Nineteenth century pitchers frequently pitched the majority of their teams games, many of which were complete games. Four, five or six hundred innings pitched isn’t going to happen again, but ..................
The Brewers “formula” for pitcher usage raises the possibility that a Gio Gonzalez, for example, could be the starting pitcher for an entire 7 game series, while racking up a grand total of 14 innings.
Such a starting pitcher during the regular season could rack up the currently required 162 innings to qualify for the ERA league leadership and the like, but would also have to suffer the indignity of winning exactly “zero” games.
Seemingly meaningful statistics could be rendered obsolete as a result. Reworking the metrics to better accommodate and evaluate such a radical change in pitcher usage could have additional ramifications.
The Cy Young Award could be discontinued and replaced by the “Gio”.
