Pitch Counts

by Moose Tacos on Aug 2, 2007 12:16 PM EDT Comment 23 comments

Prompted by the Joe Girardi debate in another thread, I thought I'd devote a diary to pitch counts. There are competing views:

http://www.baseballprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=1477

http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/article/what-pitch-counts-hath-wrought-part-deux/

Thanks to marbotty and mazoboom for those links. In addition, Bill James and other luminaries have weighed in on the issue, and their views are related in the second link.

Here are my thoughts:

The baseball prospectus study is highly imprecise. Individual variation between pitchers is far greater than the precision of the study, so very little can be said about controlling the workload of any pitcher.

Based on Rany's data, it might be worth setting a hard cap of 130 pitches. There is no reason to assume that a pitcher has to stop at 100.

There is no evidence that increased workload leads to higher rates of injury. However, this might not hold for pitchers younger than 24 or so.

Most of my objection to pitch counts comes from how arbitrary they are. Everyone assumes a pitcher can throw about 100 pitches. Why? The only reason is because it is a nice round number. It takes a long time for pitchers to build up the reputation that they can go any longer.

In short, I would have no problem hiring a manager who "hates" pitch counts.

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My thoughts

I don't think anyone thinks there should be a hard 100 pitch count. Even those who argue the hardest for taking it easy on pitchers to avoid injuries don't say you need to stop at 100 pitches (unless you have a 4-man rotation).
You stated that there was no evidence relating workloads to injury. This is not so. There is no proof but there is evidence. This evidence is, of course, not dispositive in and of itself. The evidence is particularly strong that high workloads on pitchers at young ages (let's say early 20's) leads to significant injury risk later in their careers. [I don't have any of this stuff handy, but I've read it at BP and other places]. That is why every organization limits workload on their pitchers in the minors.
Any manager must be mindful of pitch counts. Would you just let Meche keep pitching in a game as long as he was being effective? 120, 130, 150 pitches? Even worse, what about a rookie pitcher like Bannister? Should the manager ignore pitch counts and just leave him out there to blow out his shoulder? I think that's a great way to destroy your pitching staff. Either this year in the relatively near future.

No one is saying "give him the hook at 100!" No one. But a manger should always be mindful of what a pitcher's pitch count is and after 110 pitches, I think they should be looking very closely at the pitcher and the game situation. And if a pitcher threw 120 in the last game, then the manager should be particularly careful in the next game.

Ignoring pitch counts can really hurt pitchers. But of course there should be flexibility, not hard limits (except for maybe 130ish).

by NYRoyal on Aug 2, 2007 12:35 PM EDT reply actions 0 recs

In response

a lot of the Marlins young pitchers are having problems (Johnson, Sanchez). Not all of this is due to high pitch counts; however, the injury risk goes up greatly due to the greater taxation on the arms of young pitchers.

by lordbyronk on Aug 2, 2007 12:49 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

Chad Durbin called;

he wants to know if "spectator" is Tony Muser's screen name.

by loyal2s dad on Aug 2, 2007 1:02 PM EDT reply actions 0 recs

Ha!!!!!!

by buddyball on Aug 2, 2007 1:21 PM EDT reply actions 0 recs

one thing that seems oft-ignored on this subject

is warm-up pitching (both in the bullpen and the mound) and pick off attempts.

Both put strain on a pitcher's arm. Both should probably be factored into the equation.

Not every 100 pitch counts are equal.

by marbotty on Aug 2, 2007 2:27 PM EDT reply actions 0 recs

Not every 100 pitch counts are equal.

Very true. I think 100 pitches is a guide, not a strict rule. It all depends on context. If a guy is cruising through eight innings and has hit 100 pitches in the 9th, I don't think he should be pulled. And a guy that has 75 pitches, but has labored every inning is probably going to be more fatigued than the 100 pitch pitcher who cruised through eight innings.

Its the quality of pitches and the quantity of pitches that matter.

Relive Royals History at royalsretro.blogspot.com

by RoyalsRetro on Aug 2, 2007 2:42 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

What about knuckleballers?

For the most part they seem not to have pitch counts. There are very few of them but why to people not worry about there pitch count. They put just as much pressure on their arm even if they don't throw as hard. There was a knuckleballer that started both games of a double header, he pitched like 15-16 inning in one day, and that was not that long ago.

by TXroyal on Aug 2, 2007 3:45 PM EDT reply actions 0 recs

When was that?

