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Gossage slams 'pampered' pitchers, calls comparisons to Rivera 'insulting'

Reinhold Matay / Reuters

The Goose is on the loose again.

Almost a year after unleashing an epic rant in which he lamented how baseball was turning into a "freaking joke" - a result of the "f---ing nerds running the game" and players like Toronto Blue Jays star Jose Bautista, who he called a "disgrace to the game" - Hall of Famer and New York Yankees legend Goose Gossage sounded off again Friday from his former club's spring complex in Tampa.

This time around, the bulk of Gossage's diatribe was directed at contemporary pitching culture, which the 65-year-old argued is turning pitchers into "bunch of pampered babies."

"Oh, absolutely," Gossage told Randy Miller of NJ.com when asked if pitchers are being babied these days. "A hundred pitch counts are killing these kids. Yeah. I think they're killing their endurance."

He continued: "It's funny. And they're killing them in the process. Agents are bad. Agents create a lot of this pressure by protecting their kids, and in return they're really killing these kids. They're turning them into a bunch of babies, a bunch of pampered babies. And they're letting money dictate this whole thing. When we made $18,000 ... they didn't care."

Gossage, who debuted with the Chicago White Sox in 1972 and earned nine All-Star appearances in his 22-year career, also rejected any comparisons between him and Yankees icon Mariano Rivera, arguing that most of his saves, unlike history's all-time saves leader, required him to throw more than one inning.

"We were workhorses," Gossage said. "Starters still prided themselves in finishing what they started and when they got in trouble, that's when we came into the game. I'd like to know how many of my saves ... how many inherited runners I came in with and a guy like Mo, how many inherited runners did he come in with? My point is not to knock what Mo did. I'm saying that he could be utilized more efficiently and more beneficial to your team by bringing him into games earlier.

" ... And I'm not taking anything away from what Mo did, but don't compare me to him. It's insulting. It really is."

Name IP SV ERA (ERA-) WPA* % <1-inning saves**
Mariano Rivera 1283.2 652 2.21 (49) 55.1 81.7%
Rich Gossage 1809.1 310 3.01 (80) 31.4 37.7%

*Captures the change in Win Expectancy from one plate appearance to the next and credits or debits the pitcher based on how much their action increased their team’s odds of winning.
**Percentage of total saves in which the pitcher recorded no more than three outs.

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