Parra Replaces Bush in Rotation Sunday; Bush "not pleased"

[pebadger]

It's fair to blame Macha for the aggregate pitch counts to a degree, but I'm guessing more of that falls on the pitchers who either cannot throw strikes or who don't throw strikes.

 

Th numbers logan posted are interesting. Have to wonder if the difference in marginal "success" rates between hitters and pitchers in the same general categories has more to do with the differences between players across categories or the accuracy of the categorization by scouts and others doing those types of evaluations.

[brewmann04]

Bush Parra Wolf are all should be dumped into one catagory as bad pitchers .

[Fatter than Joey]

It's fair to blame Macha for the aggregate pitch counts to a degree, but I'm guessing more of that falls on the pitchers who either cannot throw strikes or who don't throw strikes.

 

Right -- It's not as if the high-pitch counts are because Macha is letting his starters pitch the 9th inning, it's because they eclipse 100 pitches in the 4th-5th inning.

[giffted1]

It's fair to blame Macha for the aggregate pitch counts to a degree, but I'm guessing more of that falls on the pitchers who either cannot throw strikes or who don't throw strikes.

 

Right -- It's not as if the high-pitch counts are because Macha is letting his starters pitch the 9th inning, it's because they eclipse 100 pitches in the 4th-5th inning.

Gallardo and Wolf have both been better than league average in terms of innings/start, so it's not a matter of them amassing high pitch counts in short starts.

[TheCrew07]

The high number of pitchers is directly related to injury frequency, pitchers are much more likely to have career altering affects from injury. Certainly there are guys who just bust, but what isn't explained is how much production is considered a bust? Mark Prior was a fantastic pitcher when healthy but had a very short career, is he a bust? What about Rogers who's peers are already pitching in MLB, is he a bust because he lost 2 full seasons to injury? The numbers are certainly interesting, but they only represent a conclusion derived from how the author chooses to frame the study. His/her bust factor might be different than mine or yours.

 

So getting back to the pitch count conversation, I think the pitch count is extremely important for young pitchers until their body finishes maturing, around age 24 or 25. Beyond the maturation point, I'm not as concerned about pitch counts, I'm probably looking at 130 as a max, unless of course some historically significant achievement is on the line. While certainly the pitchers bear some responsibility, if a guy isn't ready to be an efficient pitcher, is he going to magically overnight become more efficient? I don't think so, I think it's a process, and that certainly doesn't absolve Macha of his responsibility to protect the pitcher from himself, that's part of coaching. The problem here is that Macha has to win now and isn't necessarily concerned with extending Gallardo's career (which is my primary concern), so he's going to ride him as long as possible every time out.

 

It was absolutely ridiculous that Yo was in the top 3 in the NL for total pitches thrown while pitching last season, he only pitched 24 innings the previous season. Long toss and bullpen sessions just don't replicate the stress of pitching in a game situation. Yo slowly got worse as the season progressed last year and I believe the root cause of that drop in production was Macha's use of him. As pissed as I was at Macha for Yo's workload, college coaches are borderline criminal in their abuse of the young arms, every draft we read about pitchers going over 150 pitches in a game, the Brewers drafted 2 of those guys this year. Last year Arnett had at least one start over 140 pitches for Indiana in addition to the avalanche of innings he pitched... Heckathorn on the other hand was monitored effectively by his college coaches, I'm not saying that's the sole difference in production this season, but I think it does have some bearing on the conversation.

 

I think if you're a young pitcher you are much better off going right to professional baseball where your mechanics and workload will monitored. I also believe that high flame out rate for pitchers is a direct consequence of how they've been mishandled especially prior to age 24-25. I've seen enough of Macha to know that I don't want him managing young pitchers any more than I want Dusty Baker managing young pitchers. I was really saddened to see Wood, Prior, and Volquez (hopefully all of the setbacks are behind him now) all go down as a baseball fan. As a Brewer fan I'm somewhat relieved that we don't have to face those guys, but I don't think the game of baseball is better off losing all the arms that they have lost over the years.

[CheezWizHed]

I don't see how it makes sense to say that the pitcher bears no

responsibility for allowing home runs and other hits in an inning just

because an error occurred on a previous play. Was Bush not trying to get

those guys out and did he not fail to do so?

Mainly because he had to get 4 outs in an inning. Yeah, a better pitcher will more often get that 4th out. But as you add outs to an inning, the average amount of runs allowed is going to increase exponentially not proportionally.

