All hail Bert

Rich Lederer has posted an interview with Bert Blyleven.

Blyleven was traded to the Pittsburgh Pirates prior to the 1978 season, and he helped lead the Bucs to a World Series victory over the Baltimore Orioles in 1979. Although Bert won two games in the postseason — including a “do-or-die situation” in Game Five of the World Series — he became disenchanted with the fact that he was only allowed to complete four games that year (after never having fewer than 11 in any full season) while setting a record with 20 no-decisions.

“Chuck Tanner and I did not see eye-to-eye. My only beef with him ever was ‘why do I have to wait five to six days to pitch if I’m only pitching five to six innings?’ What you’re doing is taking away about 50 extra innings.”

I'm not sure they were counting pitches in the 1970s. Still it's clear in his record that Blyleven's managers restricted the number of starts he made and innings he pitched after the early 1970s. Tanner looks like the first in a series of managers to deny Blyleven 40 starts and 300 innnigs. He gave Blyleven as many starts as any Pirate pitcher in the 1970s but, as Blyleven told Rich, he surely pulled him early often, as Blyleven's total number of innings pitched never got real high again until he returned to Minnesota. I'm away from all of my books and reference books that might explain Tanner's approach. Any old-timers remember what he was thinking? Obviously it's a four-man vs. five-man rotation question. I'm curious if anyone remembers what was the rationale for the latter under Tanner.

The Bucs dealt Blyleven to the Indians in the middle of 1980.

Looking over the Pirate teams from the 1970s, I'm struck by how many games they won. Those teams were good.