In baseball or softball, a starting pitcher (also referred to as the starter) is the pitcher who delivers the first pitch to the first batter of a game. A pitcher who enters the game after the first pitch of the game is a relief pitcher.
A starting pitcher in professional baseball usually rests three or four days after pitching a game, before pitching another. Therefore, most professional baseball teams have four or five starting pitchers on their rosters. These pitchers, and the sequence in which they pitch, is known as the rotation. In modern baseball, a five-man rotation is most common.
Read more about Starting Pitcher: Workload, Statistics, Pitch Selection
Famous quotes containing the words starting and/or pitcher:
“what most appals
Is that tiny first shiver,
That stumble, whereby
We know beyond doubt
They have almost run out
And are starting to die.”
—Philip Larkin (1922–1986)
“The work of the world is common as mud.
Botched, it smears the hands, crumbles to dust.
But the thing worth doing well done
has a shape that satisfies, clean and evident.
...
The pitcher cries for water to carry
and a person for work that is real.”
—Marge Piercy (b. 1936)