 

Is there a way to tell how many errors occurred while a certain pitcher was pitching? If you are going to look at just RA, you should at least add those errors occurred as 1/3 IP (but even that isn't perfect, as I mentioned the probability of runs scored goes up exponentially).

 

In comparing Bush and Narveson, the biggest differences (besides ERA)

appear to be HR, strikeouts, and opponents SLG...all of which favor

Narveson. Considering all that, I'd say Narveson appears to have been a

more successful pitcher than Bush so far this season.

 

Don't confuse my arguments as defending Bush. I'm countering the argument itself, not defending Bush. But I do think Bush gets railed on far too much while Narveson gets none (or very limited). The main difference is that Bush had success as a SP, Narveson hasn't. Neither is having success right now.

 

Personally, I hope they both get replaced.

[Fatter than Joey]

Gallardo and Wolf have both been better than league average in terms of innings/start,

 

Right and that is different that pitches/start. Yo has a hard time getting through the 6th inning under 100 pitches, its very rare that he does that. Yo has thrown the 3rd most pitches in MLB this year, and the fact that is he is only better than average in innings/start should be somewhat distressing.

 

At the end of the day, Yo needs to be a better and more efficient pitcher, but Macha may very well hurt him along the way.

[monty57]

Good post, TheCrew. It makes it even worse that a couple extra starts were added to Gallardo's workload early this season in order to make sure Suppan would be in the rotation.

 

It seems to me the Brewers are babying the young arms at the low levels, almost to the extreme. Odorizzi is being brought along very slowly. They're piggybacking starters at Appleton and I believe at Brevard County (at least they did it there last year). They told Arnett to only throw fastballs in Rookie ball last year due to his Indiana workload, and he at least started as part of a piggyback in Appleton. Rogers was held to 1-2 inning starts for most of last season.

 

I'm sure much of this has been done in large part because of the horrific track record they have with draft picks making it to the majors. My fingers are crossed, and I have no problem waiting an extra year or two for a pitcher to make it to the majors, if bringing them along slowly means more of them actually make it. We seem to have reached a point where we will continually see position players filling in to the Brewers' roster. I hope we're getting close to the day we'll see the same thing on the pitching front.

[FVBrewerFan]

The Brewers have been piggybacking starters for many years at the lower levels in the system- including A ball. Yet they still seem to suffer more than their fair share of injuries to young p[itchers. So much of this is more theory than fact, so it's hard to know where the problem lies. I have a feeling the damge is done at an early age, and sometimes it takes a while for the the arm to finally snap.

 

And I think there's more to it that just pitch count per game. Elite kids of all ages now pitch year round in various leagues, tourneys, showcase events, etc. Then I see a quote regarding a draft pick, Thornburg, who threw 158 pitches in a game this year! It's just odd, because all levels of baseball from little league on up seem to recognize the importance of limiting innings/pitches, but then you see something like this...

[CheezWizHed]

Yet they still seem to suffer more than their fair share of injuries to young pitchers.

 

Any stat to back that up? I would wager that we are more along the norm than an outlier on the worst side...

[logan82]

but what isn't explained is how much production is considered a bust?

It was if you dug a little deeper and looked at the link in the article.

[Polish Falcons]

The high number of pitchers is directly related to injury frequency, pitchers are much more likely to have career altering affects from injury. Certainly there are guys who just bust, but what isn't explained is how much production is considered a bust? Mark Prior was a fantastic pitcher when healthy but had a very short career, is he a bust? What about Rogers who's peers are already pitching in MLB, is he a bust because he lost 2 full seasons to injury? The numbers are certainly interesting, but they only represent a conclusion derived from how the author chooses to frame the study. His/her bust factor might be different than mine or yours.

 

So getting back to the pitch count conversation, I think the pitch count is extremely important for young pitchers until their body finishes maturing, around age 24 or 25. Beyond the maturation point, I'm not as concerned about pitch counts, I'm probably looking at 130 as a max, unless of course some historically significant achievement is on the line. While certainly the pitchers bear some responsibility, if a guy isn't ready to be an efficient pitcher, is he going to magically overnight become more efficient? I don't think so, I think it's a process, and that certainly doesn't absolve Macha of his responsibility to protect the pitcher from himself, that's part of coaching. The problem here is that Macha has to win now and isn't necessarily concerned with extending Gallardo's career (which is my primary concern), so he's going to ride him as long as possible every time out.

