Baseball Musings
Baseball Musings
March 24, 2006
More On Pitcher Injuries

Part two of Evan Brunell's survey of experts on pitcher's injuries is up at Firebrand of the American League.

The Reds organization is attempting to change conventional thinking around baseball with regard to starting pitching and Kullman was at the forefront of it all. He oversaw a unique system in the Reds’ minor league system at the Class-A level and below. Instead of one starter going as long as he can, the Reds pull their pitchers after three to five innings and replace them with another pitcher who then goes a maximum of three to five innings. The former general manager of the Reds, Dan O’Brien, hired prior to the 2004 season, implemented this strategy. The reasoning was that if pitchers were to continually decrease in endurance to save their body from injuries, why not decrease it significantly, to three to six innings, so they can exit while their arm is fresh and bounce back quicker? “If we, as an industry, are going to continually limit starting pitcher workloads with arbitrary pitch and inning counts, why not at least get them out there one day sooner?” asks Kullman.

Critics say that this method is not utilizing the talents of a great starting pitcher correctly. However, as Kullman argues, what is the difference between a starter giving you seven to eight innings every fifth day, or five to six every fourth day? In addition, those great pitchers who can go eight innings consistently without significant harm to their career is a list so small that it can be denied in favor of the more advantageous system the Reds are slowly implementing. Kullman believes that this system should one day reach the major league level, for it will lessen the risk of the pitcher becoming fatigued, which leads to injury. University of North Florida’s Joshua Papelbon, a junior and brother to the Boston Red Sox’s young pitcher Jonathan Papelbon, says that “your arm and body can only take so much. The longer you continuously throw in a game the more and more you put yourself at risk of getting injured.”

Let's do the math. Six inning every four games equals 240 innings. Seven innings every five games equal 224 innings. And 224 inning go to a fifth starter, who is by definition worse than the other four. You need a good bullpen for this strategy, however.

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Posted by David Pinto at 07:16 AM | Injuries | TrackBack (0)
Comments

As far as I know, the Reds have now (as of this year) abandoned this approach in favor of more traditional inning limits per season that scale with pitcher age. And Brad Kullman is no longer with the team; he was fired within a day or two of Krivsky taking over as general manager. -j

Posted by: JinAZ at March 24, 2006 12:46 PM

Doing the math, if you cut the innings eaten by starters by 2 innings a game (7-8 down to 5-6) that's 320 more innings for the relievers with only one more reliever (previously the 5th starter). That will not work. I think if you want to use this method for starters you need 8 of them and plan to use 2 "starters" per game. Then add 3-4 setup/closers.

Posted by: bruce at March 24, 2006 03:11 PM

Oakland tried this in 93 (I believe) they had a sort of rough schedule of pitchers, each of whom would get 2-3 innings a game, then yield to the next, regardless of how well they were pitching. They had 4 relievers and 7 starters. As you can probably guess, it didn't work at all. I think maybe it lasted a week.

Posted by: david at March 24, 2006 07:04 PM
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