THE BOOK--Playing The Percentages In Baseball

I seem to remember reading that Mazzone tried to keep the ‘pitch through pain and don’t tell anyone’ culture away from the Braves. He said it started with Maddux - as long as he was honest about when he needed to come out of games, it set an example for the rest of the staff.

Here’s another guy who didn’t get going in the rotation until he was 25, and threw a ton of innings:

http://www.baseball-reference.com/j/johnsra05.shtml

I don’t think of his as a good example.  He was walking 7 batters per 9 innings in the minors, which is why he was still in the minors until he was 25.  However, to your point, all that wildness early probably helped his career, as it didn’t allow his MLB managers to abuse him early (or dump him), because he had no MLB managers.

Speaking of which.... RJ was born Sep 1963, and Doc Gooden was born Nov, 1964.

What do you get when you combine Gooden, ages 20 through 26, with RJ ages 27 onwards?

Through 2005, 371 wins and 165 losses, for a .692 record!  5564 strikeouts and 1631 walks.  2.97 ERA.

Randy Gooden.  They would have said, “There goes the best there ever was”.

Interesting. I am concerned that Detroit may be doing the same with Verlander. He is on course to hurl 200+ innings this year ...

I have the same concerns with Felix Hernandez and the Mariners.

Well, *you* guys shouldn’t have any concern.  A player is slave to his team for 6 years.  It is in the best interests of the team and its fans to use up their pitchers as much as possible.  To save their fate to free agency for some other teams to benefit is crazy.

If players themselves really cared, they could easily put in limits, like “can’t throw more than 110 pitches in a single game, 200 pitches in any 6-day period, 280 pitches in any 10-day period, 350 pitches in any 15-day period”, or what have you.  But, the players don’t do this!  They think of themselves as machines, that they sell off their bodies to whoever wants them.  They don’t care what goes into their machines (drugs), how they’re used, etc.

As a fan, you should treat them as they see themselves.  No more.

Pedro once said something to the effect of “The Redsox bought my arm for 6 years, and it’s up to them how to use it”.

I am not sure I fully agree with you on this one. Pitchers should care how team’s use their pitchers’ arms .... surely they want as long and as profitable career as possible. I’m sure Pedro wouldn’t have been too happy with 6 years of the Red Sox and nothing else.

As a fan of Baseball (and not necessarily Detriot or Seattle) I yearn to see top quality talent playing. Watching Clemens, or Smoltz, or Glavine ply their trade is still a joy to behold (Ok, Glavine less so these days). Similarly I want to see Felix and Verlander pitch for 15-20 years and enjoy the fruit of their special talent. Special players are a joy to behold. Felix is a special player who hopefully can go on to be a great. Likewise I want to see Tiger Woods win 25 majors, not stop at 11.

On the point about players stating self imposed limits ... it’s not too easy when you are a young pitcher trying to break through (only earning the ML minimum), thinking you are perfect, and not really understanding what causes injury.

You are saying pitchers should care, and that Pedro wouldn’t have been happy with 6 years.  But, that’s not reality. 

The reality is that pitchers don’t put into place any mechanism that would allow them to care.  Pedro did say that he rented his arm for the Sox to use how they see fit.  If he wasn’t happy with that, he could have put in controls.

Or, more to the point, the union could impose limits on behalf of their players.  That is what they are supposed to do, to look out for the best interests of their members.

If having a rookie starting pitcher at age 22 is an undue risk, then the union should act, and as part of the CBA, impose a minimum 1,000 pitch requirement, maximum 50 pitches per game, maximum 100 pitches per seven days, for all pitchers entering MLB.

It’s all fine and dandy for the wishful thinking and praying that King Felix and Liriano can pitch for 15 years.  But, that’s not how to get the job done.

You need to identify the issues, the problems, and come up with solutions.

Right now, the issue is: none.  The problem is: none.  The solution is: be a man.

I have said for a long time that much of the criticism of managers who abuse their pitchers’ arms is unfounded, except from the pitchers and their friends and families.  If I were a manager, I would maximize the value of my pitchers for as long as I expect to have them on my team, which is often only a few years.  That often means abusing their arms.

