The numbers are quite staggering… and the Atlanta Braves were not immune from them in 2019. It’s numbers about the epidemic of relief pitching.
In the majors, there were 16,571 separate relief appearances among 698 relievers in 2019.
In the National League alone, 357 pitchers entered 8,323 games and pitched 8700 innings combined.
In those efforts, each pitcher faced an average of 4.32 batters per (NL) inning. There will be a few minor problems with that data, owing to the use of ‘openers’, though this remains less a phenomenon in the NL.