Kruk on Pitch Counts

[AnotherAlias]

Pitch counts? I always worried about pitch counts - throughout my career....


-Denton "Cy" Young










1943 - In Washington D.C., the Pentagon was completed making it the largest office building in the world. The revolutionary, five-sided building consisted of five concentric pentagons connected to each other by immense corridors covering an area of thirty-four acres and was intended to consolidate the various offices of the U.S. War Department and now the Department of Defense.

The withholding tax on wages was introduced in 1943 and was instrumental in increasing the number of taxpayers to sixty million and tax collections to $43 billion by 1945.

The Boston Red Sox and St. Louis Browns played four consecutive extra-inning games (May 31 and June 2) totaling forty-five innings. Both leagues combined to set a Major League record for overtime activity with ninety-one extra-innings in the American League and eighty in the National.

On August 24th, the miserable Philadelphia Athletics recorded their twentieth loss in a row tying the American League mark for consecutive defeats. Luckily they managed to avoid breaking the record by scoring eight runs on the home team Chicago White Sox in the bottom half of the double header.

Pittsburgh Pirates pitcher Rip Sewell debuted a bizarre "softball-like" pitch that looped the ball eighteen to twenty feet high on its way down to the strike zone. The "gag-pitch" was almost impossible to judge from the batters box and was later coined as a "blooper" or "eephus ball". Despite the complaints of many batters from around the league, the approach was ruled legal and Sewell went on to a 20+ win season.

Baseball moguls Phil Wrigley and Branch Rickey established the All-American Girls Softball League as a "wartime sports backup" in case the government was forced to shut down Major League Baseball. The novelty league quickly became a very popular draw and later switched to hardball with a pitching distance of forty feet and bases set at sixty-eight feet apart.

Due to the wartime absence of sixty starters (including some of the games greatest players: Joe DiMaggio, Ted Williams, Enos Slaughter and Johnny Mize) Major League Baseball started two weeks later than usual as teams scrambled to fill their line-up cards and owners scrambled to fill their ballpark stands.

The evening before the All-Star Game in Boston, a team of Armed Forces "all-stars" managed by Babe Ruth and featuring Joe DiMaggio and Ted Williams played the visiting Braves in a war fund-raising effort. Ruth himself agreed to pinch-hit in the eighth and his team went on to win 9-8 thanks to a Ted Williams home run. The following night, the Americans went on to edge the Nationals 5-3 in the first Midsummer Classic to be played under the lights.

[twins15]

Originally posted by Rizon
Didn't Kruk also say that Wins is the most important stat for a pitcher?

Yeah he's the one that said the Jarrod Washburn is the AL Cy Young so far this year, even though his ERA is in the high 4's.

[draven085]

I can't decide if Kurk is more disgusting to look at or to listen to. I can't even watch Baseball Tonight because of him.

[ctorg]

I think pitch counts can serve a purpose, but they are way overused. Like so many other things, people found a good idea and took it too far. They make good guidelines, but you will get pitchers who come along with rubber arms who can just keep going.

When it comes down to it, I guess the whole thing is a side effect of the free agent era. Teams are afraid to push players because they're afraid to have someone in whom they have invested so much money go down.

[Skipaway]

Perhaps what makes it "overhyped" or "overused" is the fact no other theory or study exists.

[ctorg]

Originally posted by clarnzz
I played first base for the Phillies, this makes me an expert on how teams should manage a pitching staff.

Signed,
John Kruk

Hey, be fair. He played outfield, too.

[Gastric ReFlux]

Originally posted by draven085
I can't decide if Kurk is more disgusting to look at or to listen to. I can't even watch Baseball Tonight because of him.

This sort of leftie cultural elitism is really disgusting!

[Johnny Slick]

Originally posted by Skipaway
Perhaps you are not familiar with the PAPIP theories.
http://www.baseballprospectus.com/ar...articleid=1503

The study by Keith Woolner showed that pitch counts less than about 120 are very safe, while the danger of injury increased rapidly after that.

