The 3500 club (pitch counts)

[Ennder]

Some interesting information on this blog especialy pertaining to Sheets and Capuano.

http://kobayashibaseball.blogspot.com/

Here are some members of the 3500 Club who made the list more than once between 2001 and 2007

Ben Sheets
Jason Schmidt
Matt Clement
Kerry Wood
Mark Prior
Russ Ortiz
Freddy Garcia
Barry Zito
Carlos Zambrano
Doug Davis
Noah Lowry
Chris Capuano
Dontrelle Willis
Tim Hudson
Mark Mulder

You'll notice everyone on that list has seen their career head the wrong way after throwing 3500+ pitches multiple years. Just something interesting to keep in mind when we watch how many pitches they let Gallardo throw this year.

I know I was worried about Capuano after they abused him in 2005 trying to get him to 20 wins and by Sheets in 2004 when he pitched so many innings, I sure hope they don't do the same with Gallardo.

 

 

[twobrewers]

The article itself is pretty poorly written.

 

But the idea seems to be pretty solid.

 

I have a feeling we are heading towards a 6-man rotation in the future.

[Ennder]

Yeah the article is just some blog entries, but figured I should link it since I borrowed the stats from it. I notice that Oswalt and Smoltz both lived in the 3500 pitch range and survived it, but there are very few guys who sit in that range for 2-3 years and still pitch well for very long.

[bullox]

And then there are the fine examples of Cy Young and Walter Johnson, etc, who pitched more in half a season than most pitchers nowadays do in two years...

[Ennder]

http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/article/what-pitch-counts-hath-wrought/

 

Pitchers really didn't throw all that many more pitches back in the day, hitters just worked the count less so they went more innings. The difference is somewhere in the order of 10-20% and that was probably because the mound changes have made pitching more stressful combined with more violent type pitches than in the past.

 

I personally also buy into the modern pitchers pitch more high stress innings. You just don't see that many hitters that are easy outs.

[bullox]

One thing I noticed while glancing at that article: the most dominant pitcher of the recent era, with a long career full of mostly injury free years in my opinion is Roger Clemens. His estimated pitch count for his career? ~68,000.

 

Cy Young? ~107,000.

[Ennder]

I'm gonna imagine the farther back in history you go the less that little tool he is using works. But yeah that doesn't surprise me too much, pitching in the dead ball era was a joke compared to now so I imagine any comparison is going to fail.

[JimH5]

He makes a decent point about pitchers being overused and the consequence of such, but I got frustrated with his stupid roller coaster metaphor.