Tillman's Innings Pitched

[Sports Guy]

I agree that 140 innings for the season isn't enough...I would like to see him get around 160.

[Frobby]

Nobody has the answer on how to develop young arms to become good major league starting pitchers. They used to just let everybody throw until the game was over or their arm fell off, whichever came first. That seemed to result in lots of injuries to valuable and expensive players so they (they being professional coaches) rather quickly switched to never allowing anyone to throw much more than 100 pitches. 100 being that point because we have ten fingers and 100 ended up being a round number in the base-10 system. We're at a point where good young arms are never allowed to approach any kind of pitch count that might be considered in any way dangerous by anyone ever.

Hopefully one day somebody will figure this out and we'll go back to having pitchers who can go 7 or 8 innings once in a while, just without the snapped ligaments.

I think Hernandez went 114 pithches in his final start in Norfolk. They definitely have been careful with Tillman in general. As someone pointed out, he is the youngest pitcher on any of our full season teams. My guess is they won't fully take the wraps off until next year.

[Stevo5278]

Nobody has the answer on how to develop young arms to become good major league starting pitchers. They used to just let everybody throw until the game was over or their arm fell off, whichever came first.

When we were playing Texas earlier in the season our TV guys mentioned that Nolan Ryan is getting rid of pitch counts for the minor league pitchers and simply letting guys pitch until they get tired or start getting ineffective.

The argument is always made, "they don't want guys getting hurt." Is there any statistical evidence that pitchers are getting hurt less in the era of pitch counts, 5 man rotations, and 5-6 inning starts than beforehand?

[Lucky Jim]

When we were playing Texas earlier in the season our TV guys mentioned that Nolan Ryan is getting rid of pitch counts for the minor league pitchers and simply letting guys pitch until they get tired or start getting ineffective.

The argument is always made, "they don't want guys getting hurt." Is there any statistical evidence that pitchers are getting hurt less in the era of pitch counts, 5 man rotations, and 5-6 inning starts than beforehand?

This is one of those revolutionary-but-idiotic ideas. I've got no faith that we know enough about how long-term harm presents itself, if at all, on a near-term basis, or the flip side, just how accumulated pitches effect a pitcher's arm.

Who says that side-effects have to present themselves in a single start in order for there to be any harm?

Just because I don't look tired at 135 pitches doesn't mean that two great 130 pitch starts in a row at age 20 isn't going to lead to some kind of damage in start number 3.

[Slappy]

This is one of those revolutionary-but-idiotic ideas. I've got no faith that we know enough about how long-term harm presents itself, if at all, on a near-term basis, or the flip side, just how accumulated pitches effect a pitcher's arm.

Who says that side-effects have to present themselves in a single start in order for there to be any harm?

Just because I don't look tired at 135 pitches doesn't mean that two great 130 pitch starts in a row at age 20 isn't going to lead to some kind of damage in start number 3.

Yeah, Ryan's approach is pretty risky. I believe the saying is that pitcher's don't get injured from throwing, they get injured from throwing while tired. Was it Billy Martin in Oakland who ran his starters into the ground and ended up with like 3 career ending arm injuries?

I don't have any problems with pitch count if that's what they're doing. Limiting a certain amount of innings makes less sense, especially if he's throwing a lot of single digit pitch innings.

[DrungoHazewood]

When we were playing Texas earlier in the season our TV guys mentioned that Nolan Ryan is getting rid of pitch counts for the minor league pitchers and simply letting guys pitch until they get tired or start getting ineffective.

The argument is always made, "they don't want guys getting hurt." Is there any statistical evidence that pitchers are getting hurt less in the era of pitch counts, 5 man rotations, and 5-6 inning starts than beforehand?

The data is incomplete. Mostly anecdotal. So it's hard to tell. It's also biased, because everyone remembers the guys who threw 40 starts/300 innings a year, but they rarely bring up the guys who tried to do that and ended up as sheet metal workers at 23.

We also have the serious problem of pitchers from the 60s and 70s pitching in an environment of 3.5-4.0 run a game baseball with pitchers batting and 2-3 guys on every team like Luis Hernandez. While today many lineups have a 20+ homer guy in the #8 spot, runs are around 5.0 a game, and every pitcher is expected to throw at near 100% all the time.

I have a feeling that today's 100 pitch limits, five-man rotations, and 5-6 inning starts would be much, much better for arms in the same situations as the old way. And that trying to throw guys out there for 300+ innings today would be catastrophic. But that's nearly impossible and probably irresponsible to test.

[DrungoHazewood]

One other thought I've had is that removing a pitcher when he starts to labor is understandable, but questionable. Isn't that shutting the barn door after the horse has left?

No, I don't have any better ideas that don't involve pulling starters in the 5th inning when they're still cruising along.

[Stevo5278]

The data is incomplete. Mostly anecdotal. So it's hard to tell. It's also biased, because everyone remembers the guys who threw 40 starts/300 innings a year, but they rarely bring up the guys who tried to do that and ended up as sheet metal workers at 23.

We also have the serious problem of pitchers from the 60s and 70s pitching in an environment of 3.5-4.0 run a game baseball with pitchers batting and 2-3 guys on every team like Luis Hernandez. While today many lineups have a 20+ homer guy in the #8 spot, runs are around 5.0 a game, and every pitcher is expected to throw at near 100% all the time.

I have a feeling that today's 100 pitch limits, five-man rotations, and 5-6 inning starts would be much, much better for arms in the same situations as the old way. And that trying to throw guys out there for 300+ innings today would be catastrophic. But that's nearly impossible and probably irresponsible to test.

Good points... For every Jim Palmer and Nolan Ryan who racked up 300 inning seasons and 20+ complete games every year there is a Wally Bunker who had his career cut short due to injury. Then again modern sports medicine could have probably saved some of those guys who were derailed by injuries in the 50s, 60s, and 70s if they pitched today.

