Monday, May 27, 2019

Newsletter Excerpt, May 27, 2019 -- "Ryne Stanek"

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"It’s also going to screw with our statistics. Stanek’s 14 starts put him on pace to make more than 40, which is a number no one reaches any more. No one has made 40 starts in a season since knuckleballer Charlie Hough did it in 1987. No one has made more than 40 starts since another knuckleballer, Phil Niekro, made 42 in 1979. (Pitching stats from the 1970s are a sight to see.) The last non-knuckleballer to make more than 40 starts in a season was Jim Kaat in 1975, who made 41. Since the pitching rubber was moved to 60 feet, six inches in 1893, there have been 130 seasons of at least 41 starts. Eighty-seven of them happened from 1893 through 1917, and 38 happened from 1962 through 1979."