Pitch Counts

Here’s an article by Joe Posnanski and Bill James in which they discuss Nolan Ryan’s current quest as Rangers’ President to have his pitching staff move past pitch counts, since they obviously didn’t exist in his day, and he was a workhorse.

Both Posnanski and James applaud Ryan’s idea.  I’m not so sure.

One thing with having Ryan be the instigator of such an idea, is that you are talking about someone, who as a pitcher, was exceptionally durable for clearly identifiable reasons.  Ryan threw harder by far than anyone else of his era.  He was tall and solidly built, a great pitcher’s body.

Because Ryan threw so hard, he could throw more fastballs than most pitchers and didn’t have to throw his hardest fastball to get hitters out.  Ryan’s best fastball topped out at 101 or 102 mph.  A guy like that can 96 or 97 mph fastballs all day long, get hitters out with it, and not take much out of his arm.

Because he had such a powerful arm, even as he lost speed with age, he still threw plenty hard.  He ended up pitching until he was 46 years old.

Obviously some pitchers end up pitching well into their 40’s without having a great fastball (recently, Jamie Moyer, Tom Glavine and Greg Maddux).  However, it’s no surprise either than hard-throwers in their youths like Roger Clemens and Randy Johnson pitched well into their 40’s.

My point is that Ryan telling the Rangers starters that they should routinely throw more than 100 or 110 pitches a start is a little like Cy Young or Walter Johnson telling pitchers how easy it is to win 2o or 30 games a year.  What was relatively easy for them isn’t the case with anyone else.

Bill James has a point that the research hasn’t been done to prove that high pitch counts, even on rare occasions, damage pitchers’ arms.  However, one thing about paying attention to starters’ pitch counts is that it is at least an objective way to determine when a pitcher has been doing a lot of work.

The problem is that a major league pitcher will never ever tell his manager that he is ready to come out of a game, unless his arm is absolutely killing him.  From an early age, the players who become major leaguers have been conditioned to think that they are letting their team and teammates down if they don’t play through a little pain.

Sometimes, the pitching coach or the catcher will notice something amiss.  However, a lot of the time, when a pitcher is maybe pitching further into the game than he should be, he’s still getting people out, and no one wants to make a change when the pitcher is still getting batters out.

Another problem is that there is no one-size-fits-all solution.  Every player is different, so there’s no way to tell who can throw 130 pitches a game on a regular basis, as opposed to 110 or 120.  The only thing we can be pretty sure of is that pitchers under age 25 shouldn’t be worked as hard as those between 25 and 30, on average.

The thing about setting an upper limit of around 110 pitches that’s positive, is that it keeps managers mindful of the fact that they shouldn’t overwork their pitchers.  No matter what, injuries are still going to happen.  For example, the slider is extremely popular in the modern game, and that pitch burns through many elbow ligaments each year.  If pitchers went back to the curve, like in days past, we’d start seeing more rotator cuff injuries again.

One thing that I think would help tremendously is to pay greater attention to drops in speed of pitchers’ different pitches.  Injuries tend to happen most often when a pitcher’s arm is tired, and when a pitcher’s arm is tired, there is usually a drop in the speed of his major pitches.  If a pitcher’s fastball and slider each drop more than a couple of miles a hour as the season progresses or from game to game, that might be the time to enforce a strict 100 pitch limit.  The limit could be removed if pitch speeds return to the pitcher’s norms.

BTW, the Giants obviously don’t worry too much about pitch counts.  Tim Lincecum (age 25) and Matt Cain (24) have between them thrown 18 games since the beginning of 2008 in which they threw more than 115 pitches.  No problems so far, touch wood.