THE BOOK--Playing The Percentages In Baseball

I did not realize that pitch counts were that low in the 60s but it makes sense with the dramatically lower run scoring.

It seems to me that the five-man rotation probably has an even bigger impact when it comes to 300-game winners. You get more decisions in a four-man rotation.

Back when everyone was saying that Randy Johnson was the last 300-game winner this spring, I looked at all the modern era guys who achieved the distinction, and we only had three (Grove, Spahn, Wynn) until the 1980s.  Then we had Perry, Carlton, Sutton, Seaver, and Ryan within a 10-year span, each of whom debuted in the 1960s.  So far, so good on the run evironment.  But then how do you explain a burst of Clemens, Maddux, Glavine and Johnson?  These guys pitched at the height of the offensive explosion of the 1990s and 2000s. Has pitches per plate appearance shifted since these guys peaked?

http://baltimorebirdsnest.blogspot.com/search/label/300%20Game%20Winners

I don’t understand what his thinking is with regard to speeding up the game. What would that have to do with anything?

The only real way to speed up the game is to score fewer runs and give the pitcher a better chance to get someone out but there seems to be no interest in that whatsoever in MLB.

What’s his angle? I don’t get it.

Jamesian—One of James’ books had a quote from Jim Kaat in which Kaat said his arm turned into a pumpkin after two hours, or something like that. The implication was that it’s easier to throw the same number of pitches/innings in two hours than in 2 1/2.

Thanks, rfs. That must have been one of his later books that I haven’t read, or I just forgot all about it. I might could go with him on the pitch counts but I don’t know about that one.

The 4-man rotation lets pitchers get 38-40 starts.

The pitchers in the 70s and 80 also threw more than 100 pitches per start.  The high-end guys were in the 110s, 120s.  The phenomenon of the top-end guys going to the low 100s is recent, something like 10 years old. 

I presume we’ll be going back to the 110 pitches per start for the high-end guys, typical historically.  The problem really is that it takes more pitches to get through a batter.  That needs to go down.  You can probably get it down if you had a bigger strike zone, which is another reason.

There’s alot of little things that conspire to make it a perfect storm, or leads one down a slippery slope.  (Use whatever analogy makes the most sense to you.)

Does anyone count foul balls, specifically foul balls with two strikes? Are they up? Would they account for the extra pitches? And if so, what could be done about them?

I’m curious. Has there been any research done on the 100-pitch thing that anyone has done?

I’ve been trying to find information and all I’ve been able to conclude is that the Atlanta Braves used the approach and it has been copied because they were able to keep their pitchers healthy and were very successful.

If anyone can point me to something interesting online, I’d like to read it. I haven’t been able to find much.

rfs: yes, 2-strike fouls are up, I believe.

The two biggest changes I have discovered is the foul thing, and the taking of first pitches.  Those 2 accounts for a change in pitches per batter of 0.2 pitches.  It’s a huge change.

I’ve been meaning to write a research piece on this since forever.

136 wins at the age of 28 - more than any other 300 game winner since at least 1920

since 1990, 9 pitchers 29 and older have won 164 games

So, if CC can be one of the top 10 pitchers 30 and older in the last 20 years

I wonder if pitcher usage practices will ever evolve to letting starters pitch a couple innings two days after their starts, such as is often the case in the playoffs when a team does not have three stud starters.  You might then see a guy get some relief wins for a good hitting club, such as was the case with Aceves this year for the Yankees, who picked up 10 wins in only 80 or so innings, good for third on the Yankees…

Make that 4th on the Yankees…

Greg, the Yankees did that with Pettitte in April 2007. I can’t remember the stated reason — whether it was injuries, a managerial belief that the the available relievers were unreliable, or something else.

Twice Pettitte came in for an inning of relief work. Combined he threw 22 pitches in those outings (9 and 13), but I have no idea how much that, combined with bullpen and on-field warmups, compares to how much a typically throws on the between-starts throw day.

We might see an explosion of 300 game winners some time in the future if teams change the pitching patterns they use. It’s just a hunch of mine, but I’ve always thought it would be easier on a pitchers arm to pitch more frequently but for fewer innings. If you were to set up a rotation that limited your best pitchers to 60 pitches a game and threw them every 3 games, you would get the same # of pitches per season. Possible advantages of this would be not having the pitcher face the lineup more than twice, being able to use lefty/righty/lefty pitching changes throughout the whole game, reducing the benefit of platooning, and perhaps even extra effectiveness during pitching stints because they don’t have to pace themselves through 100 pitches (the starter/reliever effect).

If you were to always use your best pitcher that day as the second pitcher you bring in (releasing him from the requirement that he pitch at least 5 innings for the win) he would be eligible for a win in something like 54 games each season, rather than something like 33.

Some team’s got to get the stones to step up and try that sometime, maybe starting with one of their minor league teams.

You think this is crazy? Who can say what baseball might look like in 30 years?

It seems like there are a lot of ways to get to 300 wins: changes in pitcher usage, changes in game rules, scheduling, how umpires call the strike zone.  Or perhaps pitchers will just pitch longer; whether through better training, better medicine or simply less competition we may see more pitchers throwing beyond 40.  It seems a good bet that we will see more 300 game winners at some point.

The real question, in my mind, is will we see another 3000 Loss manager?