America's Game by Bryan Soderholm-Difatte

Author:Bryan Soderholm-Difatte
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: undefined
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
Published: 2012-05-04T04:00:00+00:00

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While certainly not heralded at the time and probably not even realized for many years thereafter, 1924 was also a pivotal year in the history of relief pitching. It was the year the Washington Senators introduced hard-throwing right-hander Firpo Marberry as their relief ace and kept him in that role in the years ahead despite his clearly having the ability to succeed as a top-flight starting pitcher. Using Marberry in this way had just one somewhat inexact precedent. The only pitcher prior to Marberry to have been used primarily as a relief pitcher for an extended number of years was Doc Crandall by John McGraw from 1909 to 1913, and he was not nearly as good a pitcher as Marberry and, moreover, started nearly 30 percent of the games he pitched. From 1924 to 1928, Marberry started only 15 percent of his games.

By the 1920s, the importance of relief pitching was accepted baseball wisdom. What was not was the concept of developing pitchers exclusively for a role as a game savior in the bullpen. Since the beginning of baseball time, pitchers were groomed and expected to be starting pitchers. Except possibly by McGraw with Crandall, no thought was given to the idea of relief pitching being its own discipline. With the percentage of complete games having only gradually declined from about 60 percent in the early teens to about 50 percent in the early 1920s, and with 70 to 75 percent of all victories being complete games, there was not a significant requirement to have a stable of relievers in an established bullpen. Many of the new generation of starting pitchers apprenticed as relievers in their first one or two big-league seasons and sometimes pitched several more years both starting and relieving before either becoming full-time starters who might occasionally be used in relief between starts to win or save ballgames (typically mediocre journeymen pitchers in both roles) or failing to make the major-league grade. Up to now, those who pitched primarily out of the bullpen were, with all due respect to Crandall, no-names who did not last long at the big-league level.

All that changed with Firpo Marberry, although the seed for a dedicated relief ace in Washington was planted the previous year, probably under team owner Clark Griffith’s direction. As manager of the Highlanders in the first decade of the century, Griffith was one of baseball’s pioneers in the use of relief pitchers, although not so much to “save” victories as his contemporary McGraw was doing, as to replace starters who were having a bad day. Just before spring training in 1923, Griffith acquired right-hander Allen Russell from the Red Sox. An eight-year veteran with 119 relief appearances to go along with 105 starts, Russell was turned into a full-time reliever in Washington, not just to mop up, but to win and save games. He appeared in 52 games, five of which were starts spaced out approximately a month apart. His 47 relief appearances were the most ever by a pitcher coming in from the bullpen.

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