Monday, January 19, 2015
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After seeing the news that Max Scherzer is leaving the Tigers for the Nationals I had a thought: From the perspective of a GM, is there a more difficult position to manage in all of sports than a starting pitcher in major league baseball? Quarterback would seem to be close, but quarterback seem to be more consistent once you have a good one. Outside of the rare example (Matt Schaub), you don't see good quarterbacks go from being good to average or bad from one season to the next. You expect that once you have a good quarterback he'll be good for eight years or so. The MLB pitcher who is good for eight years seems to be exceedingly rare. I would think that would drive a GM crazy.
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2 comments:
Interesting perspective. Age will catch up with anyone in any sport at any position, but they should still be somewhat "good" or skilled. Reggie Wayne is old, but he still has skills. He's not going to all of a sudden start dropping balls or running bad routes, etc.
If a hitter can hit, he should be able to hit consistently in his career. He just might not have the same "pop" in the bat...unless you are David Ortiz.
The starting pitcher universe is definitely it's own cat. You can miss spots and 2 mph less on the fastball is a big deal, combined with missing your target. I think there has to be some science that would say injuries are more likely to occur. It's an arm/shoulder/elbow, not a machine.
That's probably a good point, a big part of the difference could be the very narrow margin of error for pitchers.
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