Every so often on TV — well, pretty regularly actually — somebody says something so inane that it requires a response. That happened Wednesday night on MLB’s Top 100 when it was revealed that there were no starting pitchers in this year’s top 10 (not including two-way phenom Shohei Ohtani).
The Top 100 Players Entering 2025! #Top100RightNow pic.twitter.com/rOgm7YSUj5
— MLB Network (@MLBNetwork) February 14, 2025
Former MLB pitcher Ryan Dempster forcefully went off on that revelation, particularly with respect to the injustice he saw in American League Cy Young Award winner Tarik Skubal landing no higher than No. 11.
Here’s a news flash for those who, like Dempster, feel one or more starters deserve to be ranked among the game’s elite: If you don’t work, you don’t get the honors.
And modern starters don’t work, not like they used to in the days Dempster (and I) fondly remember.
Starting pitchers aren't as important in today's reliever-centric MLB
In the modern game, every team without meaningful exception has made a calculated front office decision to pare back starting workloads either out of fear of injury, suspicion that performance decline either in-game or over the course of a season is inevitable, because they like their bullpens better, because a stat geek they hired told them to, or out of a desire not to offend a player’s agent.
I’m not here to defend or take issue with any of those premises, which may or may not be valid. The impact is the same, and that impact is to diminish the role played by the starter in the game’s outcome.
And if a particular position is collectively devalued, what is the point of reserving even its best proponents the same spot of honor they have previously had, even if only as a legacy?
We can measure that decline in importance in any of several ways, beginning with the simplest: win totals. Skubal led the major leagues in 2024 with 18 wins; five seasons ago, Justin Verlander led with 21. No surprise there: Verlander made three more starts and pitched 30 more innings.
Say what you will about the "importance" of pitcher win totals. It's the change in the volume of work that starters have been tasked with that matters.
The chart below illustrates the recent decline in use of starting pitchers over the past two decades. It shows the change in the percentage of innings pitched (IP) as well as the percentage of batters faced (BF) by the game’s 30 most heavily worked pitchers covering five-season increments since 2004.
Season | Δ Percentage of all IP | Δ Percentage of all BF |
|---|---|---|
2024 | 12.95% | 12.54% |
2019 | 13.72% | 13.18% |
2014 | 14.79% | 14.48% |
2009 | 15.14% | 14.50% |
2004 | 15.21% | 14.65% |
The chart demonstrates that even among the game’s elite pitchers, they have — starting roughly 10 years ago — been given less and less chance to be productive contributors in regard to the game’s outcome.
Between 2004 and 2014, usage of the game’s most heavily used pitchers declined less than three percent as measured by innings pitched and by less than one percent as measured by batters faced. In short, usage was basically constant.
But since 2014, the paradigm has shifted markedly. Between a decade ago and today, usage of top-tier pitchers fell off 14 percent as measured by innings pitched and 15 percent as measured by batters faced. That's no coincidence — that 2014 season marked the first of two consecutive trips to the World Series by the bullpen-fueled Kansas City Royals.
The lesson here is obvious. Starting pitchers are being de-valued in the media and by the public because their importance has been de-valued by the game. Dominant and deep bullpens have become part of the contending-team paradigm.
Whether that is a good strategy or a bad one is a debate you can feel free to have over a beer. But if, like Ryan Dempster, you believe starters are being categorically disrespected: they are. And until and unless they revert back to their workhorse selves, that isn't likely to change any time soon.