Read this article by BlackJack last week and thought it was pretty interesting especially when looking at it from a capping point of view.
Why pitch counts are overrated
By Jack McDowell
The baseball world seems obsessed with pitch counts these days. I admire the concern and work that goes into minimizing injury, but don't be fooled. Pitch counts will never be a valid measure of potential injury.
When is 100 pitches really 100 pitches? Let's use one example. Pitcher A will throw against pitcher B in today's game. Pitcher A throws 50 warm-up pitches prior to the game, while pitcher B throws 70. Do those count? Not the last time I checked! That's a 20-pitch difference that is never taken into account.
In the seventh inning, pitcher A has thrown 100 "game" pitches while pitcher B has only 80. In reality, they have worked the same if warm-ups are counted. Who is likely to come out of the game? They have made the same number of throws on the same day, but only the "game" ones count.
This is only one of the many variables that make pitch counts invalid and undermine the "tests" and "studies" that supposedly validate pitch counts.
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I was a spectator at the Carlsbad 5000 earlier this month and watched some of the greatest runners in the world run three-plus four-minute miles to complete the course. If I ran my fastest 40-yard dash and averaged that time out over a mile, I could never run that way. OK, I am slow! Those amazing runners I watched just have different physical attributes than me.
But I am sure they could never throw a baseball 90 mph with all the training in the world.
Athletes are different. Bodies are different. Human beings are different!
Obviously athletes who participate in the same sport have different physiological makeups as well. Standardizing pitch counts and pitch limits do not take this into account.
Scientists are not even close to concluding who should be able to throw baseballs at the major league level, let alone how many throws lead to injury. There is no standard body type that makes up a pitcher and no standard workout that prevents injury across the board. You often see children who are "born" with great arms or at least better arms than other children with similar body structure. There is no predicting who these children are. Some children are faster and some are stronger and some can just throw that ball.
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Pitch counts don't take into account pickoff throws to first base or fielding throws to bases during a game, but these are far more unnatural throws for a pitcher than the ones off the mound that are repeated in the thousands every year.
How about the throws that are made warming up between innings? I used to throw five pitches between innings; most pitchers will take the maximum of seven. Hey, if it's a long inning a pitcher can sneak in more with the umpire looking elsewhere. That's a variance of 15 pitches over the course of seven innings that are not counted.
And how about those long innings? If your team bats around and scores six runs in a half inning while you sit and tighten up, won't that have as much to do with potential injury than counting pitches -- if not more? But those are all just numbers that to this day are not taken into account when speaking of standardized pitch counts.
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When I was a major leaguer, I had an intense workout program to keep my skinny body in top form. I played for four different teams, and I can tell you: There are vast differences in the level of players' workouts (or lack thereof). Wouldn't it make sense that those who work out more and are in better shape would be able to shoulder a heavier workload? It didn't always work out that way.
Those who worked their butts off ended up on the disabled list as much as those who didn't. There really didn't seem to be any rhyme or reason to which players got hurt. How was it that in some years, I could go through an entire season healthy, and the next, I dealt with nagging tendinitis in my joints? If there were answers that could hold water, I would have been doing them!
Any pitcher can tell you that there are times when you get rocked early and get taken out of a game after 40 pitches only to feel like you threw 500 the next day. On the other hand, there are days that you throw a complete game with 130 pitches and wake up the next morning ready to take the hill again. Variances in mound height and slope, game situations and unseen mechanical differences all play a part in this phenomenon.
What about diet and sleep patterns? Even non-athletes know that some days you wake up refreshed and others you roll out of bed feeling achy and sore. Imagine pitching on both types of days. Isn't it valid to assume that we will be less inclined to head toward injury on the free and easy days? This has to do with how sound we have slept the prior evening and what our bodies are biologically processing during the previous 48 hours.
So let's see -- differing physiological make-up, workout programs, pregame routines, game situations, mound variances, mechanical variances, sleep patterns, biochemical makeup -- nothing sounds standard to me. This would require a scientific experiment with more complexity than could ever be devised. As I said above, I appreciate the effort to prevent injury, but pitch counts are not the answer.
One hundred pitches to one individual will stress his body quite differently than 100 pitches to someone else. Let the game go on and don't file everyone together. Every human being is different and every game is as well. That is the beauty of it all.
