Q: Your young phenom ace has throw 109 pitches through 6 innings of dominant baseball. The opposing pitcher has matched him pitch-for-pitch but in the top of the 7th, your team gets lucky, and pops a solo home run from your struggling third baseman. You’ve got the 1-0 lead heading into the bottom of the 7th, what do you do?
Your options are:
A. Send back out your starting pitcher. Sure, he’s throw 109 pitches, but he’s a “freak” and he did it in college all the time.
B. Warm up the bullpen, despite a dominant performance, your pitcher has thrown some high stress innings and it’s best not to push things. Your team is going to be bad this year and you must protect your one strength — pitching.
C. Eat some sunflower seeds and try to look busy.
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Put yourself in Bochy’s giant thunderskull last night. Which option would you take? A, B, or C? I know which one I would have taken and it’s not A or C.
Last night Tim Lincecum set a career high in his young MLB career for pitches thrown in a game with 122 total pitches thrown over 7.1 innings pitched. His previous high had been 116, I believe. I also believe this is a high for any starting pitcher on the Giants this year. As “freaky” and gifted Lincecum is, I don’t like this move for a couple of reasons that I feel like I’ve gone over-and-over about on this blog.
My goal for the year, to quote Fred Sanford, is “Keep the young pitching healthy, you big dummy!” Anytime you talk about pitch-counts people tend to get worked up over these things. It’s still something in baseball analysis that some agree with as having an effect on a pitcher, long term, while others are unsure, or just plain skeptical*.
*Links to an an online preview of The Rob Neyer and Bill James Guide to Pitchers, a fantastic read on a calvacade of pitching topics. Recommended reading.
I know I personally believe that pitch-counts can prove as a useful tool in keeping pitchers healthy, but I also realize that a large part of pitching could harder to define, or at least more nebulous but I don’t think it’s outlandish to assume that there is a point at which a pitcher starts to fatigue and as a result, lose his mechanics — release point, arm slot, tempo, etc. — which in turn can do physical harm. Is Lincecum’s point 120+? Maybe, who knows, but what do the Giants have to gain by pushing Lincecum back out in the 7th inning after he’s thrown 109 pitches? Another win for Lincecum but at what cost to the future? In an April game against the Padres, I can’t see the advantages of pushing Lincecum this far, or this hard.
These high stress innings that pitchers work through are the ones that put the most wear on them. You’ll often hear in defense of Lincecum: “He’s a freak, he threw high pitch-counts in college and even relieved between games, he’s just a freak!” but while that might be true, you’ve also got to realize that the stress level isn’t the same. Major league hitters are tougher to retire, generating more stress. The environment is also totally different, pitching in front of 30,000 people is a lot different than pitching in front of 300 people on a Tuesday night in college. This is why I have some apprehensions about comparing a college workload to a major league workload, the environments are drastically different.
Let’s glance at Lincecum’s pitch count by inning.
Inning # Pitches 1 21 2 17 3 15 4 28 5 14 6 14 7* 13
Lincecum threw 20+ pitches in the 1st and 4th inning. You could argue that the 4th was one of the more stressful innings that he threw last night. The bases were loaded with 1 out but Chris Young ended up swinging away and hitting into a double play. His quickest innings were the 5th and 6th, he threw 14 pitches in each inning. The 7th also proved to be a stressful inning for Lincecum. Heading back out to the mound after 109 pitches, he didn’t complete the inning. He started the inning by walking Khalil Greene. He then got Tadahito Iguchi to ground into a force out. Next, the Padres called Tony Clark to pinch-hit and he served a 1st pitch single to LF on Lincecum’s 122nd and final pitch of the night.
Bochy could have been motivated by the previous nights’ 13-inning game — 5 relievers were used — but Chulk should have been available to start the 7th. Chulk isn’t a great reliever, he’s good – not great, but the Padres were sending up their bottom half of the order.
Still, I think the question can be reduced to what do the Giants have to gain by trying to squeeze another inning from Lincecum? A win? Yeah, but what are the long term ramifications? That’s my only question and one that I can’t answer right now, but at least I’m pondering it. Something I wish I felt the Giants were also doing.
For PAP believers, Lincecum is currently 4th in the entire majors in pitcher abuse points. His next start is something to keep an eye on.
Bullpen Gold Star Goes To: Jack Taschner, who came in during the 7th after Lincecum left, walked one, but got out of a bases-loaded jam. He got out two very tough hitters in Scott Hairston — a certified Giants killer — and Adrian Gonzalez. Check out the leverage index from when Taschner came in, doesn’t get any higher than that.
I’m very worried about the way the Giants are handling their young pitching, but Lincecum’s mechanics seemed to remain solid all night, and it’s mainly when mechanics go out of whack that injuries occur. While I’m not sure that’s any kind of justification for having a slight-of-build 23 year old throw 120+ pitches in April, perhaps that’s what was on Bochy’s mind.
I’m so happy to have found some rational, sabermetrically-inclined commentary on the Giants. Keep up the good work.
I couldn’t agree more! I was completely shocked that Bochy kept him in the game last night. Please don’t ruin the one good thing we have going for us.
