Usage

story title

sample size?

I would expect there to be far less 7-9-inning pitches relative to 1-6-inning pitches. Obviously there’s a trend (hitters have more success as the game goes on), but how much of that data are we going on?

then, correlation vs. causation:

major-league hitters can figure out a pitcher’s stuff as the game goes on, so how much of the offensive improvement in the later innings is their skill vs. how much is the pitcher’s fatigue? It’s obviously some combination, but what’s the ratio?

Do they have these stats by pitch count? That might be more interesting.

Always thought Jonathan Sanchez felt more comfortable and pitched better with Bengie Molina as his catcher. The numbers seem to back this up.

This does lead one to discover the problem with Zito, we need to let him pitch longer:

Innings 1-3: .326/.401/.465
Innings 4-6: .328/.425/.513
Innings 7-9: .000/.500/.000

there some kinda fan post earlier this year about how every pitcher gets worse with increasing pitches. Like, smoothly. Not just 90+-ith pitch worse than earlier, but 25th pitch worse than 24th, etc.

That was when I proposed the “no more than 3 innings per pitcher per day” rotation (i.e, make everyone a long reliever, but some guys pitch innings 1-3.

Those pitchers are the best of the NL AND they are all at least a few years older than our trio. Give the young’ens time to learn and I’d guess their number improve over the later innings.

And before anyone trots out Pitcher Abuse Points and where our guys rank, please don’t. Compared to where the league was just 5 years ago on pitcher usage, it has gotten WAY more conservative. Being near the top now is not nearly as bad as it was in 2003, for example. (I made this similar point in a fanpost awhile back).

How will our young pitchers ever deal with the pressures of pitching at the end of the game until Bochy lets them stay in there until they do poorly?

That is my same problem with pitch counts, lots of pitchers had long careers throwing a lot of pitches, but if you limit everyone to 100 pitches, then everybody will be like that and the bullpen would become that much more important (or deadly). It is kind of like how this lake in Japan is populated with crabs that look like a face: over the centuries, the fishermen would catch the crabs but return the ones that had a human looking face on the shell, and eventually the lake was populated only with these human-face crabs. It’s self-selection.

That said, I’m OK with some limits on pitchers younger than 25, but one based on our coaches interpretation of how the pitcher is laboring. From the way Bochy has publicly discussed the decision process, it sounds like he tries to take a broad view of the situation, inputing multiple variables into his decision. I’m OK with that.

And that makes more sense to me. 90 pitches at 100 degrees in the shade or 40 degree wind-chill is worse than 120 pitches at a balmy nice 70-80 degrees. Not to say that there aren’t managers and coaches screwing up pitchers in the majors, but ideally adjustments made by experts in the moment has to be better than stop at 100 pitches. You just have to hire better.

In addition, I think the bigger concern that I have not seen addressed anywhere is on total pitches thrown in a season, not a single game. I was pooh-poohed on this at TheBook, but the more I think about it, the more sense it makes. One or ten extra pitches in a game really doesn’t have that huge an effect on a pitcher, it should be more the total pitches thrown in a season.

I did a non-scientific study of this using The Graphical Pitcher book, which probably is why my idea was dismissed. The book presents total pitches thrown in a season plus a line graph of their proprietary measurement of how good the pitcher did that season for each pitcher.

After flipping through the book, it seemed like every time a pitcher went over 3,500 pitches, their pitching would take a big dip in production, either that season or the next season or two. Yeah, broad, but when I went through each pitcher in the book, that is what seems to be an upper bound that affects most pitchers not named Roger Clemens and Randy Johnson. Pitchers would be cruising along in their career, then touch that level and poor results followed.

I’ll admit it could be an age thing too, much like how all the “experts” were predicting that Rueter would be exposed some day and he was, like, 6-7-8 years later. Eventually you will be right.

Still, think about it, doesn’t it seem like total pitches in a season should matter more? But I haven’t seen anything on that in the places I frequent.

I just discovered a group called “YAAHHH TRICK YABU” on FB. Pretty Sick.

People always talk about total pitch count, but one thing I’m curious about is the non-game pitches.

In between innings, a pitcher throws x number of pitches, and before the start, a starter will throw y number of warmup tosses. In between starts, a pitcher throws a bullpen session (two, depending on the system), where they throw z number of pitches.

In the reasonably good ol’ days, Juan Marichal would throw over 200 pitches in a game. Did he throw as many non-game pitches before and during his starts? And what about bullpen sessions?

Additionally, have delivery mechanics changed over the years? Do pitchers today use a different delivery style for their various pitches in order to gain additional velocity/movement, but that damages their bodies more? Looking at old footage, it always seems like the speed of the game in say the 50’s was rather slower than it is today. Were pitchers throwing 95MPH back in the 30’s, or were they throwing substantially slower, possibly making the wear on the body/arm less?

What this all boils down to is, has pitching changed over the years to where it’s harder on the body now than it was when pitchers regularly threw complete games or went extra innings?

The sample sizes in the later innings aren’t large enough to give an accurate portrayal as to how well they might do. We’ve all seen this happen before: A pitcher has a good outing but has somewhat of high pitch count working against (supposedly) them. The managers trots him out to the mound and the pitcher gives up a hit or walks a guy. It’s entirely possible that the hitter reaching base was a complete aberration and the pitcher would then retire the next 9 batters in a row.

The problem arises when the pitcher is pulled after the first batter which almost always happens when the pitch count is high when the pitcher starts the inning. If the pitcher gives up just 1 hit then is pulled the average against is going to be a freakishly higher.

It is an odd thing. Perhaps it could be because of how they are babied. If they were allowed to stretch out more they wouldn’t cap out so soon.

I really don’t think allowing pitchers to throw 140 pitches is that big a deal. Slowly work them up to that level and they will stay stronger throughout the game.

Part of the problem with doing this is the heavy reliance on the bullpen nowadays. If anything, pitchers are healthier now than in the past. The only real difference is more bullpen specialists that come in earlier. This saves the starter from having to go as deep into a game.