How often do starters of El Sid’s caliber reach the 7th these days? I bet it might be about half, or less. In the ’80s starters did tend to go a little longer.
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“Schilling can fool hitters all night.”

I don’t think much of his success is due to fooling batters. It’s mainly due to throwing a very hard fastball right where he wants. He throws more strikes than any pitcher. Though it is true batters get fooled by the splitter, that’s all set up by the fastball.
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“Lifetime, it’s true that pitchers do worse through games, although I have seen years where some pitchers do better innings 7-9 than 1-6 (but nobody, to my knowledge, has kept that up for a career.)”

I’d assume that when pitchers have seasons when they perform better at the end of games, it’s usually because of a) small samples and b) selective samples. Pitchers (especially these days) only go that far if they’re “on” that day. I wouldn’t be surprised if some elite pitchers over their careers have worse Opp BA for the 2nd and 3rd AB, but then appear to improve again for the 4th AB. If they give up a hit they’ll be pulled there, but if they’re mowing people down they get to stay in.

As for home/road splits, you’re certainly right about El Sid. He was 67-40 with a 2.73 ERA at home in his career, and 47-56 with a 4.05 ERA on the road. And that includes his time with the Orioles, Phillies, and Astros. Lifetime at Shea, he was 58-31, 2.52 ERA. Geez.

As for researching general home/road splits, I do not believe that the PI is set up for that yet although of course this is something Sean could do manually if he wished.

By the way, if any readers out there do not recognize the author of comment #8, then you need to be reading The Hardball Times. We are honored to have Dave commenting here.

- All pitchers do worse as they go through the game. The better question is how did Sid do vs. an average pattern?

- The biggest thing to remember about Sid the Kid is that he had a hellacious home/road split — perhaps the largest of any pitcher in recent memory. He just loved pitching at Shea.

Is that something that can be researched?

FCAlive suggests that maybe Sid wasn’t in good enough shape to maintain a normal moderate decline in efficiency over the course of a game. In addition to hitters “catching on,” conditioning could be a factor.