Wimpy pitchers with their 90 pitch limits

beckdawg

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Story of a Spann/Marichel matchup that went 16 innings. Marichel had 220 pitches and Spann 202

https://sabr.org/gamesproj/game/july-2-1963-marichal-outduels-spahn-16-inning-thriller

Doubt either was throwing max effort pitches. It's really not throwing pitches that teams worry about. It's the effort you're putting into them that does. Also there's the fact that in 2017 league average hitters hit .259/.329/.433 where as in 1963 league average was .255/.319/.387. On base and average are largely irrelevant but a 46 point difference in the slugging is a big deal. Jason Heyward is a .389 slugger and basically is a better than average 1963 hitter at .259/.326/.389.

Marichal only had one season after age 31 where he was under 3.71 era. The more interesting fact to me about that game is that Spahn as 42 and threw that many pitches. But either way it was a far different game. Marichal averaged 5.91 k/9 throughout his career. Spahn averaged 4.43. Those numbers wouldn't get you out of AA today. Hell, they might not even get you drafted. Regardless, the difference between those players and pitchers today is I doubt they were throwing 90 let alone 95. If your jamie moyer out there throwing low 80's or a knuckleballer then sure you can throw til your arm falls off because there's not a ton of stress on it. On the other hand when you're throwing max effort fastballs or ridiculous breaking stuff that puts a lot of stress on your arm.

All that is one of the reasons I frankly like Hendricks a lot because I think he's a pretty safe bet to stay healthy throughout his career. He often gets compared to Maddux but the thing I hope he's most like Maddux in is that Maddux went like 19 years or some ridiculous number without a DL stint. Obviously hendricks had a short one last year but if you're that durable you're going to be a huge value no matter how good you are and if you're good to very good you have a real shot at being special in terms of value.
 

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I saw Marichel pitch many times and never saw him throw less than max effort. To the point where he nearly fell over on every pitch. Spann was a location pitcher. I believe Carl Hubell who was at that game called Spann an Ironman

There were plenty of guys that threw very hard that routinely pitched complete games at max effort levels (Ryan, McDowell, Bunning, Carlton, McClain, Seaver, Gibson, Drysdale, Koufax) so that argument doesnt hold

My analogy is that I was a 2 hour a day, 6 day a week weightlifter for 15 years. Never was I able to increase weight and performance unless I increased effort. So when the prevailing attitude is that a pitcher can only throw 90 pitches on a 5-6 day rotation that becomes their limit. They have been babied to the max.

If you had told these guys that they only had to pitch 5 1/2 inning they would have said let me pitch on 3 days rest
 

anotheridiot

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kids were not allowed to throw curve balls back in the day. Hell, I played little league in the 70's and was not allowed. Now they throw the twistys in the under developed arms and eventually blow out their ligaments. Seems like the norm is now to just have the kid have the surgery before he tears it on his own. That's the biggest difference in he game. Remember when Jake Arrieta was a nobody in Baltimore? They forbade pitchers to throw cutters. Did he wait long enough with his delay and eventual yoga regimin or did the delay keep his arm in tact?
 

beckdawg

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My analogy is that I was a 2 hour a day, 6 day a week weightlifter for 15 years. Never was I able to increase weight and performance unless I increased effort. So when the prevailing attitude is that a pitcher can only throw 90 pitches on a 5-6 day rotation that becomes their limit. They have been babied to the max.

You're training muscle not ligaments. Ligaments are what break in an arm. The other thing is that pitchers then and pitchers now have thrown an entirely different number of pitches when they reach the majors. Back in the day you weren't playing year round but any decent player these days is playing year round from the age of little league.

Ultimately you can say they are babied but texas literally tried what you're suggesting they do and it didn't work when Ryan was part of their front office.
 