And it is not that the pitchers or even the unions don’t care.  It is that they don’t really know what constitutes abuse.  And there is still a lot of legitimate controversy about pitch counts, etc.

And of course, before FA’cy, teams often had players for life.  Even after FA’cy, for some reason, players tended to stay longer with clubs, I think.  If you expect a player to be on your team for a long time, you employ a completely different strategy as far as development of your pitchers is concerned.

But they don’t speak up, at least publicly.  And I really think they don’t care.

If I was in a league, I’d be at the forefront to control drugs, and player usage.  I’m in the far minority.

If pitchers can handle a starter’s workload at 20 and 21 in the minor leagues, why shouldn’t they be able to handle a similar workload at the major league level at ages 22 and 23? Or should minor league pitchers be managed differently altogether?

The reality is that pitchers don’t put into place any mechanism that would allow them to care.  Pedro did say that he rented his arm for the Sox to use how they see fit.  If he wasn’t happy with that, he could have put in controls.

That is true but I don’t think that pitcher sunderstand the harm that thowing havily early on in you 20s can have. I am sure if you lay out the options to a pitcher most time he’ll choose a longer, more productive careers (with more cash) over early burn-out.

The other issue is that young phenoms think they are invincible. Liriano is putting up MVP numbers—he probably thinks he will still do that in 10 years time; he has no fear.

Perhaps Unions should intervene. I don’t know. Overuse early in your career is likely to lead to breakdowns before your FA years. It is in the best interest of clubs to manage their young talent responsibly. I believe that not only do they have an obligation to themselves, they also have an obligation to baseball (though not all share this view).

awsytn: in the minors, they get 25 starts, and 150 IP.  For example, in 2004 Liriano had 28 starts and 157 IP.  In 2005, 27 starts and 168 IP (then another 24 innings in September with the Twins).

John, re: your last sentence.  Do you think this is Iowa?  There’s not a single businessman in MLB that thinks of the “greater good”, if it’ll affect his bottom line, and help out his opponent.  This is pure wishful thinking.  Only the players themselves can protect themselves.  As for “laying it out”, I think they know, don’t you?  I mean, these pitchers ice their arms all the time, they know the impact on their arms.  Pedro is a very smart guy.  Who knew what he was saying, and I think he believed it too.

Tango, I realize, of course, that the minor league workload for pitchers is lighter (although of the O’s pitchers you cited at the top, Garland, McGregor and Martinez all threw around 200 innings in some of their minor league seasons, albeit in a time when some major leaguers were throwing upwards of 300 innings; but 200 innings is 200 innings). Liriano was in the pen for the first month-and-a-half of the season and was on pace (before the injury) for about 180 innings. I just don’t think it’s fair to criticize the Twins for their handling of Liriano. They’ve been cautious up to now. It seems implied in some of your rhetoric that rookie pitchers in the major leagues should be handled differently (that the union might limit rookies to 50 pitches/game as you suggest above) from their (sometimes) younger counterparts in the minors. I guess I’m just not clear on your position.

Can you provide a reference for the O’s pitchers?  My point remains though that Weaver did the right thing.  He wasn’t in charge of the minor league ops.

1.5 months is not what I had in mind.

Yes, I envision a sliding scale, up to age 24 or so, when I’ll consider everyone “fully mature”.

Gardenhire talking about Liriano: “The ultimate goal here is to protect our young pitchers. We’re going to miss having him in the rotation, a great arm like that. But we want him to understand that it’s all about protecting that young arm so he’s here many, many years down the road.”

Sure, baseball GMs don’t want to help out opponents but if you have a young phenom you potentially have up to 6 years of production there. Burning them out in their early years is not good for anyone. By doing what is right for their club they do what is right for baseball. No GM has the objective of “well, gee, we’ll make sure Liriano is done by his FA year because we know we can’t sign him and he may go to one of our rivals”.

