Baseball Musings: Matsuzaka and Pitch Counts

February 06, 2007

Matsuzaka and Pitch Counts

Matsuzaka Watch interviews Will Carroll on the Japanese pitcher, and there's a great discussion about pitch counts (PAP is pitcher abuse points).

MW: Something I wanted to ask you, since we began to e-mail back and forth...I did a piece a while back using a PAP chart that I was running on Matsuzaka, just to see how he stacked up, and it's off the charts compared to even the most abused Major Leaguers....
WC: It doesn't work.

MW: Yeah, I was wondering what's your perspective on it? Why doesn't it work?

WC: A couple things. First off, PAP is based off a five man rotation and even though the Japanese use five man there's more rest days in there, so it essentially factors out to six days rest, which is something I'm curious about...his adjustment to that...the five days versus six. But, it's just a different game. It's not played the same way, and all the assumptions made off PAP were based off, I wanna say, it went back to like 1978.

Japan is actually more equivalent to the 60s, and we're working on this project where we're doing this book on pennant races and two of the chapters I'm working on are 1934 and 1967. So I'm looking at all these pitch charts and it was just different. They didn't throw as hard, but they would throw 150 pitches a game. And, there weren't as many strikeouts because they were throwing for ground balls. And I think the Japanese have been kind of the same way. They are a little more strikeout happy so I think that they're throwing harder, especially from the games I've seen. But even so, the strikeout totals, and the strikeout rates equate more to a game of the late 60s or early 70s than the PAP era, so I just don't think the math works.

There's a lot more. I get the feeling there's some combination of GM/manager/starting staff that can exploit pitch counts and a four-rotation to give themselves a huge edge. The right combination hasn't come along yet, however.

Posted by David Pinto at 01:08 PM | Interviews • | Pitchers | TrackBack (0)

Comments

Thanks for the shout out Dave. Will is an interesting guy and it was a pleasure to speak with him. A lot of things to watch with Matsuzaka next year, and while we're on that subect Igawa too. If they do well, you'll see a super ramp-up of Japanese scouting by a host of Major League teams. Koji Uehara is next to cross the ocean....this time as a free agent. Stay Tuned.

Posted by: mikeplugh at February 6, 2007 07:18 PM

BTW....I was interviewed at BP Radio by Will as well. Head over there for a listen to the February 5th podcast.

http://www.baseballprospectus.com/radio/

Posted by: mikeplugh at February 6, 2007 07:19 PM

It matters little whether Matsuzaka throws every fifth day, sixth day or fourth day.

By throwing a high volume of practice pitches from the mound, in between starts, over a longer period of time (one hour instead of 10-15 minutes) with sufficient rest in between blocks of pitches, a pitcher will maintain his level of pitching specific fitness without getting injured or fatigued.

The Japanese apparently instinctively understand this but American baseball coaches haven't caught on because they are too deep into their mythical beliefs of what a pitcher is physically capable of performing.

The proof is in observing what Matsuzaka has done his entire career. And this is normal for Japanese pitchers. Is their model not working? If so where is the evidence that they are producing more arm injuries than our "safe" model. I don't see it.

Korean youth pitchers are currently throwing 200-400 pitches per day nearly every day...over a longer period of time with rest in between.

Matsuzaka threw a 103 pitch bullpen the other day. I do not see his arm falling off and he has been doing this for years.

Why can't we at least look at this as making more sense.

I have an 18 year old student who threw 180 game intensity pitches last Thursday over 3 1/2 hours and threw over 100 pitches in a lesson with me on Saturday in a two hour period. He feels great and looks great and has been doing this for months.

I believe injuries are caused not by throwing too many pitches but too few and substituting long toss from mound pitching. Long toss has little to no value except as a warm-up tool.

The PAP has not taken into account the fact that throwing more pitches in practice from the mound will keep the pitcher's body fit to deliver the arm.

The pitching arm is along for the ride and virtually provides little of the power of the pitch. If the body is not trained to deliver the arm then it fatigues and the arm is then at risk.

Throwing less will continue to produce more arm injuries and less skilled pitchers.

The American model for decreasing arm injuries has apparently not worked and will never work. Only baseball has this type of training model. Other sports would laugh at how little intense work a pitcher has to do.

Talking about a "pitcher's workload" over the course of a season is ludicrous. In a 100 pitch game a pitcher exerts himself a total of 5 minutes physically. The rest of the time he stands around, walks or sits. A ditch digger does more work in fifteen minutes than a pitcher does in a week.

It seems we are not looking at this PAP with much common sense.

Athletes, including pitchers, are far more resilient than most people realize.

Dick Mills
www.pitching.com

Posted by: Dick Mills at February 25, 2007 12:37 PM

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