Boston Red Sox Habit of Rigid Pitch Counts and Inning Limits Proves Useless

The Boston Red Sox have made a habit of very closely monitoring the pitch counts and workloads of their starting pitchers. It's been an organizational philosophy that the Red Sox have subscribed to for years. They've had some success, actually a lot of success during that time. The question is whether or not that success is because of that philosophy or has occurred in spite of this philosophy. 

The simple fact of the matter is this. The limiting of pitch counts and innings and the close monitoring of a pitchers' workload is designed to do two things. One is maintain the pitcher's health and the other is to insure that the pitchers are healthy throughout the entire season. The Red Sox want their pitchers pitching at 100 percent in September and October as well as in April and May. 

It's not working. No Red Sox pitcher has suffered the type of catastrophic arm injury that former stars such as Kerry Wood and Mark Prior have had. Those injuries have been avoided. However the Red Sox have found themselves suffering from injured and inconsistent pitchers nearly every season since the Epstein regime took hold. On the occasions when the team has remained healthy the Red Sox have found plenty of success. 

These periods of consistent health don't happen with nearly enough consistency to rationalize what has become a trying and frustrating thing to watch. The Red Sox baby their starters, removing them at 100 pitches when they're pitching well, giving them extra days of rest whenever possible and putting things in place like the 330 pitches over three starts rule that was revealed earlier in the season (Clay Buchholz stars in the frustrating case of the Red Sox' 330-pitch rule). A quick glance at the Red Sox starters for the past few seasons reveals constant injuries and in addition to that a fair amount of under-performance as well.

Currently the Red Sox have the 22nd best ERA among starting pitchers in the majors and they are ranked 25th in complete games and 28th in quality starts. One might be tempted to think that the Red Sox have a great bullpen to counter the fact that they refuse to "overwork" their starting pitchers. That's not what shows up in the numbers though.

The Red Sox have the 15th best bullpen ERA in baseball yet rank ninth in bullpen innings. Of the teams ahead of them in bullpen innings pitched only the Atlanta Braves are in contention to make the playoffs. Milwaukee, Detroit, Arizona, Philadelphia and Texas are all ranked below 20th in bullpen innings pitched. All of these teams are already headed to the playoffs as well.  

Josh Beckett who was acquired to be a No. 1 starter has had his moments. He did lead the team to a decisive postseason World Series title in 2007. That was followed by three seasons that were plagued by injuries and inconsistency. This season Beckett once again regained the Cy Young caliber arsenal he displayed in 2007. That is until September when he once again fell pray to nagging injuries as well as a drop-off in performance.

Clay Buchholz burst onto the scene in August of 2007. He threw a no-hitter in September 1st of that season in only his second career start. The Red Sox immediately discussed the importance of limiting his workload and keeping him fresh for the future. It's 2011 now and that "future" is still plagued by constant injuries.

Buchholz labored through both the 2008 and 2009 seasons before finally finding a groove last year and finishing among the league leaders in ERA. This season was more of the same with Buchholz getting out of the gate slowly and poorly and then being shelved with a back problem in the middle of June. He hasn't made an appearance since.

Jon Lester has been one of the real success stories of the Red Sox organization. The young prospect who looked like a future star when he came up in the middle of a 2006 season which was plagued by ( you guessed it, injuries), was thought to be a future ace. Then in the offseason he was diagnosed with lymphoma. Lester battled back through treatment and returned to the Sox midway through the 2007 season and would eventually win the clinching game of the World Series.

The following years have seen Lester grow into one of the better young lefties in baseball. This season once again featured a Lester who at times certainly looked dominant. Yet as this season comes to its conclusion the Jon Lester on the mound looks tired. In fact he looks both tired and ineffective. After all those extra days of rest and starts that ended at 100 pitches regardless of the game situations, Jon Lester looks like exactly what the Red Sox philosophy is supposed to prevent—a tired pitcher. 

This brings us to John Lackey. John Lackey arrived in Boston as a high profile and high-priced free agent following the 2009 season. Lackey wasn't expected to be an ace but his resume painted a picture of a pitcher who kept his team in the game, battled and persevered through tough innings and gutted out tough victories for his team. That's what the Red Sox paid for.

What they have gotten has been anything but. Lackey has been nothing short of a bust. Ineffective, temperamental, he's suffered from a few nagging injuries but what he's really done is just promote suffering. His starts have vacillated between routine and mediocre to downright awful. Lackey walks batters, he gives up hits, he hits batters, he looks frustrated at every bump in the road and at times looks relieved to come out of games. In the end it's usually Red Sox fans breathing a sigh of relief when Lackey leaves games.

Finally there's Daisuke Matsuzaka, who came to Boston as perhaps the highest profile Japanese pitcher ever to play in the majors. He was aggressively pursued by numerous major league teams but it was the Boston Red Sox who ponied up 50 million dollars just for the rights to negotiate exclusively with Matsuzaka. Then they spent another 50 million dollars on the man nicknamed "Dice-K."

He was on the cover of Sports Illustrated before he ever pitched in a regular season major league game. That cover wouldn't be the top highlight of his time in Boston but unfortunately it would probably make the top five. That's because Dice-K  suffered from a never ending string of injuries, inconsistency and poor performance.

He had a rough 2007 which was his debut season. Most observers chalked it up to an adjustment period and a tough time getting used to the multitude of cultural differences between Japan and Boston. When he came back with an impressive 2008 that featured 18 wins and an ERA of under 3.00, most experts felt that the Red Sox had spent that money wisely. 2008 turned out to be an outlier though. The remainder of Dice-K's time in Boston was spent looking a lot like John Lackey has looked since he arrived in Boston—bad.

At what point do these numbers start to add up for Red Sox executives? Philadelphia, Texas, Arizona and Milwaukee all rank in the Top 10 in innings pitched by starting pitchers this season. Detroit is 12th and the Yankees are 14th. Boston is ranked 26th. Their neighbors in the rankings are teams such as Washington, Colorado, Kansas City, Pittsburgh and Baltimore. Not one of those teams has starting pitchers with the talent of the Red Sox' poorly managed staff.

Shouldn't someone in the Red Sox organization be looking at these numbers and questioning the philosophy by which they manage their pitching staff? How many more seasons dictated by pitch counts and babying can this organization win in spite of?  The Red Sox have done an outstanding job of creating and managing their offense for the better part of the past decade. It's time to start making the same commitment to success with the pitching staff.