NEW YORK (AP) -Standing by the first base dugout at Yankee Stadium, Jim Palmer and Orel Hershiser were talking shop.
With four Cy Young Awards between 'em, it was intricate stuff about pitching - release points, stretch positions, unfolding front elbows.
And the fact that this year there won't be a 20-game winner in a full major league season for the first time in baseball history.
"I don't think pitchers should take it personally," said Palmer, a Hall of Famer who won 20 games eight times for Baltimore. "I don't think it will be a trend. It's not like global warming."
OK, so maybe this season was a statistical anomaly.
After all, there were four 20-game winners in the majors last year, three in 2004.
But never before in big league history? That's pretty surprising.
A couple of clicks on baseballreference.com and a quick scroll down the wins leaderboard tells the entire story: The only years in the 20th century without a 20-game winner were 1995, 1994 and 1981 - all seasons shortened by work stoppages.
You get all the way down to 1871, when Albert Goodwill Spalding led the National Association with 19 wins for the Boston Red Stockings, who finished that season 20-10.
Major League Baseball doesn't even recognize stats compiled before the formation of the National League in 1876, according to the Elias Sports Bureau, the sport's official statistician.
So that makes this season a first - a low-water mark for pitchers, if you will.
The reasons are obvious. In this offensive era of tender arms and five-man rotations (some clubs even cycle six starters occasionally), starters throw far fewer innings than they used to. Teams carry crowded bullpens loaded with one-role relief specialists. The game has changed.
"Bullpens, ballparks, it's just harder to stay in there and certainly win games after the seventh or eighth inning like you used to," said Mets pitcher Tom Glavine, closing in on 300 career wins. "If you don't have it won early, you're in trouble."
