Stat of the Day and The Importance of Horses

Baseball-Reference has their stat of the day, showing the only teams in the last twenty years to have 4 pitchers throw at least 200 innings. Well, they found out that only 9 teams in the past 20 have reached this goal. Two teams from that list not to make the playoffs, finished with at least 90 wins (which is playoff-level baseball). The 1993 Dodgers are the one outlier as they finished 81-81. The 2003 Yankees did this with one of the better starting 4 pitching staffs of their past two decades (they were a combined 70-32 with a 3.86 ERA in 847.2 innings with 666 Ks).

So what does having 200-inning pitchers have to do with winning?

When you look at the list above, don’t just consider the 4 guys you see listed. Behind these names were good bullpens made better because they were rested. The more innings the starts pitch, the fewer times each guy in the bullpen gets used and the more effective they can be.

Exactly. Since the Yankees reached 4 in 2003, there have only been 11 teams who have reached at least 3, according to Play Index. The 2005 White Sox won the World Series (beating those 2005 Angels along the way). The 2006 Tigers and the 2005 Astros won the pennant (beating the 2005 Cardinals--who won 100 games--along the way). The 2004 Twins and 2008 White Sox made the playoffs.

The Yankees since 2003? They had zero in 2004, one in 2005 (Randy Johnson), two in 2006 (Johnson and Chien-Ming Wang), one in 2007 (Andy Pettitte), and two in 2008 (Pettitte and Mike Mussina). When one looks at the 2004 collapse in the ALCS, maybe it could be attributed by how many innings the bullpen was forced to throw during the regular season (their starting pitching also had a grand total of ONE complete game all season). The Yankees had 4 members of their bullpen go over 77 innings, with two--Tom Gordon and Paul Quantrill--pitch 89.2 and 95.1 innings, respectively. They were also 1-2 in games pitched.

This year's Yankees team has 3 pitchers on pace for 200+ innings: CC Sabathia (on pace for 239), A.J. Burnett (on pace for 204) and Andy Pettitte (on pace for 202). Sabathia is currently injured (though not expected to miss any time) and Burnett and Pettitte are injury risks, but if they keep on this pace, they'll be only the third trio to reach 200+ innings in the past 25 years of the Yankees (2001 and 1998 they also had 3). Although still a long way to go, building a rotation with good, inning-eating horses is one of the better ways to construct a successful team.