Welcome to Buster's Blog

Irregular commentary on whatever's on my mind -- politics, sports, current events, and life in general. After twenty years of writing business and community newsletters, fifteen years of fantasy baseball newsletters, and two years of email "columns", this is, I suppose, the inevitable result: the awful conceit that someone might actually care to read what I have to say. Posts may be added often, rarely, or never again. As always, my mood and motivation are unpredictable.

Buster Gammons















Tuesday, February 23, 2010

My Two Cents On Pitching (1997)


(written for the NUMB News, 6/27/97)
In our current scoring period, much has been made of some heavy-K pitching performances. Cone got 16 strikeouts, Johnson 19, Mussina 12. Cone and Mussina won, but Johnson lost. Which begs the question: How important are strikeouts? They can be very handy and they sure can be dramatic -- the big bopper whiffing with the game on the line and the knee-buckling called 3rd strike provide ESPN with endless highlights.

I say it's all good fun, but over-rated window dressing -- 19 K's and he lost! The aim of pitching is to limit scoring, make the opponent spend more time in the field than at the plate, and let your team hit. Toward that end, strikeouts are a model of inefficiency.

We're all mightily impressed with a perfect game: No hits, no runs, no errors, no walks, 27 batters faced. But a real perfect game would be: No hits, no runs, no errors, no walks, no strikeouts, and 27 pitches thrown!!

That's my two cents. Keep the change.

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