Omeletpants

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You're training muscle not ligaments. Ligaments are what break in an arm. The other thing is that pitchers then and pitchers now have thrown an entirely different number of pitches when they reach the majors. Back in the day you weren't playing year round but any decent player these days is playing year round from the age of little league.
You are so wrong:

-A big part of weightlifting is training ligaments, especially if you are doing any sort of powerlifting like squats, benching and cleans. Just the process of moving free weights around and controlling them builds ligament strength

-=I also dont agree on the number of pitches now vs then. I was a highly regarded youth pitcher in the largest LL/Senior league system in Chicago. I was pitching all day every day for 7 months a year. If it wasnt a LL game, I was throwing in the 3 neighborhood games we had daily, plus endless "off the wall" and other simulated pitching. By the time I was 16 my arm was dead and so was my future as a player. I wasnt alone in this.
 

beckdawg

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So buy a franchise and quit your complaining? I mean they are running shit and they can run shit however they see best fit. This may as well be you complaining about walking uphill both ways in the snow "back in your day." And as I said, the rangers under ryan literally tried what you're suggesting they go back to and it didn't work. So, not sure what you're trying to accomplish here.
 

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So buy a franchise and quit your complaining? I mean they are running shit and they can run shit however they see best fit. This may as well be you complaining about walking uphill both ways in the snow "back in your day." And as I said, the rangers under ryan literally tried what you're suggesting they go back to and it didn't work. So, not sure what you're trying to accomplish here.
It's a simple conversation and observation about things have changed for the worst. Doesnt it strike you as stupid that clubs have to pay 25M/year for a pitcher that is conditioned to only be able to go 5 1/2 innings when it wasnt that way for 80 years? It's become a Pavlovian conditioning exercise in baseball

And I'm not an old school guy in general and think things are so much more difficult these days then in the past so you can drop that notion
 

beckdawg

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Doesnt it strike you as stupid that clubs have to pay 25M/year for a pitcher that is conditioned to only be able to go 5 1/2 innings when it wasnt that way for 80 years?

Not really. i mean if this is your complaint shouldn't you be complaining more about a reliever who throws 60-70 innings making $18-19 mil? I think there's always going to be a set of guys who are "safe" from arm injuries. For example, Nolan Ryan had every reason to have an arm injury and he just didn't. Ditto for Randy Johnson. Obviously you're contention here is that conditioning their arms allowed them to not be injured. My contention would be that they were never guys at risk we just didn't know that and there's not yet a way to tell who's going to blow out their elbow. There's countless troves of guys we never heard of who blew out their arms even back in the day and never pitched again.

I don't have any statistical data to back this up but I'm willing to wager that a higher percentage of players are making it to the majors than were back in the older days because of that pitch count. Well that is to say injuries are stopping fewer guys. A fair point would also be that they are doing so because of advancement in surgery allowing TJS to not really be a big deal anymore but I guess my point here is you don't really see guys who have career ending injuries anymore. I honestly can't even think of a recent example of a prospect who just blew out his arm and was done for good. I'm sure there were some guys who had TJS lost velocity and weren't effective anymore but by in large most guys come back from TJS now and there's really not much else hurting guys.

Now I will say ascetically I preferred the 80's style of play more where bullpens were less utilized. And honestly as much as the injury issue is a concern, I think that has as much if not more to do with the why on lower pitch counts. Teams are figuring out these days that the third time through a line up really results in poor performance. Hell the mets are talking about not letting any starter except de Grom and Syndergaard go through an order more than twice solely because of that. And while I always preferred the Ryan/Johnson types who pitched 7-8 innings often, that's just not how teams view the game anymore. Most view it as a race to their closer and or elite set up guys. If they get there they win.

Ultimately, if you give me 6 good innings at 100 pitches I don't really care if you could have given me 7 with 120 so long as I have the bullpen to replace you. Honestly though I think that MLB eventually will move to a piggyback system like they use in the minors. That is to say you have essentially 2 starters to get you through 8 innings and maybe a closer. There are just so many pitchers who have fantastic k rates but throw way too many pitches to be considered a typical starter. For example, you basically can't have a guy who has a walk rate of 4 or more per 9. In the current environment he wouldn't make it out of the 5th inning. So, those guys tend to end up in bullpens but if you can pair 2 of those guys together and effectively make 1 starter you can create interesting quasi-starters. For example, someone like Edwards had a 12.75 k/9 and a 5.16 bb/9 which clearly as a starter wouldn't work. But that 12.75 k/9 as a "starter" would have been second best behind Sale(12.93) last year. And in a way that's kind of how relievers were used in the 80's though slightly tweaked. Obviously you wanted your starter to go deep(7-8 innings) but you didn't have this 1 inning reliever stuff. if a guy was out in the 5th you generally had one guy for the 6th, 7th and 8th and maybe a closer in the 9th.
 

