Same question as before, except this time I'm looking at pitchers. Again: I expect the definitions described to change as I develop my argument.

Question: What's the length of a typical pitcher's baseball career? I also checked this using Lee Sinins' Baseball Encyclopedia. The mean (average) career length for a pitcher whose last season was between 1940 and 1990 (the dates are convenient for my purposes, but otherwise arbitrary) looks about like this:

• 5.60 seasons.
• 133.2 games.
• 2128 batters faced.

Quickly analyzed: Although this career's about a year shorter than the typical hitter season, the number of games--about a quarter of the hitter's number--"makes sense," and the Batters Faced number resembles the Plate Appearances number.

Let's put a face on that Major League career: Joe Presko. Little Joe, an righty, came up with the Cardinals in 1951 and pitched regularly for four years. After a couple years without big league appearances, the Tigers picked him up via Rule 5 and gave him a handful of appearances in 1957 and 1958. Although he was lightly used in his rookie year, his season was excellent. For his first three St. Louis summers Joe was primarily a starter; in 1954 (and with Detroit) he was mainly a short reliever.

 W  L   G  CG SHO SV  IP    ER   HR  BB   SO   ERA  
25 37 128  15   2  5 490.3  251  57  188  202  4.61

Stats from Baseball-Reference

Other pitchers who had average-length careers:

Player              Seasons   Games  Batters
                                     Faced
Ray Fontenot            4      145    2111
Jim Umbarger            4      133    2101