The Daily
The Sunday Read: ‘How Analytics Marginalized Baseball’s Superstar Pitchers’
Sun, 20 Apr 2025
One day at Wrigley Field in Chicago last May, Paul Skenes was pitching for the Pittsburgh Pirates, carving out a small piece of baseball history in his second big-league game. He struck out the first seven batters he faced. By the end of the fifth inning, he had increased his strikeout total to 10. More impressive, he hadn’t allowed a hit.Over the past two decades, analysts have identified a treasure trove of competitive advantages for teams willing to question baseball’s established practices.Perhaps the most significant of competitive advantages was hidden in plain sight, at the center of the diamond. Starting pitchers were traditionally taught to conserve strength so they could last deep into games. Throwing 300 innings in a season was once commonplace; in 1969 alone, nine pitchers did it. But at some definable point in each game, the data came to reveal, a relief pitcher becomes a more effective option than the starter, even if that starter is Sandy Koufax or Tom Seaver — or Paul Skenes. Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
Chapter 1: What significant change is happening with starting pitchers in baseball?
My name is Bruce Schoenfeld, and I'm a contributor to the New York Times Magazine. I've been writing about baseball for four decades, and my most recent piece for the magazine is about one of the sport's biggest evolutions in all that time. It has to do with some of the marquee stars of Major League Baseball, starting pitchers. Starting pitchers are throwing fewer innings per game than ever.
The act of throwing a baseball 90 to 95 miles an hour off a mound is not natural. A pitcher's arm undergoes an enormous amount of physical stress, and the body needs time to recover from that. Just how much time? No one can seem to agree on, despite years and years of accumulated knowledge and data. Today's baseball is heavily optimized by data.
Anyone who has been following the sport for more than a few years can see how the study and use of that data has changed the game. For example, the data says that bunting isn't that beneficial, so almost nobody ever bunts anymore. And this optimized version of baseball also dictates that if there's any doubt, take the starting pitcher out of the game before something bad happens.
Chapter 2: How has data analytics affected pitching strategies?
The longer he goes, it turns out, the more likely he'll give up hits and runs. Or even worse, get tired and maybe injure himself. And so, when a game might be at a decisive point in the late innings, these days starting pitchers are rarely still around. But then last year, a starting pitcher named Paul Skeens made his debut in the major leagues.
He struck him out with 100. Paul Skeens. He has faced four Cubs. He has struck out each of them to begin his day.
He's incredibly exciting to watch and draws huge crowds nearly every time he takes them out. Here it is.
Swing and a foul tip. He struck him out. That's unbelievable. It is absolutely incredible.
Skeens throws the ball 100 miles an hour. He has four pitches that he's able to put where he wants, and he's adding two more this year. After the season, last summer, he was named the National League's Rookie of the Year. That's unbelievable.
He has struck out seven. Derek Shelton going to remove Skeens and we'll just listen to the reaction as he heads the dugout. They're already starting to stand before he even gives up.
But even though Skeens might be this once-in-a-generation talent, unless something changes, it's likely that he'll be largely absent from the record books. And that's what's at the center of my story and this week's Sunday read. Baseball's had a resurgence lately.
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Chapter 3: Who is Paul Skenes and what makes him special?
But one of the unintended consequences of the sport's devotion to analytics is that marquee pitchers like Paul Skeens don't play nearly as significant a role. And that means fans simply don't get the chance to see those magical pitchers nearly as much as they used to. Is there anything Major League Baseball can do to fix that? So here's my article, narrated by Robert Fass.
Our audio producer is Jack Disodoro. Our music was written and performed by Aaron Esposito. Thanks for listening.
One day at Wrigley Field last May, Paul Skeens was pitching for the Pittsburgh Pirates, carving out a small piece of baseball history in his second big league game. Just two years before, he was a sophomore at the Air Force Academy, learning to fly C-17 transport planes in preparation for a career in the military. Now he was dominating the Chicago Cubs.