Managers have a duty to protect players. Fortunately many do more than they did in the past. That is both good their club and good for baseball (once hurlers are past the 25/26 age mark this protection is less important; this age tends to be some way from the FA years).

Sorry about not citing the source. It’s their respective player pages on thebaseballcube.com. Martinez threw 195 innings at age 20 in 1975 through three levels; McGregor threw 197 innings at age 19 in 1973 at AA and 199 innings the following year at AAA; Garland threw 211 innings at age 20 in 1971 at AA; the most Flanagan threw at the minor league level was 187 innings at age 22 in 1974 between two levels of A-ball; and Boddicker doesn’t have his minor league numbers listed.

But more to the point about Weaver, he wasn’t exactly diametrically opposed to using rookies in the rotation. Starting them in the ‘pen was more a matter of evaluating their talent at the big league level than a consideration for the health of their arms. “If you have a good club, the prime objective is to win the pennant, and a manager doesn’t experiment with kids. Not only is this first year a learning process for the pitcher, it’s a learning process for the manager. The manager doesn’t know what the pitcher can do in the majors...If Dennis Martinez has several good outings in long relief, then the manager must decide if the team would be better off with Martinez in the rotation, even if he has less experience than some other starter. It is a big responsibility and one of the toughest parts of managing” (page 75 of Weaver on Strategy). He goes on to say how he used Storm Davis to start important games down the stretch in ‘82, when Storm was only 20 (granted he only started 8 of the 29 games he appeared in that year). It doesn’t seem far-fetched to think that Weaver, were he managing the Twins, would see Liriano pitching very well in relief, his starters and his team struggling badly and opt to put Liriano in the rotation.

http://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/Kmartd0010021977.htm

Martinez did spot starting, and then was in the rotation for two weeks.

http://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/Kdavis0010011982.htm

Storm was in the rotation for two weeks (around the same time as Martinez), and spot started.  Three of his starts were on double-headers.

Both pitchers performed better as relievers than starters.

I think if Weaver were in charge of Liriano, he’d have done the same thing.  Put him in the rotation in the middle of the year for 2 or 3 weeks, and spot started him.

Weaver on Strategy is a great book.

Let me throw out a challenge then.  I don’t know the answer.  Who is the youngest pitcher that Earl Weaver has put in a starting rotation for an extended period of time?  I’ll define “extended” as any period of time where a pitcher threw no more than 1 relief appearance in 10 consecutive appearances.  (i.e., 9 straight starts, or 9 starts in 10 appearances).

Right now, the leader is Dennis Martinez.  On May 15, 1978, he started his 9th game in 10 appearances.  He was born May 14, 1955, making him 23 years and 1 day old.

Doyle Alexander, when he wasn’t selling vacuum cleaners, threw 174.2 innings (29 G, 26 GS) as a 22-year-old in 1973; Palmer threw 181 innings (26 G, 23 GS) as a 23-year-old in 1969; and Martinez threw (gasp!) 276.1 innings (40 G, 38 GS) as a 23-year-old in 1978 (the year previous he threw 166.2 innings, but started only 13 of the 42 games he appeared in). Those were the ones I found using the National Pastime Almanac, which I highly recommend.

http://hometown.aol.com/ronlg/download.html

I realize that doesn’t exactly follow the rules of your game by the way; I just meant it as an approximation.

Alexander did start 15 of 16 games from 4/14/73 to 7/3/73, when he wasn’t yet 23 years old (born 9/4/50). Now I’m playing by the rules!

http://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/Kalexd0010031973.htm

Earl Weaver took over in mid-68.  I am only talking about guys who entered the league on a Weaver watch. 

Palmer was an established starter in 1966.

Doyle was a rookie with the Dodgers (17 G, 12 GS, 92 IP).  In 1972, he had 9 GS and 35 G in all.  All were spot starts.  (Also note that Weaver likes to make these guys finish games in relief.) On June 6, 1973, he made his 9th start in 10 consecutive game.  He was born September 4, 1950.  That would make him 22 years, 8 months, 2 days.