When it comes to the better hitters in baseball I always wonder whether or not the hitters really are better compared to their peers in the past. Before the advent of the specialized bullpen a team generally had 4 starters and 5 relievers. In a 24 team league that's a total of 216 pitchers in MLB. In today's 30 team, specialized game the average team has 5 starters and 7 relievers for a total of 360 pitchers in MLB. My point here is that almost half of the pitchers in MLB wouldn't have cracked the big leagues 30-40 years ago.

On the other hand back in the old days the average team had 16 hitters for a total of 384 hitters in MLB. Today's teams have an average of 13 hitters for a total of 390 hitters in MLB. So bottom line is that the number of hitters have stayed about the same in MLB since the late 60s. You still have to be one of the Top 400 hitters alive to make it to the show but there are almost twice as many pitchers as there were 30-40 years ago.

While I believe there are more talented hitters at some positions like SS than there once were, I'm not convinced that the average hitter is any better than he was 30-40 years ago. His numbers are likely inflated due to a poorer overall quality of pitching caused by expansion, the 5 man rotation, and a larger bullpen of specialists.

Back to the original point. I'm not pulling a Dave Johnson here and saying that we should throw these kids out there until their arms fall off. I'm saying that give them the chance to stretch themselves out in their minor league careers. 100-120 pitches over 7-8 innings is not unreasonable IMO.

[TyCobb]

This is one of those revolutionary-but-idiotic ideas. I've got no faith that we know enough about how long-term harm presents itself, if at all, on a near-term basis, or the flip side, just how accumulated pitches effect a pitcher's arm.

Who says that side-effects have to present themselves in a single start in order for there to be any harm?

Just because I don't look tired at 135 pitches doesn't mean that two great 130 pitch starts in a row at age 20 isn't going to lead to some kind of damage in start number 3.

I wonder if this is going to have aside of effect of pitchers not throwing 100% effort every pitch now. I always wanted to see how that method would work against professional hitters. I have a gut feeling that it would actually improve the pitching performance. Instead of sitting their fastball in a 90-93mph range then would now be in a much larger range say 84-93mph.

[DrungoHazewood]

When it comes to the better hitters in baseball I always wonder whether or not the hitters really are better compared to their peers in the past. Before the advent of the specialized bullpen a team generally had 4 starters and 5 relievers. In a 24 team league that's a total of 216 pitchers in MLB. In today's 30 team, specialized game the average team has 5 starters and 7 relievers for a total of 360 pitchers in MLB. My point here is that almost half of the pitchers in MLB wouldn't have cracked the big leagues 30-40 years ago.

The population and player pool that MLB pulls from has expanded more quickly than the requirement baseball has for more pitchers or position players. Just in the US there are 120 million more people than in 1960. And the ability to find players, develop players, and keep them healthy has also dramatically improved.

I have little doubt that there are enough players to field 50 or more MLB teams at the level of play seen in 1960.

[Stotle]

I wonder if this is going to have aside of effect of pitchers not throwing 100% effort every pitch now. I always wanted to see how that method would work against professional hitters. I have a gut feeling that it would actually improve the pitching performance. Instead of sitting their fastball in a 90-93mph range then would now be in a much larger range say 84-93mph.

I think the issue is that the traditionally "weaker" offensive positions are now expected to be much better. So there isn't really a time where a pitcher can lighten his effort.

[Flip217]

When we were playing Texas earlier in the season our TV guys mentioned that Nolan Ryan is getting rid of pitch counts for the minor league pitchers and simply letting guys pitch until they get tired or start getting ineffective.

The argument is always made, "they don't want guys getting hurt." Is there any statistical evidence that pitchers are getting hurt less in the era of pitch counts, 5 man rotations, and 5-6 inning starts than beforehand?

Without going into all the statistical data (but I'll do my best if you're interested, though of course now I can't find my copy of the book), in "The Book on The Book" by Bill Felber, he presents an argument that the biggest danger to pitcher's arms is pitching too many innings per outing at a young age, rather than an accumulation of innings over a season, and that this risk lessens as the pitcher enters his late 20's and early 30's.

That is, if you have a 19 year old prospect, it might be a good idea to limit him to 90 or 100 pitches per outing, but don't worry so much about him logging 160 or 170 innings or whatever. Once the kid is 27 and has put on extra muscle, and pitched a whole bunch more, you don't have to worry so much about a high pitch count.

Still, I don't see how you can have hard and fast rules about this, given the differences in age, experience, size, strength, delivery, etc. It just seems more likely that one guy could throw 130 innings and be fine while another might blow his arm out at 110.

[TyCobb]

I think the issue is that the traditionally "weaker" offensive positions are now expected to be much better. So there isn't really a time where a pitcher can lighten his effort.

I am just going by gut, but I think increasing the range of a players fastball would really work against a lot hitters...not just the 7-9 hitters.

[Stotle]

I am just going by gut, but I think increasing the range of a players fastball would really work against a lot hitters...not just the 7-9 hitters.

Eh, I think that's what a change-up is for. If simply throwing a fastball slower were effective, why would pitchers need to learn change-ups?

[TyCobb]

Eh, I think that's what a change-up is for. If simply throwing a fastball slower were effective, why would pitchers need to learn change-ups?

Actually you throw a change up with the same effort as a fastball (your suppose to anyway). You just grip the ball with more fingers and deeper in the palm to take the MPH off. (I know you know this...not sure why i am typing it)

A change-up would be useful when your going 100% effort in the game. You won't need to throw a change-up when your not going 100% but the wide range in your fastball should not allow the hitter to lock in on your speed as easy as it is when your sitting in your 3mph range.