topper09er

This says exactly what my point is: "While pitching is an inherently unnatural motion, throwing a pitch does not necessarily do permanent damage to a pitcher's arm. It's only when fatigue sets in (and a pitcher's mechanics start to waver) that continued pitching can result in irreversible injury. " This has absolutely nothing to do with pitch counts and is different for every single human on the planet. Just because it seems that there is some average number of pitches when fatigue sets in on average for a given age group still means nothing. As your article says, you only get injured by pitching when you are tired, and as I have tried to say, managers should not even care about pitch count and just remove pitchers when they are tired/ineffective. If this is in the 4th inning after 80 pitches or the 8th innings after 140 pitches or the 6 inning with 80 pitches it doesnt matter. Anyone who relies on pitch count rather than observing the subtleties that happen to pitchers when they start to get tired do not have good baseball instincts and do not know their team very well. Again, what does this study say about players who get injured with a low PAP? And how is the study able identify those pitchers and remove them from their list of players who happen to have a high PAP and get hurt because clearly their injury would have happened without the high PAP?

MLB certainly does not count warmup pitches and any time a pitch count is discussed, as it has been here, warmup pitches before the game and between innings are ignored as if they put no stress on an arm. A pitcher is allowed 8 warmup pitches between innings and can take less if they want to. I forget who but I recall recently someone got fined by MLB for taking too many warmup pitches between innings (not that that fact has anything to do with this discussion). I really do not think that anyone can prove any correlation between pitch counts and injuries, it is just conveinient to look at someone's pitch count when they get hurt and if it is high say it is the reason and if it is low or normal just ignore it. If you look over the course of baseball history there are just as many pitchers who have high pitches/innings and dont go on the DL as their are guys with low pitches/innings and do go on the DL. I think pitchers will either be most durable or mostly injury prone and there is nothing you can do about it. How do you explain players who get arm problems without being "overworked," and how do you know players who are "overworked" are not the same type of pitcher who would have gotten hurt either way. High pitches may cause a player to tire and become less effective over the season, but it will not put them on the DL. Mark Prior averaged 113 pitches per start in 2003 and now he has arm problems, so if he would have been limited to 90 pitches every other start you really think he would shutting us down for the cubs this weekend? I think he would still be on the shelf. Here are Mark Priors injuries throughout his career: September 2002 Strained hamstring while running the bases: Rest of season Midseason 2003 Shoulder after on-field collision with former Atlanta Braves second baseman Marcus Giles: 3 Starts Preseason 2004 Achilles tendon injury: 2 months Preseason 2005 Elbow strain: 15 days May 27, 2005 Throwing elbow - comeback line drive off the bat of Brad Hawpe: 1 month Preseason 2006 Strained shoulder: 3 Months July 14, 2006 Strained left oblique in batting practice: 2 starts August 14, 2006 Shoulder tendinitis: Rest of 2006 Season Spring Training 2007 Shoulder surgery: Entire 2007 Season March 26, 2008 Shoulder surgery recovery: First part of 2008 season (60 day DL) May 16, 2008 A tear in the capsule of his pitching shoulder; shoulder surgery: Out for another six to eight weeks (60 day DL); out for the entire season It looks like his first "overworked" pitcher injury was a strained elbow in 2005 which caused him to miss 3 starts and he was effective the rest of the season. Then his shoulder tendinitis came at the end of 2006 when he was ineffective and his pitch counts in his 9 starts spread over 53 days were: 88, 91, 101, 109, 76, 103, 106, 103, 58. Seems to me that his problems are a combination of overthrowing/bad mechanics and bad luck.

Because he is not tired, pitching well, you have a better chance of getting the hitter out than by bringing in a reliever, his stuff is just as good as it was earlier in the game. I see no reason why you should remove a pitcher who is doing well simply because he reaches some arbitrary random number of pitches. If some guy is effectively throwing a baseball 7000 times in 6 months an extra 300-500 pitches is not going to matter.

