Views From The Booth: “Stopper”

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(Posted 6-29-26)

Greetings from The Booth!

Despite 2 wins to close out the weekend, it was not a great week for the Washington Nationals’ bullpen. Three of the losses in the 4-game losing streak were due to blown saves by the Nats’ “Gas Can Gang,” including a ridiculous 14-9 loss to the Phillies in which the Nationals pen gave up 8 runs in the ninth, all after two were out! Folks, that is Randy Woodward vs Jefferson stuff from 1977. The Nats’ starters deserved a better fate in the Philadelphia series, and you could easily make the case that Washington should have swept that 4-game set, arguably the biggest series for the Nationals since the Championship season of 2019.

To be a contending team in Major League Baseball in this day and age, you’ve got to have a quality bullpen, and it doesn’t seem that the Nationals put a high priority on that going into the 2026 season. The pleasant surprise, though, has been the starting rotation, who have been solid recently. Cade Cavalli has had nasty stuff, Zack Littell has been reliable, and even Miles Mikolas, who was acquired to eat up innings, has given the Nats some quality starts in recent weeks.

That brings me to Foster Griffin, who should (but probably won’t) be an All-Star. Griffin is 8-2 with a 3.15 ERA. The 30 year-old Griffin is a throwback, and what was known back in the day as a “stopper.” That term refers to a starting pitcher who can take the mound and put a stop to a losing streak, and that’s exactly what Griffin did this past week against the Orioles. Griffin threw 112 pitches in 7 innings, limiting the Birds to just 3 hits, a truly “old-school” performance. Alas, he did not get the “W” because the bullpen (you guessed it) gave up the tying runs late in an eventual 4-3 Washington win that ended a 4-game skid.

His performance this weekend was reminiscent of two of my favorite pitchers: Max Scherzer and Bob Gibson. “Mad Max” was another old school throwback, who dared a manager to come get the ball. Win or lose, Scherzer wanted to go 9 innings in an age where 6 innings is a “quality start.”

Scherzer would have fit nicely in 1968, the “Year of the Pitcher.” Pitchers were so dominant in ’68 that the following year the mound was lowered and the strike zone was changed to benefit hitters. It was the year Detroit’s Denny McLain won 30 games, a feat that surely will never be duplicated. And 1968 was the year that Bob Gibson dominated like no pitcher has since. Gibson gave up just 38 earned runs the entire season, and pitched to an ERA of 1.12 on his way to that year’s NL MVP honor.  I remember coming home from school that October (yes kids, World Series games were played in the afternoon) to see Gibby mow down 17 Tiger hitters via strikeout in Game 1 of the Fall Classic. I think that’s when I realized I wanted to be a pitcher.

Foster Griffin is a pitcher who has surely come to the Nats in 2026 from a 1968 time machine. Note to Griffin: next time Manager Blake Butera comes to take the ball, wave him back to the dugout. Somewhere, Bob Gibson will nod his approval.

Until the next visit from The Booth…GO NATS!

RW

 

 

Year Of The Pitcher: 1968

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Greetings from The Booth!

Every day on my morning show, “Randy & The Wake-Up Crew,” I do a feature called “The Big Splash From The Hot Tub Time Machine,” where I highlight a daily historical happening on that date. This week I mentioned that in 1968, Don Drysdale’s consecutive scoreless inning streak came to an end at 58 and 2/3 innings. Think about that for a second. That’s over six 9-inning games without allowing a run. And, it happened in an era when starting pitchers would just as soon physically throw a manager back to the dugout than come out of a ballgame. Especially Drysdale, who was one mean SOB. (Footnote: Drysdale’s mark would be broken in 1988 by another Dodger, Orel Hershiser, but I digress.)

Anyway, mentioning Drysdale’s feat got me thinking about 1968, the so-called “Year Of The Pitcher.” In that season, 339 shutouts were thrown in 1,619 regular season games. Both NL & AL MVPs, Bob Gibson and Denny McLain, were pitchers, with both also winning their respective league Cy Young honors. Luis Tiant and Juan Marichal were also atop a list of dominant pitchers in 1968. Gibson’s team, the St. Louis Cardinals, threw 30 shutouts alone, 13 of those by Gibson. The Cardinals’ flamethrower also ended the season with an incredible 1.12 ERA, a mark that will probably stand forever. Gibson and McLain would cap the “year of the pitcher” with their respective teams, the Cardinals and Detroit Tigers,  facing off in the World Series , a 7-game classic.

Those were the days when the Fall Classic was played during the day, and in the 1968 Series opener, Gibson struck out 17 batters. I remember getting home from school in time to watch that game, and was glued to the old Magnavox as the Cardinals’ righthander mowed down one Tiger after the next. If I didn’t want to be a pitcher before that, I certainly did after watching that incredible performance. It was a display of pure power pitching.

Ironically, it would be a finesse pitcher who would steal the show in that Series, as lefty Mickey Lolich (who once described himself as “the beer drinkers idol”) pitched 3 complete-game victories for the Tigers, including the Game 7 win over Gibson, to capture MVP honors.

It must be explained that in 1968 the pitchers mound was 15 inches, and the strike zone was larger, two things that led to the dominating season that pitchers had. Changes would soon be made, as the mound was lowered to 10 inches in 1969. In ’68, the strike zone was defined as the top of the batters’ shoulders to below his knees. The following year, the strike zone became the area between the batters’ armpits to the top of his knees, making it tougher for pitchers to throw strikes. The changes resulted in a 30-point difference in the batting average of the 1968 AL batting champ (Carl Yastrzemski’s .301) and the 1969 AL batting champion (Rod Carew’s .332), and the American League collective batting average was 16 points higher in 1969. So on and so forth. After those changes in 1969, pitching would never be as dominant again as it was in 1968.

Chicks may dig the long ball…but in ’68, they probably had a soft spot for pitchers, too.

See you next time in The Booth!

RW