Starting Pitcher

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:

    I feel the carousel starting slowly
    And going faster and faster: desk, papers, books,
    Photographs of friends, the window and the trees
    Merging in one neutral band that surrounds
    Me on all sides, everywhere I look.
    John Ashbery (b. 1927)

    Or ever the silver cord be loosed, or the golden bowl be broken, or
    the pitcher be broken at the fountain, or the wheel broken at the
    cistern.
    Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was: and the spirit
    shall return unto God who gave it.
    Vanity of vanities, saith the preacher, all is vanity.
    Bible: Hebrew Ecclesiastes (l. XII, 6–7)