From 2008, number of times throwing 115+ pitches (I'll use your arbitrary 115 number):Lincecum: 12 times plus outings of: 114, 113 and two 111. His starts in Septemer were: 92, 127, 138, 118, 102, 103. No problems at all this year. Matt Cain: 5 times, plus 4 outings of 114 pitches, 3 outings of 113 pitches and 3 others of 110+ pitches. In August his starts were: 108, 126, 110, 125, 112, 109 and then 113. No problems this year. In 2008, Ben Sheets started on July 19 with 10 rest minus 2 innings in the all star game. Down the stretch his pitch counts were: 84, 96, 100, 97, 113, 110, 96, 100, 54, 120, 113, 24, 53. That is 1160 pitches over 70 days and 1 outing of 115+ pitches. In the first half of the season he had 4 outings of more than 115 pitches and none were back to back. That is a total of 5 on the season compared to Lincecum who did it 12 times including 3 in a row in September. So are you saying in August if he would have thrown 50 less pitches he would not have gone on the DL? When he threw 120 pitches on September it was a complete game shutout in a 1-0 game...and remember we made the playoffs by 1 game. Going into the 9th Sheets had given up 4 hits on 97 pitches. Would you have prefered Sheets didnt start the 9th and we sent out Torres to possibly blow the game? Do you think the 23 pitches he threw in that 9th innings caused him to miss the playoffs? I really think Sheets was going on the shelf regardless of pitch count, just like he will again in the future.

I agree, just after reading this: "Lefties change ups do have more of a natural screw ball effect than a righties" I though you were trying to argue that leftys have more movement based on the fact that they are left handed, not that they tend to have different arm slots and pitch grips on average. If you ever have to save your life by throwing a baseball staright just throw it from over the top like JJ hardy and you wont be able to make it tail if you try.

I guess my point more is guys will either have arm problems or they wont, there is really nothing a manager can do about it. You dont need to be careful and wait until someones career is over to see if they have arm problems or not. Sandy Koufax would have been out of baseball regardless of his pitch count, just like Sheets elbow was going to break down no matter what. Therefore, you should leave pitchers in until they are no longer effective instead of pulling them out with the logic that if you pitch them less per game they will not go on the DL. If guys get tired down the stretch then they will show it by starting to lose their good stuff earlier in the game and then you should take them out and it would be smart to skip a start and let them rest up. This appear to happen to Sabathia last season, but obviously we needed every pitch he threw in the regular season to even make the playoffs. But if the guy is going to miss significant time on the DL with major arm problems, it will happen reagrdless of pitch count. It seems like that is what people on here are concerned about for Yo. Either his arm will break down or not, it happens to lots of guys and lots guys can go their whole career with minimal arm problems. If you are concerned Yo will tire over the stretch of the season, that will show itself and he will start to lose velocity on his heater and break on his curve earlier in the game. If this happens, it would be wise to skip a start and pay close attention to when he tires and pull him with low pitch counts. If it doesnt happen, thats a huge bonus for the brewers.

In 1989, at the age of 42, Nolan Ryan averaged 123 pitches per start over 32 starts and had only 1 start where he threw less than 100 pitches, 99 pitches in 8.1 IP. In Spetember his pitch counts were 146, 150, 160, 140, 120. The next season he led the AL in Ks and WHIP. How do you explain that? From 1947-1963 Warren Spahn averaged 278 IP and 35 starts without missing ANY time on the DL. There is no pitch count data for him I would assume it is above 115 per start. How is that possible? My point is that it is a case by case thing, and applying a blanket 100 pitches/start to everyone is not smart.

