I have a feeling we're reading the same book right now. It's unfortunate that so many baseball romance novels screw up the baseball. (A friend of mine also has the same complaint about sports RPF fanfics, where you'd think the writers would be totally into their sports...but I digress.)
As for the 20-game winner issue, Curt Schilling did have 3 out of 4 seasons with 20 wins in this century (if he hadn't missed a month after having his appendix removed in 2003, he may have made it then too.) I am assuming the character in this book is the sort of l33t pitcher that Schilling and Tom Glavine were. But, no, pitchers don't routinely win 20 games. That's for the "is this guy a Hall of Famer or not" category of pitcher.
There's always talk about one team or another going back to the four-man rotation, and it really doesn't work out as such. On the other hand, I'm currently reading Summer of '49, and one of the Yankees talks about having a pitching staff of "8 starters and 2 relievers"--there would certainly be a basic rotation of A, B, C, D but occasionally E, F, G, and H would spot start.
If I don't stop now, I'll start ranting about pitch count, the no-decision, and the fact that starting pitchers really shouldn't be judged by the W-L record, as it's largely dependent on run support and the performance of the bullpen. (I think romance writers have more important things to worry about than modern advances in sabermetrics, but it would be nice not to have to nitpick so much.)
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2009-08-11 05:03 am (UTC)As for the 20-game winner issue, Curt Schilling did have 3 out of 4 seasons with 20 wins in this century (if he hadn't missed a month after having his appendix removed in 2003, he may have made it then too.) I am assuming the character in this book is the sort of l33t pitcher that Schilling and Tom Glavine were. But, no, pitchers don't routinely win 20 games. That's for the "is this guy a Hall of Famer or not" category of pitcher.
There's always talk about one team or another going back to the four-man rotation, and it really doesn't work out as such. On the other hand, I'm currently reading Summer of '49, and one of the Yankees talks about having a pitching staff of "8 starters and 2 relievers"--there would certainly be a basic rotation of A, B, C, D but occasionally E, F, G, and H would spot start.
If I don't stop now, I'll start ranting about pitch count, the no-decision, and the fact that starting pitchers really shouldn't be judged by the W-L record, as it's largely dependent on run support and the performance of the bullpen. (I think romance writers have more important things to worry about than modern advances in sabermetrics, but it would be nice not to have to nitpick so much.)