Pitch counts go down...DL time goes up

[Warner2BruceTD]

http://mlb.sbnation.com/2012/5/4/2999339/pitching-injuries-data-disabled-list-study

tl;dr (it's not long at all, but god forbid EmpireWF read something)

-Since 1999, 'pitch count mania' has taken over baseball

-Since 1999, total DL time for pitchers has actually gone up

-The Rangers are the first team to throw in the towel on pitch counts, and are no longer treating their pitchers like they are made of glass

-Many of the best pitchers in baseball (King Felix, Halladay, Lee, Sabathia, etc) are guys who say 'fuck off, pitch count'.

I've been saying for years that pitchers are babied too much in this era. They are babied at all levels now...so by the time they get to the bigs, and are asked to throw 8 tough innings and 100+ pitches when the bullpen is taxed, they can't do it and they injure themselves. MLB is full of pitchers who have no arm strength, because they grew up in the late 90's/early 00's and were never allowed to throw! Pitch counts have had a reverse effect.

Nolan Ryan's first order of business when he took over the Rangers was to reverse this trend in the entire organization. The Rangers are going to try to build a organization full of horses who won't blink at 120 pitches or throwing back to back CG's.

If guys like Ryan and Vida Blue, who threw as hard as anybody today, could go 300+ innings 30 years ago, with far less advanced medicine and training techniques, there is absolutely no reason pitchers today can't throw 130 pitches and 240 innings.

 

[Warner2BruceTD]

Here is a Nolan Ryan/Rangers story from SI two years ago. A great read.

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/magazine/MAG1169750/index.htm

 

[Mogriffjr]

http://mlb.sbnation.com/2012/5/4/2999339/pitching-injuries-data-disabled-list-study

tl;dr (it's not long at all, but god forbid EmpireWF read something)

-Since 1999, 'pitch count mania' has taken over baseball

-Since 1999, total DL time for pitchers has actually gone up

-The Rangers are the first team to throw in the towel on pitch counts, and are no longer treating their pitchers like they are made of glass

-Many of the best pitchers in baseball (King Felix, Halladay, Lee, Sabathia, etc) are guys who say 'fuck off, pitch count'.

I've been saying for years that pitchers are babied too much in this era. They are babied at all levels now...so by the time they get to the bigs, and are asked to throw 8 tough innings and 100+ pitches when the bullpen is taxed, they can't do it and they injure themselves. MLB is full of pitchers who have no arm strength, because they grew up in the late 90's/early 00's and were never allowed to throw! Pitch counts have had a reverse effect.

Nolan Ryan's first order of business when he took over the Rangers was to reverse this trend in the entire organization. The Rangers are going to try to build a organization full of horses who won't blink at 120 pitches or throwing back to back CG's.

If guys like Ryan and Vida Blue, who threw as hard as anybody today, could go 300+ innings 30 years ago, with far less advanced medicine and training techniques, there is absolutely no reason pitchers today can't throw 130 pitches and 240 innings.

It's funny you would think with how much stronger and bigger MLB players are that they would be able to go longer in games, play much more...

It seems now with the amount of money being thrown around, teams are scared to "expose" their prize players or get them hurt...

It's gonna take Ryan's approach to turn this around and once the results show that they have success, other teams will follow suit...it may take 5-10 years for that to take effect though.

 

[Warner2BruceTD]

Bill James said years ago that playing the pitch count game would ultimately be counter productive. But this was during the brief period time that the SABR community had shunned James aside as a old coot, so nobody listened. He said yes, you would lose a few guys to major injury by letting them loose, but you would ultimately benefit more by stretching everybody out. And he correctly predicted that stressing low pitch counts would likely lead to more injuries due to weaker arms in general.

 

[Chrispy]

Example of this fuckery is the way the Yanks have handled their pitchers. Love what Nolan is doing with the Rangers pitchers, wish the yanks would do the same.

 

[spiker]

Fucking finally

 

[IamMedellin]

So...Cashman NO

 

[Slateman]

So ... question: Would it be better (or worse?) to have a six man rotation, BUT, have starters available as relievers on their "throw days?"

In essence, they could end up throwing more often while not necessarily overtaxing an arm.

 

[Senser81]

So ... question: Would it be better (or worse?) to have a six man rotation, BUT, have starters available as relievers on their "throw days?"

In essence, they could end up throwing more often while not necessarily overtaxing an arm.

The best system would be to have 3 groups of pitchers used thusly:

Righty: Innings 1-3
Lefty: Innings 4-6
Righty: Innings 7-9

You could have your 10th and 11th guys be the true "relievers", otherwise the pitchers are set in the rotation.

 

[Slateman]

Wouldn't the best thing be for your starting pitcher to just go 7 or 8 innings? Thats sort of what I got out of the article. Pitchers need to pitch more, not less.

I think the article fails to touch on the fact that pitching has been vastly different the last 10-20 years. Guys are putting way more torque on their arms to get breaking stuff. Pitchers are throwing more change ups, curveballs and sliders than ever before and those pitches are getting thrown harder and with more break than ever before. It has to be putting a lot of stress on the bodies of pitchers

 

[Warner2BruceTD]

I would venture to say that the reason we haven't seen 6-man rotations, is because it's hard enough to find five guys who aren't terrible. Most teams don't have three really good starters.

If there was enough high quality pitching to support it, I think 6-man rotations would have caught on 15 years ago when the "arm saving" trend went full force. Teams are willing to start one or two terrible pitchers to give their ace four days rest, but at that point it becomes advantageous to carry better relief pitchers and give that ace more overall starts rather than start another terrible pitcher.

Five is the tipping point of that balance. It used to be four, and then for a couple of decades it was four plus a swing man who would only start during long stretches with no days off, and pitch out of the bullpen otherwise.