Brewers pitchers by pitch count in 2007

[Jay Zahn]

Found some interesting splits on Baseball-Reference.com:

 

OPS by # of Pitches:

 

	Brewers		NL Avg
Pitches	PA	OPS	PA	OPS
1-25	2938	0.748	3041	0.752
26-50	1282	0.734	1294	0.743
51-75	1095	0.625	1066	0.757
76-100	822	0.964	764	0.817
101+	148	0.848	144	0.769

 

This data includes both starters and relievers. In pitches 51-75, the Brewers had the best OPS in the National League. In pitches 76-100, they had the worst. The league on average had a 60 point increase in OPS from 51-75 to 76-100. (Really it's about 40 points if you exclude the Brewers.) The Brewers had a 339 point increase.

That is one of the most insane splits of any kind I have ever seen. And the Brewers pitchers had an above average number of PAs in high pitch count situations! Watching this season's games, we saw Bush and Suppan and Capuano and whoever else explode instantly game after game. I guess this points out this is not something other teams' fans had to sit through. They could expect a tired starter to at least once in a while shut down a rally or get an extra out. This rarely happened for the Brewers.

I have a couple of comments. First, this is not something common to Yost teams. Prior Brewer teams do not show this tendency whatsoever; it was a unique feature of the 2007 Brewers. This certainly explains some of the blown leads. Above average pitching for most of the game, then boom! It's also hard to get behind the idea that the starters should have been used more (when they were already used at least an average amount late in games.) How would that have helped?

 

 

[sbrylski]

Its because our K rate dropped 5% after the 75 pitch mark, compared to league average of a 1% drop. With our defense, strikeouts are our pitchers lifeblood.

 

It's also hard to get behind the idea that the starters should have been used more (when they were already used at least an average amount late in games.) How would that have helped?

 

I don't think anyone's saying we should have used them more regardless of how poorly they were pitching, but rather our starters have to be better during that 75-100 pitch range so we can save our bullpen.

[logan82]

I don't think anyone's saying we should have used them more regardless of how poorly they were pitching, but rather our starters have to be better during that 75-100 pitch range so we can save our bullpen.

That was brought up as on of Ned Yost's faults and there was also an article in Hardball Times about it. To be fair though even people who wanted Yost out for the most part didn't think he did a bad job with his starting pitching.

 

http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/article/yost-infection/

[sbrylski]

logan3825 wrote:

That was brought up as on of Ned Yost's faults and there was also an article in Hardball Times about it

I had read the article, but didn't get involved in the discussion about it. I thought the fairly obvious conclusion was that everyone who touched the ball for the Brewer eventually imploded, leaving Yost with zero options. I thought the authors conclusions didn't fit his facts.

 

Where Yost is bad, like you mentioned, is picking the correct relievers to bring in the game. His mistakes with when to pull the starters weren't glaring.