from Amazon
Thursday, March 06, 2008
The cost of high pitches at a young age
Gassko throws in this nugget:
But what stands out most is that, after controlling for all these other variables, every pitch thrown before age 26 knocks off half an inning in the latter half of a pitcher’s career. That is a pretty huge effect. Consider, 100 extra pitches a year—just three pitches a start—means 55 fewer innings pitched down the road.
An inning is roughly 16 pitches. What David is suggesting is that for every extra pitch thrown prior to age 26, a pitcher has 8 fewer pitches of mileage after age 26. This is a rather startling revelation, and is begging for more study. As I’ve shown, regardless of how many pitches are thrown at ages 25-28, you should expect the same number of pitches at age 29-32:
Of the 96 warrior pitchers born between 1935-1958, they faced an average of 3777 batters at ages 25-28, and followed that up with 2692 batters at ages 29-32 (a 71.3% retention rate). The pitchers born from 1959-1974 faced an average of 3470 batters at ages 25-28 (that is, babied by 307 batters over those 4 years), and followed that up in their ages 29-32 years with 2648 batters (76.3% retention rate). Both groups of pitchers, the “overused” legendary pitchers and the “babied technology” pitchers both ended up facing virtually the exact same number of batters at ages 29-32!
A breakdown by earlier age classes seems to be in order.