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Post by desousa on Mar 31, 2021 5:44:16 GMT -5
Not only is it weird for pitching, but it’s pretty much reduced the art of pinch-hitting to dust. I used to love to read of the exploits of Smokey Burgess, Gates Brown, Manny Mota, Vic Davillio, Dave Philley. I don’t think anyone can name a single pinch hitting specialist any more. There’s no room on the roster for them... Yep. Don't forget Jerry Lynch on that list. I miss that type of player as well. Many teams carried three catchers as well, something you could do when ten pitchers was the norm; at times some teams carried as few as nine or as many as eleven. The fifteen to ten ratio had a nice balanced feel to it, and in the pre-DH days you could almost field an entire second team. With highly versatile teams like the Yankees of the Stengel and Houk era, it was almost like having 40 players. When I first began following baseball Jerry Lynch and Smokey Burgess were famous for being pinch hitters and they both ended up with the Pirates. Pipps, do you remember how many pitchers teams carried back then? Seems like 10. |
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Post by pippsheadache on Mar 31, 2021 12:54:24 GMT -5
Yep. Don't forget Jerry Lynch on that list. I miss that type of player as well. Many teams carried three catchers as well, something you could do when ten pitchers was the norm; at times some teams carried as few as nine or as many as eleven. The fifteen to ten ratio had a nice balanced feel to it, and in the pre-DH days you could almost field an entire second team. With highly versatile teams like the Yankees of the Stengel and Houk era, it was almost like having 40 players. When I first began following baseball Jerry Lynch and Smokey Burgess were famous for being pinch hitters and they both ended up with the Pirates. Pipps, do you remember how many pitchers teams carried back then? Seems like 10. Yep Desousa, ten pitchers was the standard number of pitchers certainly from the post WW II era at least into the 70s, and even into the 90s it wasn't unusual. Occasionally a team would go pitcher-crazy and have an eleventh guy-- I remember the Cubs doing that in the early 60s when they had their stupid rotating manager system -- but it was considered leaving yourself a little thin to have only 14 position players. Of course a lot of those PH players became DH players in 1973. |
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Post by desousa on Mar 31, 2021 17:58:43 GMT -5
When I first began following baseball Jerry Lynch and Smokey Burgess were famous for being pinch hitters and they both ended up with the Pirates. Pipps, do you remember how many pitchers teams carried back then? Seems like 10. Yep Desousa, ten pitchers was the standard number of pitchers certainly from the post WW II era at least into the 70s, and even into the 90s it wasn't unusual. Occasionally a team would go pitcher-crazy and have an eleventh guy-- I remember the Cubs doing that in the early 60s when they had their stupid rotating manager system -- but it was considered leaving yourself a little thin to have only 14 position players. Of course a lot of those PH players became DH players in 1973. I forget the DH didn't exist back then. |
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