In the past, the ultimate goal for starting pitchers was to go as far as possible in a game, even if it meant finishing it on the mound.
Now, the mission for pitchers who start games is to throw as hard as possible to generate momentum early on, which means they leave the game sooner and need more rest to recover.
It's gotten to the point where this has become the norm, and we don't even realize just how much the workload for starting pitchers continues to decrease.
As proof, last month—July—the number of complete games reached an all-time low of two: those by Dylan Cease of the Toronto Blue Jays and Yoshinobu Yamamoto of the Los Angeles Dodgers.
Pitching Longevity Has Officially Hit an All-Time Low by Tom Verducci for @SInow: Starters are bringing traditional closers' stuff… https://t.co/umDLS1gvEm pic.twitter.com/YIvt6G93Gv
— New York BBWAA (@NYBBWAA) August 10, 2026
This was only the fourth time in history that there were so few complete games in a single month, with three of those occasions occurring in the last six months of the baseball season.
During the month of July, starting pitchers averaged 5.03 innings pitched, the lowest total ever recorded in a single month.
Worse still: no pitcher has thrown more than 120 pitches in a game since Justin Verlander on August 31, 2025. In 2011, there were no fewer than 100 such games.
Furthermore, there have been only thirteen starts this season in which a pitcher threw 110 pitches, including four by Cease. No one else has two 110-pitch games to their credit.
And to add to that, the breakdown of the workload between starters and relievers this year is 57% to 43%. Fifteen years ago, that ratio was 65% to 35%.
Starting pitchers are now a disposable commodity, and we'll just have to get used to it.