 

It was absolutely ridiculous that Yo was in the top 3 in the NL for total pitches thrown while pitching last season, he only pitched 24 innings the previous season. Long toss and bullpen sessions just don't replicate the stress of pitching in a game situation. Yo slowly got worse as the season progressed last year and I believe the root cause of that drop in production was Macha's use of him. As pissed as I was at Macha for Yo's workload, college coaches are borderline criminal in their abuse of the young arms, every draft we read about pitchers going over 150 pitches in a game, the Brewers drafted 2 of those guys this year. Last year Arnett had at least one start over 140 pitches for Indiana in addition to the avalanche of innings he pitched... Heckathorn on the other hand was monitored effectively by his college coaches, I'm not saying that's the sole difference in production this season, but I think it does have some bearing on the conversation.

 

I think if you're a young pitcher you are much better off going right to professional baseball where your mechanics and workload will monitored. I also believe that high flame out rate for pitchers is a direct consequence of how they've been mishandled especially prior to age 24-25. I've seen enough of Macha to know that I don't want him managing young pitchers any more than I want Dusty Baker managing young pitchers. I was really saddened to see Wood, Prior, and Volquez (hopefully all of the setbacks are behind him now) all go down as a baseball fan. As a Brewer fan I'm somewhat relieved that we don't have to face those guys, but I don't think the game of baseball is better off losing all the arms that they have lost over the years.

I’m very interested in this topic and a correlation of pitch counts vs injuries. You seem to have a lot of strong opinions on the topic but I am wondering if you have any more evidence to back up your conclusions. What is it about 130 pitches vs 100 pitches that leads to injury? What is the cut off point and what evidence is there to suggest this is it? Why does it make a difference if a pitcher is 24-25 vs 29-30? Why does it matter that Yovani threw the 3^rd most pitches last year? What was the negative impact of that? In no way am I suggesting you are wrong, but at the same time I am interested in seeing some substantive evidence to back these complaints. If I were just to state my general observation, I would say that over my lifetime (I was born in 1980) I have seen more pitchers become injured at a time when pitch counts has declined. That is a negative correlation and the complete opposite. A lot of people say this but is it true and if so why is that happening?

 

I was searching around for studies on the topic. I did find one article on the Hardball Times “Dusty Baker and Pitch Counts” ( ) which attempts a scientific study on Dusty Baker’s handling of pitchers and concludes that the “claim that Baker ruins pitchers' careers is hyperbolic at the least.” When coaching that Cubs team his starters threw something like 3.5 more pitches per start than the average team, which doesn’t seem significant. The Dusty Baker example is probably one of the most talked about example of managers ruining a pitchers arm with high pitch counts, and here we have a well known baseball journal saying that the complaints are hyperbole.

 

This is another article on the hardball times that is more of a review of many studies and books on the topic (). Some of the most reputable baseball writers including Dan Molcolm and Bill James conclude that “the unprecedented pitch count limits employed in baseball over the past 15 years or so have been counterproductive.”

 

I would like to see a study that draws conclusions from:

 

- total number of starting pitchers to begin a year

 

- number of SP injuries per year

 

- pitch counts for SP who did and did not experience injuries

 

- correlation to age and number of years pitching

 

Obviosly there are limitations on the high end, but until I see a little bit more conclusive evidence, I feel like in general teams are wasting resources by sticking to strict pitch counts of 100 pitchers per game or whatever the round number may be.

[FVBrewerFan]

Yet they still seem to suffer more than their fair share of injuries to young pitchers.

 

Any stat to back that up? I would wager that we are more along the norm than an outlier on the worst side...

No, that's why I used the word SEEM.

 

 

[TheCrew07]

but what isn't explained is how much production is considered a bust?

It was if you dug a little deeper and looked at the link in the article.

I read the original article as well, he used a prospects first 6 seasons as a baseline as far as I could tell, that was the whole point. Maybe I didn't develop the idea enough but why is less than 6 seasons a bust? I wouldn't personally take that to be a bust. My hunch was that he used 6 years as the average career is 5.6 years... but what's the median, mean, and mode? He doesn't attribute any of the variance to injury, just sample size, the study wasn't in depth at all.

 

Justin Thompson wasn't a bust, he got injured. Mark Prior wasn't a bust, he got injured. Nick Neugabauer wasn't a bust, he was injured just as he was getting started... and so on.

 

If he did mention injuries I didn't see it anywhere it in the article, but I was just skimming it from the fan graphs link and that was months ago. This isn't the first time that article was posted.

[logan82]

I then looked at the how much value those prospects produced in their first six full seasons in the majors. I chose to look at the first six full seasons because that is how long a Major League team has control of a player before that player reaches free agency. During that period, the Major League team has the ability to pay that player much less than what he’d earn on the open market.

