Pitch Counts

So my cousin was watching the Tigers game the other day when Scherzer was pitching. Scherzer came out of the game after 110 pitches against the White Sox, after allowing 7 hits, 2 earned runs, and striking out 10. So why did he come out? Especially when the 9-1-2 hitters (Tyler Flowers, Jordan Danks, Marcus Semien) were up to lead off the 7th inning.

Tigers fans remember the horrible Game 2 of the ALCS last year, in which Big Papi promptly hit a grand slam off of Benoit to seal the game and if you ask me, the series. Nonetheless, there was a similar situation. Scherzer had gone 7 strong innings against the Red Sox, allowing 2 hits, walking 2, and striking out 13, but Leyland elected to take him and go to the bullpen, which allowed four times as many runs in one inning as Scherzer did in 7. Leyland alluded to pitch count being the main factor that he removed the Cy Young winner, but all Tigers fans know all too well what happened next.

Either way, the question at hand was about pitch counts and how pitchers these days are so bound to that century mark. Few pitchers have the durability/longevity to go over 100 pitches a start for an entire season. So I'm combining my two favorite loves here: baseball and history!

Last year, the Marlins shut down Jose Fernandez in September because of his pitch count to preserve his arm. The New York Mets did a similar thing with Matt Harvey, and he is still on the DL for the year. But what about the past? What about the pitchers who threw almost 6,000 innings in a career? 

Let's do a bit of a comparison. "Big Train" Walter Johnson pitched from 1907 to 1927, the age of 19 to 39. That in itself is really impressive, but even more than that, he threw 531 complete games, 5,900+ innings (side note, he had a career ERA of 2.17, wow), and faced 23,000+ batters in his career. He was the premiere pitcher of the Dead Ball Era (though his career spilled over into the Live Ball Era as well). He'll be our Dead Ball sample and we'll use Randy Johnson, shoo-in Hall of Famer, 5 time Cy Young winner, and career leader in strikeouts per 9 innings. 

They are both named Johnson, so they are obviously the perfect duo to compare about durability. Walter Johnson pitched 21 years, won 417 games; Randy Johnson pitched 22 years, won 303 games. Here's how this will work. I'll list a category (durability related), the career stat, the single season best, and a general winner. 

Games started: RJ 603/35; WJ 666/42
Complete games: RJ 100/12; WJ 531/38
Shutouts: RJ 37/4; WJ 110/11
Innings pitched: RJ 4135.1/271.2; WJ 5914.1/371.2
Batters faced: RJ 17,067/1,079; WJ 23,405/1,413

In 1999, Randy Johnson's year in which he led the league in innings pitched and batters faced, the most pitches he threw in one game was 142, and the fewest he threw was 93. Unfortunately, Baseball Reference does not have pitch counts available for Walter Johnson, but here's my theory so why pitchers back in the day: medicine, ball construction, and pitch types.

Medicine: Pre-integration teams were unaware of how to address tired arms, other than rest. Guys like Walter Johnson would pitch 300 innings and virtually had no rehabilitation, compared to this: 

This was courtesy of the Mets on Twitter; Daisuke Matsuzaka threw 15 pitches in a saving effort for the Mets on April 24th and had that get-up on after his exhausting outing (sarcasm). I think the pitchers back then, since they never iced or anything, were just so much physically stronger than everybody else that it never really mattered. So when my son starts playing ball, he'll never ice! He'll be the strongest cookie on the block. Just kidding. 

Ball Construction: back in the Dead Ball Era, one game usually used one ball. After the first three innings, the ball was dirty, spat upon, muddied, and physically mutilated. So it became easier for pitchers to retire other batters. Unless hitters could place the ball easily, they usually would weakly ground out or fly out so the pitchers had a much easier time to retire them. Blow up innings were so much rarer because there were so few home runs. Because of that, innings pitched increased, batters faced increased, and shutouts increased.

Pitch type: fastballs and changeups. Curveballs and sliders were also very rare; pitchers relied on pure speed to retire batters. Rumors of the past have it that Walter Johnson was the hardest throwing pitcher that ever lived, which would make a lot of sense as to why (Walter) Johnson was such a successful pitcher in his day. 

So there's my thought for the day. I don't think the pitchers now are any more or any less talented than the pitchers of the pre-integration era, but I think that it's just an interesting difference that a hundred years makes. Thanks for reading.