June 26, 2010

1 thought on “Jackson’s Pitch Count

  1. pft

    Strange how the link disappeared. But folks who are critical of this usage are not so much concerned about the results the next game.

    The main concern is the impact such usage has on health and long term effectiveness, especially with pitchers who have been developed in the pitch count era. Those with fragile arms have not been weeded out as they were in the past.

    Excluding Jackson since 2000 there have been 11 pitchers who threw 140 or more pitches, R Johnson and L. Hernandez did it multiple times.
    That’s a really small sample.

    Here is their fate:

    K. Wood who was 26 then missed most of the next season with an arm injury.

    S. Hitchock at 29 missed most of the rest of the same season due to injury

    A. Pettitte at 29 then missed much of the next
    season with an injury

    M. Redman at 29 and with an ERA of 2.8 had an ERA of 4.39 the rest of the way.

    J. Schmidt at 31 then had a DL stint the next year, an off year, and well short of 200 IP.

    The last time L. Hernandez went over 140 pitches he was 30 and this was the last good season he had, he was never the same pitcher after 2005.

    D. Davis at 24 in 2000 missed most of 2002 due to injury.

    A. Ashby at 32 in 2000 then missed most of 2002 with injury.

    The last time R Johnson threw 140+ pitches he missed most of the next year with injury . Of course he was 39, so it is likely this was age.

    R. Villone at 30 did it on the last game of the season, and seemed to suffer no adverse effect in the subsequent seasons. Of course, he had a long rest between starts (150 days).

    K. Appier seemed to suffer no ill effects, although his next start he gave up 5 ER in 7 1/3 IP

    So of these 11 pitchers, one may only say 3 or 4 of the 11 likely had no ill effects related to that game. As for the others, nobody can say what happened later had anything to do with the high pitch count, but nobody can say it did not either.

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