DanTown

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You are so wrong:

-A big part of weightlifting is training ligaments, especially if you are doing any sort of powerlifting like squats, benching and cleans. Just the process of moving free weights around and controlling them builds ligament strength

-=I also dont agree on the number of pitches now vs then. I was a highly regarded youth pitcher in the largest LL/Senior league system in Chicago. I was pitching all day every day for 7 months a year. If it wasnt a LL game, I was throwing in the 3 neighborhood games we had daily, plus endless "off the wall" and other simulated pitching. By the time I was 16 my arm was dead and so was my future as a player. I wasnt alone in this.

So what you're saying is that pitchers are babied and should throw more because in your direct experience, when you threw more and pitched a ton, your arm was dead by 16 due to overuse?
 

DanTown

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To answer the question at the top, there is a lot of survivor bias in terms of pitchers and getting hurt and it's important to note that basically pre 1970s, guys would just stop pitching and there was no answer but now we have those answers.
 

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So what you're saying is that pitchers are babied and should throw more because in your direct experience, when you threw more and pitched a ton, your arm was dead by 16 due to overuse?
My case was abuse and my own fault. But it was proven for 70 years, a pitcher could pitch near complete games on a 4 day schedule. Under that standard, 5-6 innings every 5-6 days is babying
 

anotheridiot

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My case was abuse and my own fault. But it was proven for 70 years, a pitcher could pitch near complete games on a 4 day schedule. Under that standard, 5-6 innings every 5-6 days is babying

So this had nothing to do with my point of not allowing kids to throw curve balls when you got dead arm at 16?
 

fatbeard

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In the Land of Ignorance, anecdotal evidence is King.
 

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It's got very little to do with the players themselves but has everything to do with ownership protecting their investment. This is from 2015...no reason, just a random season. Just scroll down and look at the percentages of pitcher injuries compared to the other positions. It has nothing to do with players being "babies" or the players back in the day being more "manly". Back then, pitchers were treated no differently than any other player until the realization of how important they were and how often they would get injured.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/maurybrown/2015/10/16/infographic-breaks-down-where-700-million-in-baseball-injuries-are-at/#6ccacf4211ce
 

TC in Mississippi

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It's got very little to do with the players themselves but has everything to do with ownership protecting their investment. This is from 2015...no reason, just a random season. Just scroll down and look at the percentages of pitcher injuries compared to the other positions. It has nothing to do with players being "babies" or the players back in the day being more "manly". Back then, pitchers were treated no differently than any other player until the realization of how important they were and how often they would get injured.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/maurybrown/2015/10/16/infographic-breaks-down-where-700-million-in-baseball-injuries-are-at/#6ccacf4211ce

Bingo. Number four starters make $20 mil these days and 1-3 starters make $25-$30 mil. Even if you have young starters you'll want to protect them because replacing them is too expensive. Even a solid middle reliever makes $3-$5 million. That's just from the ownership side too. From the players side, if you're a better than average starting pitcher you will eventually get a contract worth $50-$250 mil if you stay healthy. You might be competitive as hell, and you sure don't like your innings reduced but you're probably going to listen to reason in the end.
 

CSF77

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Just the business model. Guys have always been over paid to play. My dad made 31K per year as a diesel mechanic in the early 80's. That was after 20 years in a union job. the median is $42,910 now with a 12% growth in 10 years. My brother works on salt trucks for the state and makes over 30 per hr in the early 2000's.

So that is just inflation. prices go up and the value of the dollar goes down.
 

SilenceS

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I saw Marichel pitch many times and never saw him throw less than max effort. To the point where he nearly fell over on every pitch. Spann was a location pitcher. I believe Carl Hubell who was at that game called Spann an Ironman

There were plenty of guys that threw very hard that routinely pitched complete games at max effort levels (Ryan, McDowell, Bunning, Carlton, McClain, Seaver, Gibson, Drysdale, Koufax) so that argument doesnt hold

My analogy is that I was a 2 hour a day, 6 day a week weightlifter for 15 years. Never was I able to increase weight and performance unless I increased effort. So when the prevailing attitude is that a pitcher can only throw 90 pitches on a 5-6 day rotation that becomes their limit. They have been babied to the max.

If you had told these guys that they only had to pitch 5 1/2 inning they would have said let me pitch on 3 days rest

I got something you can curl big boy!
 

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