by Nic Larson

Created on: December 10, 2008

Baseball has become a business. The players are the organization's investments. In order to protect these investments, pitchers have been put on strict pitch counts to prevent fatigue, and injury. With the millions of dollars being spent on pitchers in today's free agent market, the last thing a team wants to do is overuse their stud pitcher, causing an injury that would negate him from taking the mound. Generally the majority of a team's payroll is spent on starting pitching. A pitcher is of no value to his team if he ends up on the disabled list. The San Francisco Giants learned the hard way with this as they shelled out over $100 million for Barry Zito who ended up spending as much time on the disabled list as he did on the mound due to arm problems.

The Milwaukee Brewers were highly criticized at the end of the 208 season for allowing sensational pitcher, CC Sabathia to pitch complete game after complete game, many times reaching upwards of 130 pitches in a single outing. Experts thought that this would hurt Sabathia's free agent value as teams thought that the Brewers wore out his arm. This proved to be untrue as Sabathia led the Brewers to their first playoff appearance in over 20 years, and he recently signed a 7 year $160 million contract with the New York Yankees, becoming the highest paid pitcher in the history of the game.

Another reason that complete games are a thing of the past is due to the amount of money that owners are spending on bullpens. By having a dominating bullpen, teams are looking for only five to six innings out of their starting pitcher. The game is then turned over to the bullpen to shut the door on the opposing team. With the emergence of dominating closers as an asset to many teams, it is ever more important to take advantage of their ability. Using the bullpen allows the starter to remain fresh and to continue pitching every five days.

It is now a major headline on ESPN if a pitcher throws a complete game, differing from 30 years ago when it was as common as seeing Cal Ripken Jr. in the starting lineup. It is now considered a quality start when a starting pitcher pitches six or more innings, allowing three or less runs. This is a highly regarded stat, showing that teams are not expecting their pitchers to pitch the complete game. The game has transformed from its starting pitcher dominated past to a new era that is concerned more about protecting their investment then allowing pitchers to reach their maximum potential.

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