Article: Twins Starters & Pitch Limits

[jjswol]

You can view the page at http://twinsdaily.com/content.php/2521-Twins-starters-and-pitch-limits

[DuluthFan]

As with all stats, this doesn't tell the whole story by itself. How are starts where the pitcher is pulled after 2-3 innings after getting shelled counted within this article. There is a high probability that they didn't hit the 100 pitch mark. You might need to do more research and take into count how many pitchers made it to the 5th inning. Perhaps including innnings pitched as a confirmation stat to verify your research. The Twins have not exactly had a pitching staff that compares to other major league teams as far ability to pitch 5 innings goes.

[jay]

Another factor at play here has been the Twins' focus on pitchers who throw strikes and don't walk batters. I'm sure you'd see walk rate along very similar trend lines. That is probably the biggest factor at play in limiting the number of pitches thrown.

[Cris E]

1994-2013 includes a lot of bad Twins teams with a graveyard full of bad starters. 56 pitches is injured or blown out, not tired or time for the pen. As mentioned above, count awful starts (<3 IP?) and either show the number or exclude it from the study.

[Badsmerf]

From 2002 to 2010 the Twins rotation was not bad. Still, they didn't even manage to be league average? I have a hard time agreeing with this philosophy. Something to think about.

[notoriousgod71]

Another factor at play here has been the Twins' focus on pitchers who throw strikes and don't walk batters. I'm sure you'd see walk rate along very similar trend lines. That is probably the biggest factor at play in limiting the number of pitches thrown.

 

I don't believe this at all. It takes less pitches to strike someone out than it does to give up a single and then get a ground out. More often than not our pitchers are not guys that don't walk anyone AND don't give up hits.

[Jim H]

I think you may have missed the biggest reason the Twins limit pitchers to around 100 pitches. I remember Tom Kelly saying (when he was still manager-probably on his Sunday show) that the Twins believed that when a pitcher went over significantly over 100 pitches, his next start was usually short and poor. He implied that the Twins had studied this, and it was more than just the Twins pitchers but applied to most major league starting pitchers. Apparently the correlation between the 2 was very strong. Obviously, there were outliers, Verlander being a current one who often throws well over 100 pitches and does not follow up with bad starts.

 

Now, a couple of qualifiers. I believe I heard this from Kelly more than once, but I cannot remember other Twins officals stating this. Even if it was once one of the reasons the Twins tended to limit pitchers to around 100 pitches, it doesn't mean it is a current reason. Given how often Bert knocks pitch limits and how often the Twins officals get asked about, this reason doesn't seem to come out in the discussions.

 

Still, the Twins tend to be close mouthed about many of their policies. This could be an important reason why the Twins tend to limit their starters to around 100 pitches.

 

I do agree with some of your points about pitch limits. 100 pitches is certainly an abritrary limit and there are many factors that should factor into how many pitches a pitcher should throw in a particular game. I suspect that sometimes major league organizations don't want to leave the judgement of when to pull pitchers entirely up to their managers. Certainly in the minors there reasons to have limits and to avoid giving too much leeway to the managers. It is also true that certain managers had bad reputations for the way they handled their pitchers. Billy Martin was often given credit for ruining a whole staff of young starting pitchers in Oakland, by overusing them.

 

One thing that I think it possibly true, if you limit your young pitchers in the minors to 100 pitches per start(I suspect there are often good reason to do this) it has to be rather hard to stretch them out to say 120 in the majors. They have been conditioned to that 100 pitch limit and it is likely to affect them in some way to throw more pitches.

 

By the way, interesting article.

[Thegrin]

Usually, when a pitcher is nearing 100 pitches and he only uses around 15 or less pitches to finish his last inning, the Twins leave him in the game for another inning. If he breezes through that inning, they will leave him in for another. I watch or listen to almost all Twins games and I rarely disagree with timing of when they bring in a reliever. That is one of the reasons I support Gardy/Andy is that the pitchers have earned the right to pitch another inning.

 

I remember, about 20 years ago, or so, there was a study out that said exactly that pitchers tend to pitch the next game more poorly after pitching around 115+ innings in the previous game. Somewhere between 100 & 110 pitches was ideal. I have looked for this study online, but I haven't found it.