Let's go back to having managers and coaches evaluate pitchers' effectiveness on game day and not some copout pitch count that frees them of any responsibility for their pitching moves within a game
Why pitch counts are overrated
By Jack McDowell
The baseball world seems obsessed with pitch counts these days. I admire the concern and work that goes into minimizing injury, but don't be fooled. Pitch counts will never be a valid measure of potential injury.
When is 100 pitches really 100 pitches? Let's use one example. Pitcher A will throw against pitcher B in today's game. Pitcher A throws 50 warm-up pitches prior to the game, while pitcher B throws 70. Do those count? Not the last time I checked! That's a 20-pitch difference that is never taken into account.
In the seventh inning, pitcher A has thrown 100 "game" pitches while pitcher B has only 80. In reality, they have worked the same if warm-ups are counted. Who is likely to come out of the game? They have made the same number of throws on the same day, but only the "game" ones count.
This is only one of the many variables that make pitch counts invalid and undermine the "tests" and "studies" that supposedly validate pitch counts.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I was a spectator at the Carlsbad 5000 earlier this month and watched some of the greatest runners in the world run three-plus four-minute miles to complete the course. If I ran my fastest 40-yard dash and averaged that time out over a mile, I could never run that way. OK, I am slow! Those amazing runners I watched just have different physical attributes than me.
But I am sure they could never throw a baseball 90 mph with all the training in the world.
Athletes are different. Bodies are different. Human beings are different!
Obviously athletes who participate in the same sport have different physiological makeups as well. Standardizing pitch counts and pitch limits do not take this into account.
Scientists are not even close to concluding who should be able to throw baseballs at the major league level, let alone how many throws lead to injury. There is no standard body type that makes up a pitcher and no standard workout that prevents injury across the board. You often see children who are "born" with great arms or at least better arms than other children with similar body structure. There is no predicting who these children are. Some children are faster and some are stronger and some can just throw that ball.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Pitch counts don't take into account pickoff throws to first base or fielding throws to bases during a game, but these are far more unnatural throws for a pitcher than the ones off the mound that are repeated in the thousands every year.
How about the throws that are made warming up between innings? I used to throw five pitches between innings; most pitchers will take the maximum of seven. Hey, if it's a long inning a pitcher can sneak in more with the umpire looking elsewhere. That's a variance of 15 pitches over the course of seven innings that are not counted.
And how about those long innings? If your team bats around and scores six runs in a half inning while you sit and tighten up, won't that have as much to do with potential injury than counting pitches -- if not more? But those are all just numbers that to this day are not taken into account when speaking of standardized pitch counts.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
When I was a major leaguer, I had an intense workout program to keep my skinny body in top form. I played for four different teams, and I can tell you: There are vast differences in the level of players' workouts (or lack thereof). Wouldn't it make sense that those who work out more and are in better shape would be able to shoulder a heavier workload? It didn't always work out that way.
Those who worked their butts off ended up on the disabled list as much as those who didn't. There really didn't seem to be any rhyme or reason to which players got hurt. How was it that in some years, I could go through an entire season healthy, and the next, I dealt with nagging tendinitis in my joints? If there were answers that could hold water, I would have been doing them!
Any pitcher can tell you that there are times when you get rocked early and get taken out of a game after 40 pitches only to feel like you threw 500 the next day. On the other hand, there are days that you throw a complete game with 130 pitches and wake up the next morning ready to take the hill again. Variances in mound height and slope, game situations and unseen mechanical differences all play a part in this phenomenon.
What about diet and sleep patterns? Even non-athletes know that some days you wake up refreshed and others you roll out of bed feeling achy and sore. Imagine pitching on both types of days. Isn't it valid to assume that we will be less inclined to head toward injury on the free and easy days? This has to do with how sound we have slept the prior evening and what our bodies are biologically processing during the previous 48 hours.
So let's see -- differing physiological make-up, workout programs, pregame routines, game situations, mound variances, mechanical variances, sleep patterns, biochemical makeup -- nothing sounds standard to me. This would require a scientific experiment with more complexity than could ever be devised. As I said above, I appreciate the effort to prevent injury, but pitch counts are not the answer.
One hundred pitches to one individual will stress his body quite differently than 100 pitches to someone else. Let the game go on and don't file everyone together. Every human being is different and every game is as well. That is the beauty of it all.
Let's go back to having managers and coaches evaluate pitchers' effectiveness on game day and not some copout pitch count that frees them of any responsibility for their pitching moves within a game