[CheezWizHed]

Yet they still seem to suffer more than their fair share of injuries to young pitchers.

 

Any stat to back that up? I would wager that we are more along the norm than an outlier on the worst side...

No, that's why I used the word SEEM.

 

Just trying to point out that perception and reality can be very different. Seems like there is a lot of complaints about our training staff/methods/etc... but no real data to back up whether if our success rate is any higher or lower than others (injury wise).

[monty57]

I don't have anything to back up the Brewers' pitcher development, but there are 150 starting pitchers in baseball right now, and unless I'm missing someone, three were drafted and spent some time in the Brewers' system (Yo, Eveland & Sheets). The average would be 5 per team, so the Brewers are below average.

 

Not really scientific, but I think it's telling that for a long, long time, the Brewers have only developed two starting pitchers that have played any significant time on their roster (Sheets and Yo). You would think that you would at least find a #5 starter here & there. The new strategy seems to be to draft so many SP that by sheer dumb luck at least someone will have to make it to the majors.

[TheCrew07]

I’m very interested in this topic and a correlation of pitch counts vs injuries. You seem to have a lot of strong opinions on the topic but I am wondering if you have any more evidence to back up your conclusions. What is it about 130 pitches vs 100 pitches that leads to injury? What is the cut off point and what evidence is there to suggest this is it? Why does it make a difference if a pitcher is 24-25 vs 29-30? Why does it matter that Yovani threw the 3^rd most pitches last year? What was the negative impact of that? In no way am I suggesting you are wrong, but at the same time I am interested in seeing some substantive evidence to back these complaints. If I were just to state my general observation, I would say that over my lifetime (I was born in 1980) I have seen more pitchers become injured at a time when pitch counts has declined. That is a negative correlation and the complete opposite. A lot of people say this but is it true and if so why is that happening?

I don't know why I put so much time into pitching, I'm just fascinated by the subject, and I read as much as I can about it.

 

Whomever mentioned piggy backing, that's only for the A ball team as pitchers emerge from short season ball and don't have enough IP to go a full season. Piggy backing is strictly a mechanism to limit IP in a year. At A+ they've occasionally experimented with relievers starting and the starting pitchers finishing the game, but that's not piggy backing, That's a mechanism to get pitchers acclimated to pitching through the 9th inning.

 

Why 24-25 years? Because as I said the average adult male is fully matured around that time... obviously some will mature more quickly or take longer to mature. The chance of injury is at it's lowest once the body reaches maturity then gradually begins to rise again with age becoming exponential by the early to mid 30s.

 

As far as the actual pitch counts, I'm not sure that 100 is THE number for young pitchers, I don't think there is such a thing. I think it would vary by pitcher, even pitchers of the same age. It's very difficult subject to tackle, one which I would like the medical community to work on as opposed to statisticians number crunching, just get us some good ballpark numbers based on age so we can err on the side of caution. It might be 90... I don't think anyone really knows. This idea is based entirely on injury prevention, getting young pitchers to the majors healthy, then keeping them in the rotation. PAP (Pitcher Abuse Points) set the threshold at 100 for everyone, which is what is generally accepted, but I personally believe it is bunk.

 

130 pitches for older veteran pitchers is based more on the decline in production that follows a start of that many pitches and has been covered numerous times on numerous sites, If a pitcher is being regularly pushed over 130 I'm skeptical how long he will be able to stay healthy but pushing 130 here and there before an off day where the starters all get an extra day of rest before their next start doesn't bother me.

 

I read the study on Baker previously, and I think it's flawed in the same way that all pitching studies are flawed, there's no context. The fatigue point is critical, and it's going to differ by start due to many factors... weather, opposing line up, how good the pitchers stuff is that day, etc. The point about fatigue is that every pitch past the point of fatigue carries exponential injury risk. Just to be clear, the injury is not a straight line graph, it's a very steep curve, it's exponential. For example if a pitcher reaches fatigue at 85 pitches, like Parra not being stretched out against St Louis the other day, by pitch 100 his performance is likely plummeting and his injury risk is sky rocketing with each successive pitch. It's not really about pitch velocity either, most pitchers can keep digging a little deeper to maintain their velocity, which is part of the problem. They put additional stress on their arms trying to maintain velocity the more tired they get. It's not the 3.5 pitches per start, it's the distribution of the those 3.5 pitches that make all the difference.

