During this quarantine I have been watching a lot of old baseball highlights from the 2013 and 2007 World Series’. One main thing stood out to me about comparing those series’ to the 2018 or 2019 series, the bullpen. In the regular season starting pitchers are usually expected to pitch 6 or more innings at this time. It used to be that pitchers would go to the 8th or the 9th every start. But over time as we have learned about arm health and what is required to keep a pitcher healthy through a career the 6th inning is the expected distance a starter should go.

In the playoffs, all bets are off. You have starting pitchers coming out in the 2nd or 3rd inning, sometimes you have them coming out in the first. If a pitcher goes to the 5th inning generally unscathed that is considered very helpful and the bullpen will take over. Also you will very rarely see a starter throwing 110 pitches plus, because they may need him the very next day to come out of the bullpen.

However in 2013 Jon Lester, the ace of the Red Sox pitching staff, had five starts in the playoffs. He went 4-1 with a 1.62 ERA in 5 starts. He threw 33.4 inning which is an average of 6 2/3 innings per start. That would be extremely above average these days. He had an excellent postseason, which definitely contributed to him pitching deeper into games. Thanks for reading, check back tomorrow for another post 🙂