He struck out the first seven batters he faced. By the end of the fifth inning, he had increased his strikeout total to ten. More impressive, he hadn't allowed a hit. To end the sixth, Skeens unleashed a fastball that was foul-tipped into the catcher's glove for an eleventh strikeout. The Cubs remained hitless. At that point, Skeens had thrown exactly 100 pitches. He wouldn't throw another.
When the Pirates took the field in the bottom of the seventh, Pittsburgh's manager, Derek Shelton, replaced him with Carmen Majinski. No hitters are not wildly uncommon. Since 1901, when the American League was formed and rules were standardized, each season has averaged around two of them.
But for most of the sports history, they represented a peak expression of individual achievement on the mound. They weren't quite sacrosanct, but pulling a starter when he hadn't allowed a hit was sure to produce headlines and no small amount of animosity in the clubhouse.
Now, here was Skeens, the most heralded young pitcher in years, three innings away from throwing a no-hitter in his second start. It felt like an opening salvo by a future Hall of Famer. Instead, he watched from the dugout as Majinsky allowed a single to the third batter he faced, a short fly to left field, and all the drama of the day was gone.
When I asked Skeens about that, he noted that in his first start the week before, he had been removed after 84 pitches. The fact that they let me go 100 in Chicago, he told me recently at the Pirates' spring training base in Bradenton, Florida, was even more than they were planning on. And no hitter or not, 100 pitches is pretty much the most anyone gets to throw these days.
Over the past two decades, analysts have identified a treasure trove of competitive advantages for teams willing to question baseball's established practices. Eventually, that meant every team. Sacrifice bunts, for example, squander the game's signature currency, outs.
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Chapter 4: Why are no-hitters less common in modern baseball?
Late in the game, Simeon seldom gets the opportunity. This has become a problem for Major League Baseball, which needs all the stars it can find. In 1968, Bob Gibson started 34 games for the St. Louis Cardinals and finished 28 of them. In the process, he became a national celebrity. Last season, no pitcher managed more than two complete games.
Six times pitchers were pulled from games after the seventh inning when they had no hitters underway. It even happened to Skeens again later in the year after seven innings at a July 11th game in Milwaukee.
The drama of a pitcher's attempting to complete a no-hitter, battling not just fatigue but luck, a bloop off the end of the bat can break up a no-hitter just as easily as a line drive, remains one of the game's greatest pleasures.
But with pitching injuries increasingly common and the benefits of bringing in a reliever after going twice through the batting order statistically unassailable, the circumstances under which starters are allowed to continue have dwindled. Astonishingly, even a no-hitter is no longer reason enough. In the heat of the moment, it feels short-term.
Let's have something cool happen, says Craig Council, the Cubs manager. But at the risk of someone's health, I don't think it's that cool. Skeens was a rookie last season, gratified to have made it to the majors. If Shelton wanted to protect his arm, who was he to argue? By mid-season, though, Skeens was a phenomenon. When he started a game at PNC Park where the Pirates play, attendance jumped.
That matters for a club that hasn't won even half its games in any season since 2018. The closest thing we've had to an event here in Pittsburgh since I arrived are the days that he pitches, says Ben Charrington, who has been the general manager of the Pirates since 2019. After the season, Skeens, 22, won the National League's Rookie of the Year Award.
At spring training in Florida this year, his image decorated a pirate's banner at Sarasota Airport and a flag that flapped from a lamppost in downtown Bradenton. That success confers some bargaining power. Skeens told me that if he has a no-hitter going late in a game this season, and he feels strong enough, he'll ask to complete it.
Still, Shelton is tasked with winning, not producing memorable moments. I understand that fans wanna see guys come out for the eighth and ninth, he says. But he cautions that several variables need to line up for that to occur. He lists a few of them. Is the game close? Have the innings been stressful? Is the bullpen rested? Over the last few years, baseball has enjoyed a resurgence in popularity.