Sort of. Actually, what it showed was that pitch counts of 130 or more are unsafe, relatively speaking. According to that study, 120 pitch outings are no more dangerous than 100 pitch outings (but slightly more than 110 pitch outings, which screams "sample size problems" to me), and since the next data point doesn't occur until 130, the only conclusions one can reach from it are:

a. There's not a great deal of danger from throwing 120 pitches, and
b. There's quite a bit more from throwing 130 or more.

Isn't it amazing that Leo Mazzone almost always pull his starters before the magic number? What you said about variations at best would prove the magic number might be less than 120 for some pitchers.

Mazzone's succcess does not, in fact, speak to the goodness of pitch counts. Mazzone's success speaks to at the very least the genius of Leo Mazzone and at most the goodness of the general idea that one should pull pitchers at the first sign of fatigue. For some guys, that's going to be 80 pitches, for others, 130.

[Skipaway]

Originally posted by Johnny Slick
Sort of. Actually, what it showed was that pitch counts of 130 or more are unsafe, relatively speaking. According to that study, 120 pitch outings are no more dangerous than 100 pitch outings (but slightly more than 110 pitch outings, which screams "sample size problems" to me), and since the next data point doesn't occur until 130, the only conclusions one can reach from it are:

a. There's not a great deal of danger from throwing 120 pitches, and
b. There's quite a bit more from throwing 130 or more.

Mazzone's succcess does not, in fact, speak to the goodness of pitch counts. Mazzone's success speaks to at the very least the genius of Leo Mazzone and at most the goodness of the general idea that one should pull pitchers at the first sign of fatigue. For some guys, that's going to be 80 pitches, for others, 130.

Heh, 130 or 120, basically what you said also confirmed the idea of limiting pitch count is a good idea.

Also, I don't know where do you got those 80 and 130 numbers. From kq76? Check the numbers I provided, and you'd see every pitcher got pulled inbetween 113~131, which confirmed Woolner's numbers. The only exception being Greg Maddux in 2002 and 2003, and that's probably Maddux' own idea.

[draven085]

I wonder what kind of affect pitch types have on how damaging higher pitch counts can be. Pitches like the slider and splitter tax the arm more than a fastball or changeup do. I'm not sure there is a way to study this issue statistically, but I still think its important to consider.

[dougaiton]

It is an interesting argument. Although they may tax the arm more, what exactly does that mean in terms of long-term muscle damage, and is overuse worse? It's a question that only a Dr(aven) could answer

Evidence suggests over 130 is bad. Regardless of how we argue about different pitchers have different limits, it basically is just a refinement of acceptance of 'pitch count' strategy - that a certain amount of work will break a starters arm.

I've no doubt throwing 130 curveballs would hurt more than 130 fastballs, but it would it necessarily be worse long-term? Short-term pain could actually be a limiting factor on long-term damage by making a starter ineffective quicker. IMO, overuse is the primary problem, while the rest is variations (but important variations) on a theme.

[Skipaway]

Well, there are still tons of unknowns. Livan Hernandez and Mark Prior claimed to pitch less than 100% effort sometimes, and would that help? Would less time between pitches help? Between innings? The damaging ratio between a screwball and a fastball is 1:1? 2:1? 5:1? What's the effect of warm up pitches?

To answer all those, I think only medical studies would tell us the truth. Not pitching coaches or statheadzzz.

[Teddyballgame]

Pitch counts are nothing! By the time you become a professional athlete, you should be able to pitch as long as your manager and team needs you to, no matter how many pitches it is. Otherwise, I'm afraid you fall into the catergory of "My career is more important than my team".

[dougaiton]

Originally posted by Teddyballgame
Pitch counts are nothing! By the time you become a professional athlete, you should be able to pitch as long as your manager and team needs you to, no matter how many pitches it is. Otherwise, I'm afraid you fall into the catergory of "My career is more important than my team".

Look Teddy, you've really gone too far this time. I can take all your whining about OOTP should have a manual by OOTP19192, and that you think the depth chart is still a bit odd considering it inserted a pitcher to play SS, but this is it.

Hang him high.