Ben Sheets injuries:2003: bulging disc in back, not pitch count related. 2005: Ear infection, not pitch count related 2006: Should tendinitis, possibly over working/pitch count related, possibly he was injury prone and it would have happen either way, it just would have happened a little later if he threw 10 less pitches per outing. 2007: Hamstring, not pitch count related 2008: Elbow, possibly pitch count related, possibly not. 3051 pitches thrown/31 starts = 98 pitches per start...so the magical 100 pitches per start was used but he still got hurt??? How is that possible?? There are statistics that say he should have had a low chance of injury with this number of pitches, doesnt make sense?

I totally agree, guys will have arm problems or they wont. You hurt yourself with either: bad mechanics that put too much stress in certain places, over working by throwing when you are already tired, and bad luck by just naturally being a little more weak somewhere in your arm than normal. I think pitch count is extremely overrated (like saves) and managers who rely on it too much just dont have good baseball intuition. It so annoying when BA is like well this guy finished this inning with 98 pitches so obviously he is done like it is some golden rule that smart managers should abide by. You can look at trends that say certain pitch counts correlate to a certain injury risk, but you need to remember that is the major league average and does not apply to every player individually. Pitchers should be taken out when there are no longer effective, not when they reach the magical 100 pitch count. It is also annoying when someone is obviously not effective anymore but only at like 80 pitches so they automatically go out for the next inning and then often get chased. Pitchers can be ineffective at 60 pitches or 80 or 100 or 140. Good managers should be able to watch a pitcher and tell when they cant hits their spots, lose velocity, lose break on their pitches, take longer between pitches. When things like that happen pitchers should be removed to avoid injuries. Yesterday, Yo still had his A curve in the 7th and there was no reason to take him out. Last season Sabathia threw 3813 pitches in 253 IP and started 35 G. So if you add 8 warmup pitches per inning (8*200) plus say 50 warmup pitches before each start plus say 500 pitches in spring training plus long toss between starts his arm felt (very approximately) ~ 8000 pitches. So he averaged 3813/35 = 108 pitches per start. Say you add 15 per start he would have thrown 525 more pitches for about 525/8525 = 6% more pitches. If his arm falls off this year it would have fallen off anyways even if he would have average 100 pitches per start or 123 pitches per start last year.

Gamel is looking worse and worse with this part time playing time. He looks very confused and is behind average fastballs a lot. Yesterday Pelfrey struck him out on the same inside fastball twice (I will say they were both very good pitches) but you would expect Gamel to have learned something from his first K and foul that 2nd off at least. Its like hes not up there looking fastball...or anything, he is just trying to react and he is late on everything. He needs a long stretch of full playing time so he can try to get into a grove and maybe Braun to tell him to start being cocky and aggressive up there. I would like to see Gamel at 3B and McGehee at 2B for the next 10+ games in a row regardless of pitching matchups.

OK, I even spelled it changeup in my post because that is what it is called today, I was just mentioning that no ones knows it evolves from change-op because if you think about it, what does "changeup" mean? Also, I was clearly not talking about whether more lefties have a natural tail based on the fact that more lefties throw circle changes, I was talking about your theory that someone who left handed naturally has more ability to cause a baseball to move in a certain direction, which is rediculous. As I said, if 2 pitchers throw the same exact pitch with the same exact release both pitches will move exactly the same amount. If you have a lefty pitching S-N and a righty throwing E-W and factor in the rotation of the earth you might have something, but other than that there is nothing inherantly special about left handed people that give them an advantage at causing baseball to tail. Have you been watching Hoff this year at all??? When his changeup is on that thing tails back across the plate a huge amount for a significant "screwball tail."