Rule changes have accelerated the game's pace, and a new generation of dynamic and enormously talented young players has arrived in the majors. Still, the sport's decades-long trend toward cultural irrelevance remains worrisome.
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Chapter 5: What challenges do modern pitchers face with analytics?
Here was a pitcher who might have the ability to rank among the best of those who have preceded him, except that the sport itself won't let him. Rob Manfred, MLB's commissioner, remembers traveling to Yankee Stadium from upstate New York on an August weekend in 1968 to attend his first big league games. On Saturday, Mickey Mantle hit two home runs, but that was only the prelude.
I was more excited about Sunday, Manfred says, because Mel Stottlemyre, his favorite pitcher, was starting for the Yankees. Stottlemyre, who had just thrown a shutout against the Oakland Athletics, had 15 wins and a sterling 2.27 ERA. The game turned out to be a bust. Stottlemyre allowed seven runs and was removed in the second inning.
But Manfred, who was nine at the time, hasn't forgotten the anticipation he felt. To the extent that there's an erosion in the significance of that starter position, you lose that, he said. The average length of a pitching start these days is around five innings. It's hard to base a decision to attend a game on a player who is going to participate in only half of it.
This doesn't happen in other sports. If you're at an NFL game and the score is close as it nears the end, you'll see the star quarterback leading his team down the field. If you're watching the Golden State Warriors in the NBA playoffs, you won't see Stephen Curry benched after three quarters and held out for the rest of the game.
To be sure, neither football nor basketball has a position so demanding that it requires players to skip games as part of a scheduled routine. There's already some inherent acceptance in our game that a starting pitcher is physically incapable of handling beyond a certain workload, says Mike Fitzgerald, who oversees data analysis for the Arizona Diamondbacks.
But it's debatable exactly what that workload is. What's not debatable is that the workload used to be far higher. They're trying to get you out of the game as quick as they can. Lance Lynn, who pitched for St. Louis last season, says of the data analysts, it doesn't matter what kind of effort you put in. They already have it planned.
The diminished status of the modern starter has put the traditional markers of excellence out of reach. 24 pitchers in baseball history have won 300 games, for example, but nobody else will. The outcomes of too many games are decided from the sixth inning onward, when the starters are already out.
I can't stand the direction of the game, with all the analytics legislating that you can't go three times through the lineup, says Max Scherzer, who pitches for the Toronto Blue Jays, and at 40 is nearing the end of a glorious career. In 2018, Scherzer struck out 300 batters, one of only 19 pitchers since 1901 to achieve that feat in a season. There is not likely to be another.
The loss to baseball transcends the statistical. Starting pitchers are now rarely involved in situations of high drama. I'm saddened by it, says Jack Morris, a Hall of Famer whose epic 10-inning shutout won the World Series for the Minnesota Twins in 1991. Really saddened in my soul. Will we ever see greatness again? I don't think we will, because pitchers are not allowed to be great.
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Chapter 6: How does the role of a starting pitcher impact fan engagement?
Perhaps the most exciting thing that happened at Citi Field last summer was when Edwin Diaz left the bullpen to the player of Blaster Jacks and Timmy Trumpet's Narco to get those final three outs and save a Mets game. More frustrating are the innings before that, the eighth, the seventh, and increasingly the sixth.
Instead of pitchers whom fans might buy tickets to see, they get a parade of anonymous relievers tasked with briefly throwing as hard as they can. Not so long ago, those mid-game relievers were starters whose effectiveness had faltered. On balance, they were no better, and usually worse, than a starter who had been through the batting order two or three times.
But in recent years, that one inning of relief from a stronger pitcher in the middle of a game has become a specialty unto itself. That's the shame right there, Scherzer says, that a starter can no longer go 105 pitches, which is seven innings at 15 pitches per inning, that we have to pull him out before that.
Many pitchers have strong feelings on the subject, but perhaps none express them quite as stridently as Scherzer. We've got to develop starters again able to throw 100 plus pitches, he told me toward the end of last season. He was in a dugout at Globe Life Field in Texas, so agitated about the issue that he couldn't keep still. That's what I keep telling them, he said.