I haven't heard anyone that started both games of a double header since the 20s.

"I DARE you to make less sense."

by dejackso on Aug 2, 2007 3:56 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

I don't know the exact date

but I don't think it was that long ago. If it was that long ago I know why they didn't care b/c there was no pitch count then.

by TXroyal on Aug 2, 2007 3:58 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

BPro's PAP

is flawed: it measures volume but totally ignores intensity. PAP treats every pitch as the same, regarless of whether it was a 100 mph fastball, a 92 mph sinker, a 90 mph slider, a 85 mph fastball, a changeup, a curve, or a Zack Greinke eephus.

visiting A's and Mets fan

by rfloh on Aug 2, 2007 4:07 PM EDT reply actions 0 recs

Breaking balls actually put more stress

...on a pitcher's arm.

There is nothing wrong with equating every pitch. It basically averages them out. PAP isn't an exact science. But they have definitely tapped into something real.

by NYRoyal on Aug 2, 2007 4:36 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

You're both right.

It is "flawed" as this difference doesn't likely average out; however, it is better to keep statistics unweighted when one doesn't have ANY idea about what the actual weight is...

In this case, it's a best guess and the correlations and interpretations suggest that using a pitch count is better than not using one in terms of pitcher longevity. Not every pitcher is Livan Hernandez and pitching injuries have changed significantly since pitch counts have been introduced.

Also, to preempitively comment on an argument against pitch counts...the fact that injuries seem more common nowadays has nothing to do with the change in pitch culture...instead, it has to do with the better medical information that diagnoses problems that weren't diagnosed in the past.

"I DARE you to make less sense."

by dejackso on Aug 2, 2007 5:32 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

I wasn't saying that breaking pitches put

less stress. I was saying that they put different stresses. Not just a different amount, but also on different structures.

The problem with equating every pitch is that it's basically useless as a tool to regulate a pitches workload. If Gil Meche throws 100 100 mph fastballs against the Red Sox and 100 90 mph fastballs against the White Sox, PAP says his workload is the same. In the eyes of PAP, a runner runner a 4 minute mile performs the same amount of work as a runner running a 5 minute mile.

visiting A's and Mets fan

by rfloh on Aug 2, 2007 5:52 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

A meaningful difference?

How meaningful is the difference? In reality, every pitcher throws multiple pitches of varying speed. Yes, I suppose PAP might be a bit more accurate if it measured the velocity of each pitch, accounted for the type of pitch and weighted them appropriately. But how different would the PAP values be? I doubt they would be much different overall. You claim that without this level of minute differentiation, it is a "basically useless tool". I couldn't disagree more. Increasing the level of detail a bit would increase PAP's value only minimally in my opinion, because the stresses just aren't that radically different from pitcher to pitcher.

And even to the extent that there are differences, these affect different pitchers in different ways to different degrees. That's a given. PAP, like all statistics and metrics, is a blunt tool. It measures the number of pitches and how and when they are used. It doesn't tell you everything, but it tells you something important.

Batting average, OBP and SLG record all hits a player has gotten. But some of them were routine groundballs that happened to get between infielders. Some of them were dinkers just over the infield. And some of them were hard hit line drives. Just because those metrics don't differentiate between the various kinds of hits, does that mean they are "useless tools". No stat tells you everything. No stat even tells you everything about the thing you are trying to measure.

by NYRoyal on Aug 2, 2007 6:00 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

I said it is useless as a tool

to regulate workload, not that it is a useless tool.

The burden of proof is on the inventors of PAP to prove that intensity doesn't matter. The burden of proof is on the inventors of PAP to prove that only volume matters. Especially since evidence from other sports indicates that to measure and regulate workload, both intensity and volume are necessary variables.

Please explain to me why you believe that it makes minimal difference if a pitcher throws 10 pitches at 100 mph, 90 pitches at 90 mph in one start, and 100 pitches at 90 mph in another start. I'm assuming here that all pitches were fastballs for simplicitys sake, which would never be true. The work performed by the pitcher in both situations is clearly different.

Go to the gym and try squatting 200 lbs 10 times. The next day, squat 180 lbs 10 times. Are you telling me there is minimal difference in the work performed?

