Seattle Sports Insider

K-Pax Innings - in Practice

Posted by

2/12/12

............

=== And It Netted Them a Cleanup Hitter for Their Efforts ===

... I think the Mariners handled the 2011 Michael Pineda perfectly: they let him pitch, pulled him at 100 pitches, and the moment he started showing signs of slowing down, they shut him down. Notice on this graph that Pineda had exactly one (1) game in which his average fastball MPH dropped off alarmingly, and he did not throw the second game after that.

=== Which Half? ===

There is an assumption that you should save a Pineda or Paxton for the second half of the season, but:

1. In 2011, and probably in 2012, the first halves of the seasons were the halves that mattered.

2. If you "save" Paxton for the second half, he's still logging innings in AAA.

=== Dumb Question Dept. ===

If you followed HQ's assumption, and you refused to increase a pitcher's IP by more than 40 in any one season: how would you ever convert a reliever to a starter?

=== Dumb Question 2 Dept. ===

If you train for marathons, are you concerned about total miles in a year? Or are you concerned about getting enough rest between workouts?

It's tough to understand the logic behind saying, "OK, I've rested up between workouts, but I've been working out for six months and now I should sit on the couch for six months." Granted, the work/recovery graph can be sort of a sawtooth graph, trending down. But in running or weightlifting, that's a question of taking a week off in June, to let the sawtooth come all the way back up, not a question of taking six months to sit on the couch.

=== Dumb Question 3 Dept. ===

Michael Pineda's mechanics were okay - in my opinion. He had a high elbow, but came through sidearm. Net result, to my eye: average-solid.

James Paxton's mechanics are a dream. He's lefty and therefore smooth; his lower-body leveraging is nothing short of sensational; his genetics seem outstanding, given he was throwing 95 mph immediately after a year off.

Do you set different IP figures for LHP vs RHP, for hard throwers vs soft, for pitchers with tons of K's? Or do you apply the same rules to Clayton Kershaw that you do to Jason Vargas?

=== Dr's Diagnosis, Dept. ===

I'm open to the suggestion that you shouldn't increase a pitcher's IP by more than 25, or 40, or 80, or 150, innings in a season. My question is: do we consider this an assumption, or do we consider it a documented syndrome?

Under these circumstances, I would do exactly the same thing for James Paxton that the Mariners did for Michael Pineda in 2011: I'd let him pitch until he were gassed, and then I'd get him out of there.

Comments

Innings are innings

If Paxton is a 130/150/170/200 inning guy (take your pick), innings are still innings.
If he's on a 130 inning limit in Seattle he would still be on a 130 inning limit in Tacoma.
Ergo: an innings limit is NO argument for not putting him in an M's uniform, if he's got the talent to wear it.
By the way, your point about a game PITCH limit and radar gun watchfullness is right on. Wasn't it Nolan Ryan who lamented about the fact that pitchers don't throw enough when young?

Nolan Ryan is partially wrong.

Ryan pitched in a time when the world was much more cruel to pitchers. If you didn't throw 300 innings ,you didn't make the big lagues as a star pitcher...so everyone threw a lot more. This did two things:
1) It made the pitchers who could take the punishment a lot more durable at a younger age
2) It broke everyone else.
Not everyone can throw the way Ryan did as a kid. He shouldn't expect it of them. But if you find a kid who seems tobe more resiliant after throwing or has naturally graceful mechanics...he should be encouraged to test his limits. ANd the way you do that is precisely how the Mariners did it with Pineda. You watch his stuff game to game and pitch to pitch...you throw him as long as he seems fresh...and back off when he isn't.

Russian weightlifting programs.

Yeah, they produced champions. If your talent supply is large enough the brute force method is the very effective in finding champions, and but it's entirely inefficient. It breaks more than it makes, as did Ryans better old days mindset to pitching. Only the genetic freaks can survive the onslaught.

