Quote:
Originally Posted by Mark17
Gossage is a good guess. He was only 30+ saves twice but did have 124 wins. Fingers is the guy.
It makes me re-think how guys like Fingers and Gossage make the Hall. So many fewer IP than your average HOF starter.
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I'm not sure why you would compare IP for a reliever to IP for a starter.
Fingers pitched back when closers (if they were called that back then) were used for multiple innings and didn't only come in when it was a save situation. He pitched in 944 games (907 in relief) and finished 709 of them and had 341 saves. He also pitched 1701 innings so close to 2 innings per appearance.
For comparison, Mariano Rivera pitched in 1115 games (1105 in relief) and finished 952, but he only had 1283 innings so rarely pitched more than 1 inning during an appearance.
Trevor Hoffman pitched in 1035 games (all in relief) and only had 1089 innings.
I don't think you can really compare how relievers were used back in the 70s and 80s with the relievers who pitched when the modern closer role was established.