Sweeny Blog: The Great Pitch Count Debate

Tampa Bay, FL (WFAN)  -- The biggest debate of the Yankees 2008 season will have nothing to do with Joe Girardi, Alex Rodriguez, or Hank Steinbrenner. It is a subject that will drive WFAN callers mad some days. There will be more than one old-school baseball guy tell us it’s a bunch of bunk. But in 2008, Yankee baseball will be all about pitch counts and innings limits.

We’ve seen a lot of it the last couple years as Phil Hughes and Joba Chamberlain climbed the ladder. Two years ago, Hughes was pulled from a no-hitter in the minors after 5 innings…twice. Last year there was doubt whether he would get to finish that no-hitter in Texas before he pulled the hammy. Then, of course, there were the Joba Rules. Welcome to baseball in the 21st century.

While Yankee fans are waiting for Hughes, Chamberlain, and Kennedy to morph into Koufax, Drysdale, and Podres overnight let’s remember that the road to Cooperstown is riddled with potholes. And you just have to turn the clock back a decade.

In the spring of 1996 the Mets were building a marketing campaign around Generation K, the young trio of pitchers that were going to carry them back to glory (sound familiar?). Bill Pulsipher was 22, Paul Wilson was 23, Jason Isringhausen was 23.

This train derailed early. In fact, Pulsipher got injured before the ’96 season started and Wilson went down later that year. Unless you count the photo shoot that put them on the cover of Baseball Weekly, these three guys were never healthy and on the active roster at the same time. NEVER.

Pulsipher came up as one of the best lefty prospects in all of baseball, considered by some at the time a better prospect than Andy Pettitte, who had just arrived in the Bronx about the same time.

By himself, Pulsipher is a landmark case in innings limits. He pitched 201 innings at AA as a 20-year old in 1994. The next year, at age 21, he threw 218 innings between AAA and the majors, averaging 7.45 innings over 17 starts for the Mets following a mid-June call-up. Pulsipher pitched his last game of 1995 on September 11. He didn’t throw another major league pitch until June 1998. To date, Bill Pulsipher has pitched in 11 different organizations, not counting independent leagues, and has a career big-league record of 13-19.

Paul Wilson was drafted out of college, not high school, so he was a little ahead in development. The first overall pick by the Mets in 1994, Wilson threw 186 innings in his first full year of pro ball in 1995. He started 26 games for the Mets in 1996 (5-12, 5.38 ERA)…then after the injuries didn’t pitch in the major leagues again until 2000 with Tampa Bay. He had just one winning season in the majors (2004 with Cincinnati, 11-6) and finished with a career record of 40-58.

Even Isringhausen, the most successful of the group, couldn’t avoid falling into this Bermuda Triangle. In 1995, the year he reached the majors, Izzy threw a total of 221 innings. He was 22 years old. Between AAA and the majors, he went 20-4 in 32 starts. Isringhausen went 6-14 for the Mets in 1996. He missed most of the next two years due to injury before being traded in 1999. Izzy became an All-Star closer in Oakland and has nearly 300 career saves, but it’s not exactly what Mets fans had in mind These three guys served as wake up calls to everyone around baseball. Steve Phillips ran the Mets minor league department at the time (under GM Joe McIllvaine). Phillips told me a couple months ago it was just “too much, too soon for young arms” and made sure that philosophy changed by the time he became GM.

Nearly every team has adopted this philosophy these days, knowing how valuable young pitching has become. But it doesn’t mean that the opinions are unanimous. Check out what Bill Masse, then manager of the Yankees AA farm club at Trenton, told the Trenton Times in 2006 about the pitch counts and innings limits being placed on 20-year old Phil Hughes:

We get so ridiculous with this dumb pitch count stuff...It's so (dumb). Somebody came up with a pitch count thing (like) this is going to decide if a kid's arm is going to be healthy or not. It's like predicting the weather sometimes. 'If he throws 66 pitches, he will be fine, but if he throws 81, he is going to get hurt.' No one can predict that.

I understand completely what the Yankees are doing, and I support what they are doing. The only negative you run into is that he never learns how to pitch when he is tired. He never learns how to pitch when he is a little bit fatigued.

I think you run into those problems because he is always fresh. Also, he is never in trouble. He needs to learn how to pitch out of his second or third jam in the seventh inning with two outs and he's throwing 90 mph instead of 94.



Masse wasn’t criticizing the approach with Hughes, just disagreeing with the general approach that some pitchers are babied too much during their development. Coincidentally, Masse was let go by the Yankee organization after the 2006 season.

But his last point is a good one. Hughes has never made 30 starts in a season. Pitches 100-110 could be the most important ones he throws all game, yet it’s a place he hasn’t been.

Just this week, Mike Mussina shared his thoughts on the subject:

I’m from the old school...when I came up there were no innings restrictions. My opinion of what wears your arm down isn’t necessarily how many innings you throw in a starter’s situation. My wearing down happens when you’re out there a lot, when you don’t get the proper rest in between those turns. That’s what beats you up. I understand both sides of it. They’re an asset and you have to take care of your assets. At the same time, they’re not 19-year-old kids either. They’re certainly capable of doing it. We’ll just have to wait and see what happens come August. This is a question that’s gonna come up in August, not March.

Mussina may not be wrong, but he’s a baseball dinosaur. He made the major leagues at age 22 and pitched a total of 210 innings that year. He threw 241 the next year at age 23. He’s thrown nearly 3000 more innings since then. Eighteen years in the major leagues, 250 wins, zero arm surgeries. Go figure.

There may not be any perfect way of doing this. Every time a pitcher throws the ball it’s quite possible he won’t throw another pitch. But the management that invests millions in these young arms sleeps a lot better knowing they did everything they could to prevent that from happening. Which is why we now live in a world with pitch counts and innings limits.

From 1993-1995, Bill Pulsipher threw 19 complete games (in 67 professional starts Phil Hughes has thrown just one, and even that was only a 7-inning game, part of a minor league doubleheader). In 1996 Jason Isringhausen made seven starts where he threw at least 120 pitches, including three of at least 130 pitches. Joba Chamberlain won’t see 130 pitches unless there is an electrical fence holding Joe Girardi and Dave Eiland in the dugout. Any manager at any level who abuses a young arm will find himself looking for other work.

So maybe they should add a new graphic this summer to those boxes in the corner of your screen. Might as well make pitch count as important as the score. And instead of hanging “K’s” maybe fans should hang innings. These are the numbers you will hear about most in 2008.

Thanks for reading. Send comments and questions to yankees@wfan.com.

Sweeny