$3 per month - cheap at quadruple the price

Dr. D reasons that if he pitches BJOL, then he can excerpt recent material more guiltlessly :- ) .... At BJOL, you can gingerly (taking care not to annoy the bears) submit Q's like this one:

Do you tend to agree with the popular idea (BaseballHQ, etc) that a young pitcher's IP should only be increased by a small amount (25-40 or so IP) each successive year? Supposing that a 22-year-old AAA pitcher had thrown only 120 or so innings in 2011, but exploded on the AL in 2012, would you consider letting him make 30 starts if he were feeling good throughout? An illustrative case - Justin Verlander threw 130 IP in 2005, and then threw 200+ IP seasons, if you include playoffs, from 2006 and each season since.
Asked by: jemanji
Answered: 2/13/2012

I think that's become standard practice in baseball; I believe it has. I think most organizations now are reluctant to increase the innings for their young pitchers.

It doesn't seem convincing to me, intuitively, but of course one can't oppose prevailing wisdom with intuition. I do agree that many teams for many years made reckless changes in usage patterns for young pitchers, often resulting in destroying their careers.

I don't know if I can explain why it doesn't seem exactly right to me. As I would see it, a pitcher has injury risks from many different causes. To focus on ONE of those potential causes--his innings on the mound--is not irrelevant, because no doubt the innings on the mound do cause stress (therefore injuries) on many occasions. But I would think it was MORE critical to avoid certain stress points--long outings, innings pitched when the pitcher is not exactly right physically, etc.--than simply to cap the innings pitched. - Bill James

Light bulb

Picking among several light bulbs in that answer, my favorite is "You can't oppose prevailing wisdom with intuition." What a gem :- )
You can, of course, TRY to oppose prevailing wisdom by asking for the evidence, which in this case is "little or none" ... but we know what Mr. James means, particularly inside the halls of an MLB front office...

/promote

Thx Matty :- )

pre-limit vs. post-limit injuries ...

For me, I think you can present evidence. (I don't know what the actual numbers are, but I think one might find them).
1) How many pitchers who did NOT exceed the 30+ innings in a year limit got hurt (as a %).
2) How many pitchers who DID exceed the 30+ innings in a year limit got hurt (as a percentage).
That's a start - even if weighted to "falsely" support the inning-increase paradigm. Why do I say "falsely?" Because there is some basic "base rate" of chance of injury on every pitch thrown, (regardless of other factors). That base rate we will call "unlucky" injuries, (pulling a muscle when sneezing would qualify). Even if that luck rate is really low - (1in 10,000 chance of getting injured on any pitch), the more pitches thrown, the more total chance of getting unlucky.
Box cars on dice are a 1 in 36 chance. While the chance on any given throw doesn't change, the odds of throwing box cars (getting injured?) in 36 rolls vs. 360 rolls is very, very different. But, it does not matter at all whether I throw those 360 rolls all in a single day vs. over a 36-day span.
I think James is absolutely spot on. There are a bunch of factors that influence injury, and while "common wisdom" has fixated on innings limits, this is more likely out of a sense of "this is something we can control easily" rather than it being an actual (scientifically valid) major issue. While pushing beyond physical endurance is a valid concern, for pitchers specifically, this seems to be a self-correcting issue. When pitchers "tire", they get less effective and they get yanked.
Honestly, I think a larger chunk of the whole pitch-limit and inning-limit issue is simply managers and coaches doing everything they can to absolve themselves of responsibility for injuries rather than to actually prevent them. If industry standard says 100 pitches per game is a reasonable limit - then a manager has "permission" to yank a starter after 104 pitches, even if pitching well. But, mostly I think it is a (bad) case of attempting to take control of something largely out of anyone's control.

Well said...

This whole metered innings thing fails completely to take into account the variation among individuals. What suits Verlander may destroy Paxton. Or not. He could very easily go 200 innings this year, and 200+ on into the indefinite future.

Cover-your-backside dept.

Honestly, I think a larger chunk of the whole pitch-limit and inning-limit issue is simply managers and coaches doing everything they can to absolve themselves of responsibility for injuries rather than to actually prevent them.

Without a doubt.
And this isn't unique to baseball, of course. At Boeing or Weyerhaueser, if a manager has a tough decision to make, they're leaving themselves wide open to second-guessing if they make it unconventionally.
Where does that leave the M's on decisions like Jesus Montero, two rookies in the rotation, Carp in LF, Wells in CF and so forth? ....

To James's point

To James's point, it doesn't really matter if it's scientifically proven or not. It's accepted convention. They shut him down after 95 IP last year to "protect his arm" and they will do the same thing this year at some point.

Right, it's irrelevant as it relates to the M's own biases

But what do you think about their treatment of Pineda in 2011?