First, there is absolutley no difference between a lefty throwing a pitch and a righty throwing a pitch except that they are "opposite," or break the other way. There is nothing special about leftys that cause them to have more break in a certain direction than a righty. A lefty change, if throw the same way by a righty, will have the exact same "screw ball effect." In general, however, the best changups (Santana, Hamels) tend to belong to leftys because they face many more opposite hitting matchups (although there are plenty of good RPH changes like Hoffman). This is because RH hitters see the ball better and earlier from a lefty (and vice versa) so if they are guessing fastball and you have a good change that looks like a fastball they will be way out in front because they think you just threw them a fastball down the middle. Now, a LH hitter sees the ball worse and later from a LH pitcher. Therefore, since it will take the LH hitter a little longer to see the pitch and recognize it as a "straight pitch" (fastball, changeup; rather than a curve or slider) and by throwing it a little slower you just gave him the extra time back that it took him to recognize the pitch. If you would have thrown a fastball he would have recognized it too late a been behind it, but by slowing the pitch down you give the hitter a chance to catch up. As mentioned above, this is more pronounced in a L-L matchup because they are more rare than a R-R matchup and the LH hitter is not as used to recognizing pitches from a LHP than a RH hitter is against RHP. Also, the word changeup is really spelled wrong because the name for the pitch comes from the phrase "change-of-pace", so the nickname became a "change-op" not a changeup.

