Former Chicago Cubs pitcher Moe Drabowsky was a bullpen pioneer

The hot stove discussions surrounding the Chicago Cubs bullpen have left us with an intuitive sense of the economics of building a competitive pitching staff.

All-Star left-hander Tanner Scott will be making $18 million on a four-year contract with the Los Angeles Dodgers. Jeff Hoffman received a three-year contract at $11 million per season even after multiple teams balked at his medicals. Perhaps 40-year-old David Robertson is holding out for his first multi-year contract this decade. His annual salary figures to be between $10 and $12 million. All these men and their children should be financially comfortable for life.

When I became a baseball fan at the age of five, I learned that my father sat next to a baseball player at work. His name was Moe Drabowsky and he worked as a stockbroker in the offseason. Soon thereafter I received his 1972 baseball card. Had I possessed the knowledge I have now as a fan, I would have seen that his lifetime record was 87-104 and would not have been surprised that he needed a job in the winter. Lost on this young boy would have been the fact that Drabowsky had enjoyed a 16-year MLB career.

Recently I looked at his Baseball Reference page found some interesting facts. He was primarily a starting pitcher for 10 seasons. His WAR was exactly zero during that period, though there were two very good seasons in the bunch. You get the sense that teams always hoped he could recapture the magic of 1957 and 1963.

That '57 season, his second year in the big leagues - and with the Cubs - put him on the map. He pushed 240 innings and won 13 games, with a respectable 3.53 ERA, roughly 10 percent better than league average. He recaptured that form, like I said, six years later - long after his five-year stint on the North Side ended - pitching to a 3.10 ERA for the Kansas City Athletics.

Drabowsky showed up in Baltimore in 1966 at the age of 30. Someone must have seen something because he earned a prominent role in the bullpen for a team that ultimately won the Fall Classic. Drabowsky's Game 1 appearance probably stands as the greatest relief performance in World Series history.

The Little Rock native earned $14,000 in salary that season. The median income in the United States that year was $7,400. The winners' share for the World Series champions was $11,683 that year so you can see how important winning was to a typical player.

The right-hander continued to enjoy success in the Orioles' bullpen. He amassed a cumulative 6.3 WAR from 1966-68. By comparison, Tanner Scott has put up a 7.7 WAR the last three seasons and Jeff Hoffman 4.5. When Drabowsky was drafted by Kansas City in the 1969 expansion draft his salary was $36,000. He proceeded to put up a 3.0 WAR for the expansion Royals. His 1970 salary was $45,000 and he was able to win another World Series after a mid-season trade back to the Orioles.

My impetus for writing this article was the question of what Moe Drabowsky would earn today. No doubt he would not be working next to my father from October to February. His performance after moving to the bullpen would probably have netted him a multi-year contract paying 200 times the median salary in the United States. Had he chosen, he could have milked his career for a couple more one-year contracts at several million dollars each.

The economics of baseball have drastically changed in my lifetime. I've witnessed them firsthand. Let's just put it this way: no mere mortal is working with Jeff Hoffman or Tanner Scott in an office this winter.