BP Daily Podcast: Effectively Wild Episode 371: Listener Emails: The Mariachi A-Rod Edition

A little research on the late-career pitching start by Babe Ruth sheds some light on what was going on there (and in an even later, and theoretically more remarkable, start three years later). Both of these late-career starts were at the very end of the season, against Boston Red Sox teams that were ghastly to begin with, and had several of their regulars (such as they were) on the bench and rookies or part-timers starting. In one he gave up 3 runs against a ragtag lineup, but still got the W and the CG; in the other it was 5 runs, again with W and CG. In other words, the opposition was a team that was poor even by the standards of his day, probably wasn't highly motivated, and still almost managed to beat him.

These games are more in the line of the proverbial dog walking on its hind legs than anything to judge talent on: the marvel isn't that the dog walks well on two legs, it's that it can do it at all. So also Ruth. He didn't have to pitch well to win those games, he just had to make it through without his arm falling off. That is no small feat in itself; try throwing 150 pitches even at 70% and see how your arm feels. But I would not draw, from those games, the conclusion regarding quality that you guys did. They weren't "serious" games. Baseball was like that back then, too.