Whether the pitching is worse now than ever before is subject to debate, but one thing is clear; Pitching is NEWER then ever before. In 1995, more pitchers (152) made their major league debut than in any previous season. Over the past five years, there were 509 new pitchers. The table below shows the rate at which new pitchers have entered the major leagues since 1900.
| Years | Pitcher Debuts | Teams | New Pitchers Per Year | New Pitchers Per Team/Year |
| 1900-1909 | 490 | 16 | 49.0 | 3.1 |
| 1910-1919 | 672 | 16/8* | 67.2 | 3.8 |
| 1920-1929 | 554 | 16 | 55.4 | 3.5 |
| 1930-1939 | 461 | 16 | 46.1 | 2.9 |
| 1940-1949 | 524 | 16 | 52.4 | 3.3 |
| 1950-1960 | 512 | 16 | 51.2 | 3.2 |
| 1961 | 56 | 18 | 56.0 | 3.1 |
| 1962-1968 | 406 | 20 | 58.0 | 2.9 |
| 1969-1976 | 499 | 24 | 62.4 | 2.6 |
| 1977-1992 | 1203 | 26 | 75.2 | 2.9 |
| 1993-1995 | 329 | 28 | 109.7 | 3.9 |
* includes Federal League, 1914-1915
Expansion did appear to cause more new pitchers to appear in games, perhaps just because there were more jobs available for pitchers. But when we remove that variable, we see that the overall rate has been steadily decreasing. In the 26-team era, each team added about three inexperienced pitchers a year. Suddenly, this number has jumped to almost four a year.
This change can be directly attributed to the owners move towards less expensive players. From 1994-1995, the median player salary dropped from $500,000 to $290,000. This was caused by two things. First, the percentage of players making the minimum salary nearly doubled (7.1% to 13.2%). Second, the number of players in the $1-4 million range dropped dramatically, while the number in the <$500K rose dramatically (ie many veteran players took huge pay cuts or lost jobs completely).
What we're seeing, particularly with pitching, is that more newcomers are being given jobs at the expense of veteran players. There is no data to indicate that the pitching of 1990-1993 was extremely bad, so we can fairly say that this shift is a purely economic decision. Therefore, we can conclude that "less expensive" pitchers are replacing "more talented" pitchers.
