Yesterday,
Craig Calcaterra pointed to a story by the Boston Herald's John Tomase in which he claimed that pitchers who have seasons like
Josh Beckett's 2010 historically have had a really difficult time coming back:
So what are we talking about? Thanks to the magic of baseball-reference.com, it was easy to sort for pitchers in their 30s who posted ERAs above 5.75 while pitching at least 125 innings.
The search returned 69 such seasons by 66 different pitchers....
Of those 66 pitchers, only three managed to regain something even remotely approximating their form, at least as starters.
Here's that list. And he's right, it sure does look ugly. But while Tomase himself notes that these results "have no bearing on whether Beckett will bounce back in 2011," he does say that they "should at least give Red Sox fans pause," and that "the game's entire history is working against him." But should it, and is it?
