Baseball Musings: Required Pitching

January 15, 2004

Required Pitching

I saw this link at Baseball Primer about the Reds instituting pitch counts for their minor league pitchers. Part of it is to try to prevent injuries, but a more interesting part comes from Tim Naehring:

Although the prevention of injuries is expected to be a fringe benefit of the new plan, Reds player development director Tim Naehring said that isn't the primary reason for it.

"Coming out of college, with aluminum bats, these guys are used to pitching away from contact," Naehring said. "We're trying to teach these young pitchers at an early age to pitch to contact, which means trying to command the fastball and get the hitter out early in the count. When you only have 75 pitches, you better be pretty effective with the way you use your pitches if you want to stick around until the fifth and sixth innings."

Another aspect of the program is that each pitcher will be required not only to develop a changeup, but to use it on at least 10 percent of his pitches in every game, regardless of whether he has perfected it. And finally, pitchers at those levels will be presented with a list of requirements they must meet before becoming eligible for promotion to the next level.

"It's sort of like elementary school, where you have to pass first grade before you can go on to second grade," O'Brien said. "I'm not saying it will be that way in every case, because you might have an injury that necessitates an individual being promoted when he hasn't mastered all the ingredients at that level. But by and large, the program we have put in place is going to make it clear to the athlete what is expected at that level. After that, it's up to him."

I like this idea. It's like the A's rewarding minor leaguers who get on base well. It will be interesting to see how it develops over time.

Posted by David Pinto at 10:25 AM | Management | TrackBack (0)

Comments

This sounds so crazy that it just might work. However, even I can hit a bad changeup, so in the short term we might see some scary numbers for Reds minor league pitchers...

Posted by: Matt Davis at January 15, 2004 01:03 PM

"No Pitcher Left Behind?"

Posted by: Linkmeister at January 15, 2004 01:09 PM

Hey, maybe it's also something of an intelligence test for pitchers. I bet they'll see a few of them do the math:

ten percent half-learned changeups divided by a full team of batters equals a steady diet of offspeed pitches to the number nine hitter, who's probably not going to crush them, anyway

They may not 'graduate' the guys who figure that out, but maybe they'll keep them in mind for coaching and front office jobs. Everybody's got a talent, you know.

Posted by: Charlie at January 15, 2004 03:58 PM

That "no pitcher left behind" comment is pretty accurate. A big thing in New York City public school education these days is "Clear Expectations." In other words, we want the kids to know exactly what it is they need to do and know to move on and how they can go about doing it.

It's actually one of the few things about the current path of education that I find good and useful as a change from the past. I don't see any reason why it can't work in baseball as well, so long as the expectations are correctly created (which is exactly the problem in the education realm; the exepctations are ridiculous).

Posted by: Jason at January 16, 2004 06:25 PM

I think this is a positive step for the Reds, as an organization, to take. This gives the kids, and the Reds, and opportunity to see what they can do. Most young pitchers don't have much of a changeup and are forced to come up with one in the high minors or even major leagues. Now they are going to have to develop one earlier - which will be to their benefit.

Posted by: Brian at January 19, 2004 09:13 AM