Pitch counts changing the development stages of starters - Current Strategy - baseball ptiching - Brief Article

Baseball Digest, Sept, 2002 by Jerome Holtzman

ADMITTEDLY, THE GAME HAS changed. What happens today cannot be compared to the past. One of the new-fangled inventions that seems to have escaped popular notice is the pitch count. It isn't unusual for a manager to tell his starting pitcher, "All we want is six good innings."

There is also a new unofficial and supporting stat created by John Lowe, the respected Detroit baseball writer. It's called a "quality start": six innings with a yield of three runs or fewer. It appears to be widely accepted but there have been naysayers.

Sandy Koufax, the great Hall of Fame pitcher, is among the former players who object.

"To me, a quality start," Koufax insists, "is when the starting pitcher is still on the mound when the game is over and his teammates rush out of the dugout to congratulate him on the victory."

Today, the odds of this occurrence are higher than winning the lottery, or the Cubs winning the World Series. And the biggest deterrent, in my opinion, is the pitch count. The limit is about 110 pitches which on an average allows for a six-inning stay.

"The pitchers are trained completely different than in the past," said Larry Rothschild, the pitching coach for the Cubs and previously for the Cincinnati Reds and Florida Marlins.

"All the clubs are very protective of their pitchers." Rothschild observed. "Today's starters throw fewer innings." And surprisingly there are more injuries than ever before.

It's baseball's Catch-22.

The first thing to do is change the training, to emphasize that five or six innings isn't enough. "To restore the iron-man pitcher maybe we should go back to a four-man rotation," Roths-child said. "I'm not sure what the answer is."

Neither is White Sox manager Jerry Manuel:

"If you start a big strong guy, and he knows how to pitch, you can stay with him longer. But when you've got young pitchers and they get into the 100-pitch count I become concerned because of the injury factor."

There are many reasons why today's starters don't have to go more than six. Primary among them has been the population increase of relievers. Half of the pitchers now work out of the bullpen. They are specialists, categorized as middlemen or long men, set-up men, short men, usually left-handers who often face only one batter, and the closers, who work the perilous and crucial ninth and get all the glory and fat contracts.

Mickey Herskowitz of Houston, a longtime scribe and reliable source, says the pitch count began when Paul Richards was the general manager of the Houston Colt .45s. This was in 1962, the year before Houston played its first National League game.

Larry Dierker, until recently the Houston manager, had been signed by the Astros out of high school and was a prize prospect. On his 18th birthday, Dierker started against the San Francisco Giants and got into trouble in the first inning. The Giants had runners at first and third with Willie Mays and Jim Hart coming up. Dierker Struck them out but was lifted in the third inning after throwing about 60 pitches, his limit.

"They didn't want to take any chances," Herskowitz said. "They were afraid he would hurt his arm."

As Dierker blossomed--(a career total of 139 victories) he was taken out only when ineffective. He had one season when he worked 305 innings and five others with 200 or more. "When he had his 300-inning season, nobody paid much attention," Herskowitz said. "There were a lot of 300-inning pitchers."

The number of pitches thrown in a single game were not recorded before the computer age. No precise figures are available. But according to several beat writers, Nolan Ryan, when he was with the California Angels, threw 259 pitches in a 12-inning game against Kansas City. Ryan worked 332 innings in 1974.

Was he tired? Apparently not. The next year he worked 326 innings.

Chuck Tanner, who managed in the majors 19 seasons, insists there would be fewer injuries if the four-man rotation was restored. He rebelled against the pitch count when he managed the Atlanta Braves and the Chicago White Sox. During these tours Johnny Sain was his pitching coach.

"I remember one day Tom Glavine threw 150 to 160 pitches. Sain showed me the pitch counter. I told him to change it to 120. And sure enough one of the club executives came into the clubhouse and started to bawl me out for keeping Glavine in. He asked his pitch count.

"I said `I don't know. Ask Sain. He has the counter.' Sain had changed it to 120. The front office guy apologized."

Tanner said Sain taught him a lot about pitching. Foremost was that pitchers should throw every day, not throw hard, but just lob the ball and play catch to loosen tip. Pitchers must keep their arm lubricated. "If hitters take batting practice every day," Tanner asked, "why shouldn't pitchers throw between starts?"

When he was with the White Sox, in a crunch, Tanner pitched Wilbur Wood on two days' rest, every third day. Wood didn't throw hard. He was a knuckleballer and may be the last pitcher to start both games of a doubleheader.

Tanner also had three young flamethrowers, all at the same time--Goose Gossage, Terry Forster and Bart Johnson: "I used them a lot. I was told they would break down. Well, Gossage had a 22-year big league career. Forster was up for 16 years. Bart Johnson went out early. But he didn't hurt his arm. He hurt his knee."