One Last Note on Goose

Before the whole thing fades away, there's just one last thing I'd like to say about Goose Gossage, or, rather, the support for him -- okay, the words of at least one of his supporters. Jayson Stark has repeatedly said that Gossage "was routinely being asked to pitch 100 to 141 innings (yep, 141) a year" (emphasis in the original). This is misleading at best and dishonest at worst. Look at his career numbers, and 100-inning seasons were more the exception than the norm. Take 1976 out of the equation, when he was a starter, and you have a cluster of seasons of over 130 IP in '75, '77, and '78. In the entire rest of his career (which stretched form 1972 to 1994), he had only one other season of 100 IP, a 102.3 effort for the Padres in 1984, after which he never even pitched 80 innings in a season. If he was "routinely" being asked to pitch 100 or more innings a season, then he was "routinely" coming up short.