Try running a mile at the fastest speed you can. The next day, take your own sweet time to complete the same distance. Minimal difference?

What does PAP do that just plain, vanilla pitch counts can't? Why have PAP when pitch counts do the same thing?

visiting A's and Mets fan

by rfloh on Aug 3, 2007 9:17 AM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

PAP does more than just add up pitch counts

Have you seen the formulation of this metric?

by NYRoyal on Aug 3, 2007 10:19 AM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

I'm aware that it doesn't just add up

pitch counts for a total. Yes, I've read all the articles by Woolner and Jayazerli. But AFAICT the formulation is still entirely pitch count based. If I'm wrong, please correct me.

Also, from the linked article:

We should interject a few notes of caution here. First is that we haven't yet established what PAP was originally designed to measure -- risk of injury from overuse. We've been investigating a related (and initially easier to assess) phenomenon -- short-term ineffectiveness following high pitch count outings. PAP^3 should not, at this point, be used as a proven indicator of health risks.

visiting A's and Mets fan

by rfloh on Aug 3, 2007 4:02 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

Pitch counts, situation, frequency, etc.

It puts the pitch counts in a meaningful context.

by NYRoyal on Aug 3, 2007 4:33 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

Mike Marshall is the best read on the subject of

pitcher abuse. His ideas are, however, so revolutionary as to be automatically rejected by the baseball establishment, which, as RR points out, is loathe to do virtually anything outside the norm.

Pitch counts arose, most likely, because of the physiological tendency for the pitcher's mechanics to become difficult to repeat after a certain level of repetition. Naturally, this number could easily vary from pitcher to pitcher; however, logic says there should be some limit inherit with all human beings. The limit theoretically should exist at the limits of the human body for endurance.

I can compare something I do to pitching. Bowling, while not as physically demanding, has the same inherit limitations. For years, I bowled in a tournament requiring 24 straight games - usually over about a 8-10 hour period. Because most tournaments are only about 10-12 games, bowlers bodies were usually conditioned for only that much competition, and performance usually began to decline after that point. I think a bowler could condition himself to maintain his form for a longer period; however, regardless of conditioning, I firmly believe at some point the strain on the legs and wrist from the activity would win out, and consistent performance would drop, and injury risk would increase. Where is the point? Not sure.

Most experts in physiology think the point at which this happens for a major league pitcher is somewhere between 110-125 pitches. Marshall's beliefs are that his training methods can push that figure higher than current accepted training methods in the industry.

Given the level of intensive data analysis that begun with Bill James in the 80s, I think it's only a matter of time before we have more definitive answers to these questions.

by loyal2s dad on Aug 2, 2007 6:10 PM EDT reply actions 0 recs

Seems logical...

really, it just seems like pitcher carpal tunnel syndrome. There is a fine line between muscle memory and wearing out a muscle group.

"I DARE you to make less sense."

by dejackso on Aug 2, 2007 6:14 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

there's a video of a Marshall-pupil

somewhere on the internets. He (Marshall) has completely revolutionized the throwing motion to reduce strain, yet still deliver results.

It's really bizarre to watch, and it's unfortunate that no major league team is courageous/creative enough to test it out on a legitimate prospect.

by marbotty on Aug 3, 2007 11:50 AM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

Somehow, I forgot to mention

that injury risk increases as the repeatablility of mechanics decreases; thus, this is intuitively why teams are cautious with pitch counts.

by loyal2s dad on Aug 2, 2007 6:12 PM EDT reply actions 0 recs

repeatability

This makes sense. It also could be taken to support the side that says pitch counts are unnecessary.

If there is a noticeable change in mechanics, it follows that pitching coaches should be able to tell when pitchers are putting themselves at risk. Accordingly, teams should trust their pitching coach instead of a number. We might also be able to trust pitchers themselves to some extent, though I realize competitiveness/grit gets in the way of their judgment.

I believe there's a reason why everyone (managers, pitchers, Joe Girardi, etc.) hate pitch counts, and I think it's largely because it's so consistent and so arbitrary. As with any activity (running and drinking come to mind) your endurance/tolerance changes a lot depending on the circumstances and your preparation. This includes both training regimen and day-to-day decisions like what you eat.

By the way, I completely agree that workloads of young pitchers need to be monitored.

by Moose Tacos on Aug 2, 2007 10:53 PM EDT reply actions 0 recs