Best comment of the day, always defer to the judgement of engineers when dealing with anything... OK, first, I think that like Joe Morgan, Harold is a smart baseball man who knows the game and knows what good teams need to do to win, but is just so horrible at communicating his ideas that it really takes away basically all of his credibility. His blog post really looks like he just dictated it to someone off the top of his head and published it without even reading through it once. The blog itself it terrible and probably would get an F in some high school debate class because it is so poorly written. Im not sure if HR's point is that walks are not as good as hits, I think that is his point but the blog is so bad I cant tell for sure, but Ill assume it is. That and the fact that in certain situations certain players should be up there hacking instead of looking to walk. I will ignore his whole point about sluggers clogging up the bases which seems to indicate he would rather see a strikeout than a walk. I think it is obvious that a hit is better than a walk because a walk can never be better than a hit and they are only equal when no one is on base (which is the majority of the time). How much better is a hit with 2 outs and a runner on 2nd? If Mat Gamel is up with a runner on 2nd with Kendall on deck then a hit is "much, much" better than a walk, but if Hardy is up with 2 outs, runner on 2nd and Braun on deck a walk may only be "much" better than a hit. One thing which seems to get lost is that good pitchers do not walk batters, and playoff teams have good pitchers. I think this is the biggest flaw in the whole money ball strategy and may be one of the reasons that the A's consistentaly made the playoffs (because over the course of the season walks are valuable against the mediocre pitching across the league) but never won the playoffs. Beane just writes this off and says the playoffs are just random luck that anyone can win, but for all of the smart thinking he puts into the rest of his ideas he should realize that if you have to face Roy Halladay 3 times in 7 games you better find other ways to win than walking a few times and hitting 3 run dingers. The overall goal of an offensive player is to produce runs, either by scoring them due to other teammates or driving other teammates in. OPS is a good stat because it tries to combine these 2 aspects of offense into one stat. The main problem I see with OPS is how things are weighted; walks are equal to singles, doubles, triples and homers in OBP, and OBP is equal to SLG% in terms of the fact that they simply added together. The first part, "getting on base for your teammates to drive you in" or OBP, should measure how good you are at scoring runs, which was previously measured by the stat runs. Most modern experts now write this is off a pretty meaningless stat in terms of measureing this "getting on base" stat and rely on OBP as a better measure, although the idiots who vote for MVP and HOF still like the stat of runs. If you think about it in terms of getting on base a single is equal to a walk, a double is better as you are in scoring position, a triple is even better as you can score in many more ways especially with less than 2 outs, and a HR is the best possible outcome as you do not need to rely on teammates to score. Also, stolen bases should come into play because a single or walk plus SB is as good as a double in terms of putting yourself into position to score for your teammates, but a CS is much worse than not stealing because now you have 0 chance to score. So a much better OBP should be something like (TB + BB + SB)/(AB+BB+CS). This is much closer to SLG% than OBP and SLG% is really a better measure of "getting on base" than OBP except that SLG% ignores walks. The other half of the equation, "ability to drive in teammates" is actaully measured decently by SLG% because a walk is useless except in the rare bases loaded situation, a single is good, a double is better, a triple is better than a double (not necesarily) and homer is best. SLG% as TB/AB is actually a pretty good measure. The old school version of this stat is RBIs and people still really love this stat although SLG% is really a better measure because RBIs depend on your teammates. It is still difficult to look at one player with 110 RBIs and a .600 SLG% and say he had a better season than a player with 140 RBIs and a .540 SLG%. However, when you think about the difference between a double and triple it really reflects the "getting on base/getting into scoring position" stat more than the "driving runners in" stat because in any situation with runners on (from man on first to bases loaded) a double scores and same number of runs as a triple assuming the same speed on the bases and the difference really lies in the speed of the batter. SLG% should really be something like: hits in front of the outfielders are good, hits that get behind the outfielders are better, and homers are best. So first assuming we will weigh hits based on total bases (saying a single=1...HR=4) then "OPS" or best hitter stat should look something like [(TB+BB+HBP+SB)/(AB+HBP+BB+CS)]+[(TB+SF)/(AB+SF)] instead of [(H+BB+HBP)/(AB+BB+HBP+SF)]+[TB/AB]. As an example lets look at the American League OPS leader last season, Milton bradley. Using the current formula his OPS was: [133H+80BB+9HBP/414AB+80+9+6SF]+233TB/414 = .999. If you take out the walks, his OPS would be basically AVG + SLG% = .321+.563 = .884 so the walks accounted for .115 or .115/.999 = 12% of his OPS. If you use the way I outlined his OPS would be [233+80+9+5SB/414+80+9+3CS]+[233+6/414+6] = .646 + .569 = 1.215. If you remove the walks the number is 1.149 so the walks account for 1.215-1.149/1.215 = 5% of the number. If you agree with any of this it shows that walks may be overvalued in the conventional OPS as they contribute more the the value than they should. It also seems like HRs are undervalued in the conventional OPS because they are the only way to score and drive in runs on your own without teammates, and they must be better than the simple weighed scale used in SLG% and certainly better than a single or walk as calcualted in OBP. Now, with the bases loaded you could say a HR is twice as good as a single because you get 4 runs instead of 2, but with a runner on 1st a HR is infinitely better than a single because you get 2 runs instead of 0. This leads to the problem of how to decide how much better a HR is than a triple or double or single in terms of both getting on base and driving runs in. For getting on base a triple is much better than a double because you can score in many more ways, but they are essentially the same in terms of driving runs in (the differance is more a function of the outfield arms and speed). And obviously a HR is much, much better than anything else for both categories. The weighted on base average (wOBA) at fangraphs does the best job of handling all of this and producing a number for "best hitter" that I have seen. I know this is way too long already, but after all of that if you correlate the wOBA leaders with the OPS leaders they correlate pretty well. For 2009 in the AL: (Rank in OPS - Rank in wOBA) Bradley (1-1) Rodriguez (2-3) Quentin (3-2) Youkilis (4-4) Huff (5-7) Hamilton (6-8) Markakis (7-6) Kinsler (8-5) So OPS is easier to calculate and still pretty good for determining the "best offensive player"

Why does Gamel bat 2nd the in non-counsell RHP lineup but Hardy bats 2nd if Counsell is in and Gamel then hits 6th? Whoever you think is the better 2nd hitter against RHP should always be there. I personally like Gamel hitting 2nd, it gives us a L-R-L combo in our order and it should help his development and confidence with all the FBs he will get hitting before Braun and Fielder. Also, why would you give Prince 6 off days over the season, that is way to much for your best run producer. If you ever need to rest Prince you should have him DH a few times. Braun and Fielder should never get a day off when they are healthy, they under 26 years old, they dont need the rest. I also dont like Hart 1 or 2, yes he has speed and is hot now, but his horrible decline in OBP over the past few years is too much to overlook, Braun will have too many ABs with no one on.