 

I really like what the Brewers have begun doing. They have 3 levels of pitch counts in the minors... pitches in an inning, pitches in a game, and pitches in a season (total IP pitched). At first glance pitches in a inning may season a bit weird, but if you think about it, is pitching 7 innings that each last 15 pitches more fatiguing, or pitching a single inning of 40 pitches? When a pitcher is only going 15 pitches at a time there are periods of rest and recovery, pitching 40 straight pitches is incredibly taxing on the body.

 

Generally speaking a young pitcher's workload should only increase 20 to 30 IP per season. These are approximations but what we typically see with high school pitchers is they are around 100+ coming out of A ball, 130ish out of A+, and 150ish out of AA and AA. (the season is shorter so they don't have the opportunity to work up to 180 IP). In some cases a guy is going to have to be pushed a bit if an injury sets him back, his progression is going to get messed up (Mark Rogers). So again, this isn't set in stone, but it is the guideline the organization has adopted recently.

[logan82]

I really like what the Brewers have begun doing. They have 3 levels of pitch counts in the minors... pitches in an inning, pitches in a game, and pitches in a season (total IP pitched). At first glance pitches in a inning may season a bit weird, but if you think about it, is pitching 7 innings that each last 15 pitches more fatiguing, or pitching a single inning of 40 pitches? When a pitcher is only going 15 pitches at a time there are periods of rest and recovery, pitching 40 straight pitches is incredibly taxing on the body.

 

Think of it in terms of weight lifting. You do it in sets with a short rest between because your muscles get tired. Tired muscles are more likely to get injured and are not as effective. If you do to much in the early sets you are not going to be able to do as much in the later sets.

[TheCrew07]

Excellent analogy logan, put it better than I did.

[Baldkin]

An article I've linked to before, about PAP (Pitcher Abuse Points) which revolves around pitch counts:

Brief explanation:

• Pitches 1-100: no PAP awarded
  
• Pitches 101-110: 1 PAP per pitch
  
• Pitches 111-120: 2 PAP per pitch
  
• Pitches 121-130: 3 PAP per pitch
  
• Pitches 131-140 4 PAP per pitch
  
• Pitches 141-150: 5 PAP per pitch

• 31% of all injured pitchers had above average career PAP totals for
  their career pitch counts.
  
• 9% of all healthy pitchers had above average career PAP totals
  for their career pitch counts.
  

 

This suggests that high PAP pitchers are more than three times as likely

to be

injured as low PAP pitchers of who've thrown similar numbers of pitches.

We have

our first piece of evidence that PAP provides predictive information

beyond what

pitch counts alone can tell us.

 

[phxMILWfan]

I'd like to see pitching on short rest incorporated in a study on pitcher abuse. I wonder how much that matters.

[jeffy]

I don't see how it makes sense to say that the pitcher bears no

responsibility for allowing home runs and other hits in an inning just

because an error occurred on a previous play. Was Bush not trying to get

those guys out and did he not fail to do so?

Mainly because he had to get 4 outs in an inning.

But I think you are still missing the point that a pitcher can be forced to get 4 outs in an inning, even when there are no "errors". How about yesterday when an easy fly ball fell between 2 cub outfielders...no error, therefore any runs count as earned. Yet this was just as much bad defense putting extra pressure on the pitcher as an official "error" would be.

There are a lot of bad defensive plays that do not count as errors. This is why I agreed that the distinction between earned and unearned runs is probably largely "luck"...because it is just sort of random chance and arbitrary rules (ie. blowing a double play is never an error) that determine if the bad defensive plays are declared to be errors or not.

 

[Baldkin]

Yes, having Ryan Braun in LF results in many 4 out innings for our FB heavy pitching staff. Even if he doesn't make many errors.

[CheezWizHed]

Yeah, obviously errors are subjective and maybe poorly called. But I think that most errors that ARE identified are obviously bad plays. The play that anyone should say, yep any MLB caliber player should have made that one.

 

I didn't see the fly ball you mentioned yesterday, but those type of plays generally ARE luck related. That's why the aren't counted as errors. I'm sure some MLB outfielder would have made the catch, but there is enough reason for the average fielder to not make the play.

 

So you have a stat that separates obviously bad plays and borderline bad plays. Its not a perfect measure (obviously), but its better than ignoring it IMO.

 

Is Braun really that bad in the OF? I don't get to watch many games, but I thought he was pretty average in LF.

 

But even if he is limited on defense, his limitation effects both Narveson and Bush. Any obviously bad plays (i.e. errors) are such a small sample size, they rarely are equally distributed. Thus the reason to try to minimize their effect on a pitcher.