Where are all of the quality arms? With the home stretch of the baseball season being played out daily and the approach of the football season picking up steam, has it occurred to you that there are a shortage of quality arms in the two major pro sports that require them?
Baseball aficionados will tell you that most teams don’t have enough quality starting pitchers. In this day of the 5-man rotation, most teams can muster a number one, a two and sometimes a three. But, most teams struggle to fill the fourth and fifth spots with someone who can give them a decent chance to win a game.
MLB teams are always looking to upgrade their starting rotation. Due to the lack of durable, strong starting pitching, there is a great premium put on pitchers to “set-up” (8th inning) and “close” (9th inning) at the back end of games. We all know that great closers make the same millions of dollars for their 1-inning appearance as the great starting pitchers who throw about four-times the amount of total innings over the course of a full season.
When you think of it, professional baseball in America draws talent from a global pool. There are guys from Mexico, South America, Asia, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, Canada and Australia-- and the 30 MLB teams still can’t find enough quality arms!
Moving to the gridiron…if there were enough quality arms in the NFL, not just average arms, we wouldn’t be hearing of the never-ending saga of everyone’s favorite (kidding) gray-beard, Brett Favre, returning to play. The Minnesota Vikings must feel strongly that the three quarterbacks on their roster were just not good enough to play winning football. Being on the threshold of the regular season, more than a handful of teams are still struggling to declare a starting quarterback. At this stage of the pre-season all teams want to have starting positions locked up so they can fine-tune preparation for the games that really count, the regular season.
Due to their relative lack of productivity and efficiency to this point, the 49-ers played “Eenie, Meanie, Miney, Moe” and settled on Shaun Hill over Alex Smith. The Tampa Bay Buccaneers are holding off until after their third pre-season game to choose the man that will take the helm. Byron Leftwich and Luke McCown are currently leading rookie Josh Freeman in that QB derby.
In Detroit, where the Lions matched the Motor City automobile industry for having an incredibly bad 2008, rookie Matt Stafford, despite being the #1 pick in the entire draft, is not quite ready to take over for a recycled Duante Culpepper. Because of philosophical differences in Denver between Jay Cutler and the Broncos new 30-something head coach Josh McDaniels, the Broncos traded away one of the game’s strongest young arms in Cutler to the Bears for a very average Kyle Orton. To illustrate the level of mediocrity, Orton is in a battle with Chris Simms, who was once a promising 2nd round pick in Tampa Bay. Simms has thrown only 494 passes in seven years in the league. You can do the math based on a 16-game schedule over that span. He was an emergency back-up in Tennessee for just part of last season.
The NY Jets have had a neck and neck race between first round pick Mark Sanchez and fourth-year man Kellen Clemens. It looks like Sanchez at the wire by a nose. Regardless of who gets the nod, the Jets are looking up at the rest of the AFC East when it comes to who is lining up under center. Lastly, in Cleveland the Pumpkin Head loyalists are still waiting to see if it’s going to be the former Golden Domer, Brady Quinn, or the less-acclaimed Derek Anderson. As goes an old silly saying, "same difference."
To sum it up, it seems that we have too many pro teams in both baseball and football to effectively stock the rosters with quality arms who can win games. If that is not the case, why do we keep hearing the same stories each year about not enough good pitching and not enough quality quarterbacks?
If your team happens to have a quality player regularly throwing the ball, consider yourself fortunate. There are many fans who are envious.
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I agree. The lack of arms in basball can be blamed in some degree on the DH. Not on the major league level, but in high school, college and the minors. Remember the days when the best baseball players and the best athletes were also pitchers. Then the DH came along and they said you can pitch but you're not going to hit. Well, those good athletes said "If I can't hit, I'm not going to pitch". And you lost some great arms. I would guess that Gibson, Drysdale and Seaver may have opted out of pitching at a young age if they didn't have the chance to hit.
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