Um...I like Reggie White for what he did for the Pack...but you are lying to yourself if you call him untarnished. He stole money that was meant to rebuild his church and that whole antigay speach in front of the the state assembly was pretty bad. Its also you opinion that Favre has ruined his legacy, why do you blame him for wanting to play the game that he loves, it was Ted Thompson who wouldnt let him play for the packers, not Favre wanting to play for another team. I just hope they release all the names from 2003 so we can move on from this thing. It is obvious Sosa was juicing. There is only 1 name everyone cares about from the list, Pujols. Lets see if he is on the list and then move on with the understanding that when you look at the stats from the steroid era you need to round down a little bit.

Hopefully no one sees this, if I was a hitter who could face Dif I would definetly learn from this and sit on his cutter.

Maybe over his career, but at this point Kendall has to be the worst hitting starter in the entire league. He has ZERO ability to drive the ball anywhere, all of his hits are luck that either get through the 3rd-SS hole or fall behind the 2nd baseman. Remember, Kendall has 5 IBB which is infinity percent higher than the worst hitter in the league should have but he does bat in front of the pitcher (which always causes me to laugh whenever another team pitches around Kendall when he is just as bad as the pitcher half the time). So if you take those away his stats are: .227/.282/.273 over 207 PA!!! Rivera this year is: .262/.319/.333 in 47 PA. Kendall does NOTHING offensively better than Rivera, although his defense seems better enough to justify more playing time, but I think Rivera should be catching 2 out of the 5 starters at least.

When you look at a 3 game series and say to yourself we need to win these 2 because pitcher X is going on the other day and that is a virtual loss, pitcher X would be an ace.

Looking at the schedule, it is brutal until the break, if we are at .500 by the break I will be happy. We have road series at CLE, DET and CHC. Home against, MIN, SF, NYM, STL, LAD. Ouch.. We need to stay positive because we are not going to be in first place at the break, but after that we have play almost all bad teams except for 3 in LA, home and away CIN until September in STL. If we are at .500 by the break we can get 10 or even 15 games above .500 by september and then hopefully not choke like last year... Its a long season

Todd Helton, Manny Ramirez, Albert Pujols, Brian Giles, Chipper Jones, Lance Berkman, Jim Thome, Jason Giambi and Bobby Abreu. The point of this is not just see who can look up the answer first, if you actually knew Brain Giles right away then Im sorry for assuming.

Question, who are the 9 active players with a .400+ career OBP%? Hint, 2 RH batters, 5 LH batters, 2 switch hitters

I agree they are both out, just wondering about how you score the play for the hitter, as a flyout or hit. It would be interesting if it was a hit because it would be a way to get a hit without reaching base...which makes me think it must be scored as a flyout.

Been thinking about this and I have come to the (maybe faulty) conclusion that this is not possible. Once the runner on first passes the runner on second, he is declared out and therefore no longer are there runners on first and second and therefore the infield fly rule is no longer in effect. - There is no provision that states "before the ball is hit" or anything of the sort. There is a provision that could render an umpires declaration of " Infield fly - batter out" moot - the ball bounces untouched in front of the pitcher and kicks to foul territory making it a foul ball and therefore no out even though the ump has screamed "Batter out". What I have always wondered about this situation is that when a batted ball hits a runner, the ball is dead, the runner is out and the batter is credited with a hit, but what happens in this case to the batter? Is he credited with a hit even though he flew out due to the infield fly? I dont tihnk he would be given first base, but I wonder how it would be scored, as a flyout or hit?

1) It is 50 years, from 1901-1950 close enough 3) Fred Haney 4) John McGraw

Sorry its not a trick question, at least 300 games managed. 5) Larry Doby is correct, the 2nd black player and 2nd black manager