Randolph,
Thanks a lot, and welcome to the site. I’m no mechanics expert but Tim’s mechanics did look good even late in the game. His velocity was still good as well. His last pitch in the game to Tony Clark was a 97mph fastball. I thought he looked a little fatigued against Greene, he had trouble keeping the ball down in that at-bat.
Mike,
I’ve been unimpressed with Bochy’s handling of pitchers. He was billed as a pitchers manager coming over from SD and I haven’t seen it yet.
I really don’t get what Bochy is “thinking” here with his use of Tim & Matt so far. I can’t cobble together any justifiable rational beyond a misguided, “ Well they did it that way in the 60’s .“ If any one has one I would be real interested in hearing out. I promise no sarcasm.
Just because these guys are dominate does not mean they know enough to protect themselves. That’s Bochy’s job. I am seriously wondering his they need a breathalyzer test (or some thing) that he has to blow into every half inning. If he fails then the bench coach (or even a ball dude) takes over and the rest of the team just ignores him.
Will Carroll has something recently (http://www.baseballprospectus.com/unfiltered/?p=853) I would like to quote from:
“no one that looks at pitching knows what they’re seeing. At best, we can speak in generalities, rules of thumb, and conjecture. Yes, I’ve done it and will do it again, but none of us have the knowledge needed.”
So here’s the lead guy of BP, BP being the lead group pushing pitch counts abuse, saying that none of us have the knowledge needed, including himself. Just something to keep in mind whenever someone feels like pontificating on this point.
All I need to know is that Lincecum is able to long throw the next day, no problem, and don’t need to ice his arm down after a start. The vast majority of pitchers need to do this because their body and arm is put under huge physical stress, and need to cool it down, get the swelling down. His body/throwing is different, no matter what any of you say. But most seem to forget that he doesn’t ice his arm and is able to long-throw the next day when saying how wrong this is for him.
Now, am I saying to just have him throw complete game, 160+ pitches? No. But if he’s throwing as much as any other pitcher and he’s still efffective, I don’t see any reason to take him out.
However, if this is talk about Matt Cain, I would say that I would lean more towards caution than extreme. I would like to see him pitch less average pitches per game, less pitches in a game max. He had arm problems his first season with us in the pros. Plus, he gets in a lot more stressful counts, particularly when he is as wild as he was last night, with 5 walks. Him, I would baby his arm more, despite how he towers over Lincecum physically.
>> So here’s the lead guy of BP, BP being the lead group pushing pitch counts abuse, saying that none of us have the knowledge needed, including himself. Just something to keep in mind whenever someone feels like pontificating on this point.
BP is a collective, so while Carroll is one of their more well known guys (and one of my favorites), I don’t think he’s the “lead guy”, BP gets a lot of fantastic work from many different authors. But, I agree with what he’s saying, pitching analysis of what works and doesn’t work is murky at times. I do think pitch counts can serve as a proxy for pitching health, just not the final end-all-be-all word.
I think mechanically Lincecum looked fine, not that I know anything about mechanics. I just don’t like the early going for this season with the way they’ve handled Lincecum. The rainout debacle and now high pitch counts. He pitches tonight so I’ll be watching.
Even though I’m no expert on mechanics, Cain was visibly out of whack last night. Kruk touched on it on the TV side of things, but Cain was really “slinging” the ball at times, looking like he was throwing from across his body. It didn’t look good and I hope he’s not hurt and trying to alter his delivery or something like that.
If we are going to precede that the data may not be there to discuss pitch counts on young arms analytically then lets got at it with antidotal evidence. To that end I would like to submit the Box score for July 2, 1963. Braves vs. Giants.
( http://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/SFN/SFN196307020.shtml ) Yes the game as little before my time but I grew up hearing about it. 16 innings of Spahn vs. Marichal. No relievers. Mays solo home run in the bottom of the 16th decides it. The stuff of legends.
I could not find a documented pitch count but lets just say lots. I have heard interviews with Marichal that his arm was not right for a couple weeks there after. He still got wins but it was a struggle. All because he would not let “ that old man stay in the game longer then me” and Dark would not pull him. Considering Marichal is the probably the most “recent” comparison to top notch young pitcher in the Giants system to Matt or Tim. Considering the Manager ( then Dark now Botchy) had it in his power to protect the young player ( Marichal was 24 and entering his 3 season in the Bigs) from himself and did not. There does seems to be a parallels. The only thing that is not similar is the ‘08 Giants are not competition for a pennant and don’t have Mays, McCovey or Cepeda like players to get them there.
Martin:
As for Cain & a pitch count I am almost of a mind most of the Giants starters would benefit from it. Not necessarily as an insurance policy but given the stage of development they are at. It could enforce efficiency. I would probably exempt Sanchez from this at this point. He is still figure ring out how to get throw the line up 3 times in good order. But Correia, Cain & Tim ( to a lesser extent) could all benefit. I saw El Lefty’s pitch per innings and I know Correia is doing well now but lets see ( and encourage) that for a couple months running.
Side note just how much off speed stuff was Tim throwing the first few innings of April 29? It seemed like an awful lot for him.