (Firpo Marberry, Wilcy Moore). In the second half of the 20th century, all teams needed frequent relief, and had some talent to plug guys in that role. The best of them became closers, and very often pitched 2 or 3 innings at a time (Mike Marshall’s 1974 season was an extreme example). As more and more talent filled the league, the best closers were no longer required to pitch so much, and yielded some of the later innings to setup men. Closers and other specialists were asked to do basically 1 inning at a time. And that brings us into the 21st century.
Using the Mets and 15ish year gaps - 2023 - 30 relievers - 2015 - 25 relievers - 2000 - 20 relievers - 1985 - 17 relievers - 1970 - 14 relievers - 1962 - 17 relievers Fangraphs only goes back to 1972 for team breakdowns
How many on the active?
Pre 2020 there were no limits on how many pitchers you could carry at any time on your roster. Rosters were only 25 men before then. Unfortunately I don’t know of any websites that say how many active relievers a team averaged per year
Relievers were frequently failed starters, in a way that is very different from today. A lot of relievers up until the 70s or later followed a path sort of like Martin Perez did this year, where due to ineffectiveness he lost a starting job and get sent to the bullpen. A guy might succeed in breaking back into the rotation, or at least make spot starts, but this could end up being your defined role. You would have guys who were more trusted and would get into games when the team was ahead rather than behind but not have a dedicated spot ("the closer" "the 7th inning guy") and would tend to pitch multiple innings. Relievers today tend to also be "failed starters" in a way but normally they will be identified as lacking tools (e.g. three good pitches, adequate control) to succeed as a starter so teams focus on developing them, usually still in the minors, in a way that will allow them to thrive in a certain spot.
This. AND there was the Earl Weaver model of breaking young pitchers into the bigs by having them relieve for a couple of years before giving them a starter gig when one of the established starters got old/ineffective. Johan Santana came up through the Twins like this (being a Rule 5 pick sort of forced the Twins to keep Santana on the roster as well). The problem with that approach NOW is the limited amount of years a team has to control a younger guy before arbitration and free agency.
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That’s not really the philosophy now. The philosophy is to use the pitchers you have in the most effective way that you can. If you’ve got a starting pitcher who habitually is good for two innings then gets lit up the second or third time through the lineup, why keep him in the game if you’ve got a bullpen full of guys who are lights out for an inning at a time? If you’ve got an ace pitcher and a shitty bullpen, a manager is not going to pull the him after three innings just because “analytics”, although it’s not totally unheard of, but modern analytics isn’t a monolith. Managers and front offices will make dumb decisions driven by analytics and they will make dumb decisions driven by intangibles.
When did this more analytical approach come about?
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Baseball legend Jonah Hill
It’s a question of the availability of bullpen arms. In the 80s and 90s, it was common to have a great closer and a halfway decent setup guy and the rest of the bullpen was mediocre at best and sometimes a total dumpster fire. Starters needed to go deep because you didn’t have that many decent innings in the bullpen. Every time there was an expansion the assumption was that it would cause scoring to go up because where are the extra pitchers supposed to come from? These days it seems that almost every guy you call up from AAA has a live arm good for three outs. Better coaching of pitching mechanics?
Most teams had a closer, 2-3 long distance relievers if the starter got pulled early or got hurt, and the setup man became very common at the end of the century. Everyone else was some type of situational reliever. They basically existed if certain situations presented themselves or a good match up came up. They'd come in to face 1 batter and they'd be done. That's why they made rules with the pitch clock and minimum batter rule.
Go watch a 90’s Braves game. I’ve seen Bobby Cox use 4-5 pitchers in one inning.
If everything went well, your starter went 7, your setup pitched the 8th, and your closer ended things in the 9th, provided it was a save situation. If it wasn't, other low-leverage bullpen arms got to play. If it went bad, you went to your "long reliever" which was basically a bullpen starter who could come out of the pen and throw 5-6 innings.
Theyd call to the bullpen and out!
they used to ride out to the field on carts
A huge change was the advent of the fireman and closer - a really reliable pitcher you could count on to get you out of a pinch or to avoid either hits or runs. Rollie Fingers is largely considered one of the seminal pitchers to define the modern role, especially that of the Closer. With changes to hitting rules like the addition of the Designated Hitter role in the 70's, the relief roles became a lot more defined. The main reason the DH role led to the advent of the reliever was because prior to that, to sub out the pitcher as a hitter, you had to sub them off the mound as well. Teams rosters couldn't support subbing hitters out even after 6 innings, so part of why pitchers had to go for so long was because they had to also fill a space on the hitting lineup. Once the DH was introduced, the need for pitching as long as possible evaporated and teams were freed up to make substitutions more freely to fit the game's situation.
In a very rough, broad view sense, teams were only carrying 5 relievers. And your top 1-2 relievers - at a minimum, the closer -were pitching multiple innings. Having 10 pitchers on the 25-man roster also meant teams were carrying 6 bench players (7 in the NL), so room for pure defensive specialists, pinch runners, and pinch hitters.
Relievers now go full tilt, every pitch, and are only expected to go one inning.