As for Martinez, rather than talking about innings, you should talk about pitches, or batters faced.  He faced 1140 batters, and the next year led the league at 1206 batters faced.  Still doesn’t take away from the fact that he was groomed in.  His first season, as a 22-yr old, he started 13, finished 19, 10 games in middle-relief.

Weaver seems to operate on the premise that you need to be at least 23, with a full year of apprenticeship in the majors, or 24/25 as a rookie.

But we’re not counting Doyle since he broke in with the Dodgers, right? As for Martinez, I don’t think because he was “groomed in” at age 22 that the next year you should go balls-to-the-wall, he’s a full-blown, full-workload guy you treat the same as a 28-year-old established, durable starter. But hey, it was a different time and I know you would recommend a gradual, scaled increase anyway, as you noted above (and I agree).

Quick aside: what happened to Earl Weaver? Is he in poor health? He sort of seems to have vanished.

Right, I’d have been even more careful than Weaver. 

Just think, Martinez is the most extreme example we can find of Weaver abusing his pitchers (and this, at the height of the “let’s abuse our starting pitchers” era).

As for counting Doyle or not, I’m on the fence here.  Regardless, “23” seems to be the magic age.

Roughly speaking, this is the position I’d advocate:
Age IP G GS Pitches
24 220 34 34 3500
23 185 30 30 3000 (extra day of rest)
22 155 40 20 2500
21 125 50 10 2000

You can tweak it a bit, but the key is you have a progression until a certain age.  Whether that age is 23 or 24 or 25 I don’t know.  It’s unlikely that age is 22.  Even the above might be too aggressive.

This is an all too frequent example of a pitcher being just plain stupid:

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/12/sports/baseball/12liriano.html?_r=1&ref=sports&oref=slogin

This sort of behaviour doesn’t help in a pitcher’s quest to have a long and healthy career.

An ideal example of how you can ignore previous games:
http://democratandchronicle.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080727/SPORTS06/807270351/1024

But, you have to do it based on his pitch speed and movement or the pitcher telling you he feels he’s over his injury.

And, you still need to factor in a percentage change of injury recurrence.

A lot of good information about pitching in that article.

3 things:

One, Liriano’s “numbers” at AAA are very good but not great.

An NERC (normalized component ERA) for an average major league starter is around 4.00. A great pitcher like Santana, Peavy, Webb, etc. is around 3.00 (true talent).  I think Liriano was in the low 3’s before his injury which is great for a young starter.

His MLE NERC in Rochester as of the all-star break is 3.66, good, but not great.

Two, we have to be very careful about “throwing out” data even if it is clear that a player was a “different player” at that time.

We must throw out or keep data based on something OTHER than the numbers, otherwise we are going to selectively throw out or keep data and that isn’t good!

For example, let’s say that we have a pitcher who had major surgery and is coming back to pitch after the surgery.  And let’s say that we know that at the beginning he is not going to be right and at some point in time he is going to be nearly 100% (of his true talent for the next year or so). 

We CAN’T discard bad data at the beginning and keep data starting from some point in which he starts to pitch well!  Can’t do that! We have to decide beforehand which data we are going to keep and which we are going to discard, like, “We will not use the first 3 months.” Setting limits after the fact and after we know the performances is a big mistake!

Finally, reading about Livan pitching well (which he has not of course - he has pitched terribly) and that they will keep all their starters until and unless they start pitching badly, has gotten me thinking again about this thought experiment, which can be simulated and answered of course.

Let’s say that you have a bad pitcher who is replacement level - 1 run per 9 worse than an average pitcher.  And let’s say that you are going to pitch him every 5 days until he has 3 bad outings in a row (or 2, or whatever you want).  Then you will take him out for good.  This happens all the time with players (riding the hot hand). 

How much does this (misguided) strategy cost you over a season?

Any guesses?  I’ll try and see if I have the time to simulate it and come up with the answer.  Of course it depends on your criteria for taking him out.  Let’s say it is 3 straight starts with an ERA of 6.00 (4 runs in 6 IP, etc.) or worse.