I don't care how we do it, but we have to do it. He offered his solution, a combination of sticks and carrots. If a starter doesn't throw 100 pitches, go six innings, or allow four runs, his team loses the designated hitter for the rest of the game.
For recalcitrant teams, Scherzer would also remove the runner who automatically starts each inning after the ninth in scoring position on second base, creating a significant handicap. Once the starter qualifies, his team gets a free substitution, such as the ability to pinch run for a catcher who still gets to stay in the lineup. Such changes would bring considerable upheaval to the game.
But to Scherzer, who has no power to do anything beyond advocacy, the issue is existential. Baseball's rise in popularity began after batters lost the right to specify whether each pitch would be delivered high or low. That rule was changed in 1887, and almost immediately pitchers became the most important players on the field.
If the continued emphasis on throwing hard makes them all but interchangeable, the unique confrontation of pitcher against hitter that constitutes the heart of the game will lose its intrigue. Scherzer has been proselytizing his argument for several years, as MLB has continued to study the issue with what appears to be more intellectual curiosity than urgency.
To every member of all the committees, he says, and shakes his head. Nobody listens. Skeens is 6'6 and 260 pounds. That's large for a baseball player, even in the era of huge multi-talented athletes, and would rank him among the two or three biggest pitchers in the Sports Hall of Fame.
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Chapter 7: What does the future hold for starting pitchers in MLB?
Such efficiency was crucial when starters expected to get through games. These days, it clashes with another dictum of baseball analytics that the only controllable outcome of an at-bat for a pitcher, at least in a positive sense, is the strikeout.
Once a ball is hit, what happens next will depend on an amalgamation of factors, including the ability of the fielders, how hard the wind is blowing, and pure luck. Those lazy outfield flies might just end up in the stands. To avoid that, when pitchers get ahead in the count, they usually throw a pitch or two nowhere near the plate.
You're going out of the zone, in the dirt, just hoping they swing, says Logan Gilbert of the Seattle Mariners, whose 208 and two-thirds innings last season led the majors. Trying to induce swings can add a couple of pitches per batter, the difference between finishing the sixth inning at 75 pitches and an untenable 95. Strikeouts also get pitchers noticed.
That's what gets you drafted high and moves you through the minors, says Daniel Bard, a former first-round pick who pitched parts of nine seasons in the majors. If you can do that while keeping your walks down, you can be really, really good. Skeens' frequency of striking out hitters is the highest of any pirate ever, but he knows that also compromises his ability to work deep into games.
To Skeen's, every at-bat should end in three pitches, a three-pitch strikeout. But at some point, I'm like, okay, let's get this at-bat over with. And he'll throw a pitch designed to get a ground ball. At the end of the day, I want to put up as many zeros as possible, he says, referring to scoreless innings. But if it's just five innings and no runs, I'm not super happy about that either.
Neither is Manfred. Lately, Major League Baseball has shown a willingness to tinker with its rules, counteracting some of the stultifying effects of analytics-driven baseball. Among other adjustments, it outlawed the shifting of fielders from one side of second base to the other and enlarged the bases.
After last season, when Skeens' 11-3 record and ERA under 2.0 focused attention on how the role of even the top starters has changed, many of the sport's stakeholders expected Manfred to issue some kind of edict about pitching, possibly a rule change that might be provisionally implemented in a minor league so that the ramifications could be studied.
Instead, MLB released a report on pitching injuries that revealed little that wasn't already known. I haven't even read it, Skeen says. Manfred describes himself as uncomfortable restricting how teams deploy their pitchers during games. I don't see how you can in the context of competition, he says.
Instead, he suggests limiting how often pitchers can be recalled from the minors, or how many can be on a roster. Not surprisingly, pitchers favor financial rewards, such as a bonus for anyone who throws 180 innings in a season.
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