He came out for the ninth with Stanford up by five runs, which did seem a little much.

I watched the game and wrote a pretty expansive take on this.

I'll never stop waving the flag for the HS pitcher I personally watched throw 216 pitches in a 14-inning complete game.

1-0 final, mid-1980s. don't remember who won the game - but for fock's sake, I hope he did.

was a big game, to be fair - county tournament quarterfinals, and it was a big county with more than 50 high schools !

he was a RHP, but rumor is he still is called "Lefty" to this very day......

OMG Stanford wins on a can of corn pop fly that the outfielder lost in the lights. Heartbreaking.

Yes, but they should have won earlier but for a couple of meatballs right down the middle called balls just prior to a game tying single.

OMG Stanford wins on a can of corn pop fly that the outfielder lost in the lights. Heartbreaking.

Not if you went to Stanford. Yay!

What is the current science on pitch count. I've never really bought into the 100 number. It seems 120 -130 would be the more likely upper limit and you wouldn't want to do that every start.

Is there any evidence at all that reduced pitch counts have lessened arm injuries ? It seems like arm injuries happen as much or more than they used to.

If I had to guess, higher velocities are far bigger issue for injuries than pitch count.

In a strange way higher pitch counts probably lessens arm injuries because you can't throw 120 pitches at max velocity

Kenny Baugh says 156 is a clown pitch count, Bro.

#7 I tend to agree with you, I'd like to see some updated studies. Joe Sheehan was railing about this outing on Twitter with a list of all the MLB pitchers in the last 20 years that have gone 130+ pitches, saying see...Kerry Wood! Mark Prior! Jaret Wright! But there was also Freddy Garcia, Randy Wolf, Matt Cain guys that all enjoyed nice long careers. I wonder if you just took a random sample of pitchers, you'd get a similar mix of guys who got hurt and guys who had nice careers. Maybe arms just inevitably break down and we should get as much use out of them as we can?

idk what the answer is, but it seems like protecting arms is a lot like not pitching your closer until the ninth inning - you're being overly conservative for something that may not even happen. For 95% of the kids playing in that game, this will be their greatest sporting achievement. Why not let them pitch?

My (alma mater) high school lost the State Championship semi-final 3-2 to a young man who pitched a complete game and hit a two-run triple in the sixth to win it.

In the stands, I turned to my brother and said, "This kid just had the greatest day of his life. Now he's got 50 years to reflect on it."

#7

The lower pitch count leads to the higher velocity, but the problem is the higher velocity is necessary to succeed. A guy who can throw 120 pitches at 90 mph may not be more likely to get hurt than the guy throwing 90 pitches at 95 mph, but the former isn't getting out of the third inning at the big league level, so it doesn't matter how many pitches he can throw.

Arm injuries are also up this year, almost certainly due to the pitch clock, as well.

Illinois 3A HS Finals, 3rd place game, Saturday. Mizzou-bound (and likely draftee) Josh McDevitt: 8.0 IP, 5 H, 1 R, 0 ER, 14 K, 1 BB, 118 pitches.

My 11-year-old was apoplectic about the pitch count. I told him...I've seen a lot worse, and this was literally the kid's last high school game, so the reins were off a little. Especially since McDevitt was still sharp at the end.

Unfortunately, the kid who came on for the 9th couldn't control the situation and threw a game-ending wild pitch. 2-1 loss. But McDevitt is special.

Is there a college WS thread anywhere? Because my law school alma mommy beat the ever loving snot out of Alabama and is going into the CWS after a nearly 70 year absence ranked #1 in the country, and I want to talk about it.

Per #11 ... the number of max effort pitches probably hasn't changed much at all. Heck, until the last 10 years or so, the average number of innings per start hadn't changed much at all. But now, the team wants all of those max effort pitches within the first 22 batters then they will bring on 4 guys to get through the last 15-18 batters, each of those guys throwing max effort. Not surprisingly, teams have decided that 9 innings of max effort pitches is more effective than 5-6 innnings of max effort pitches spaced out over 7-8 innings.

Julian Javier came up the other day. OK, he didn't come up, I brought him up. Anyway, Javier was the Cards' full-time 2B from 1960-1970. He hit 257/296/355 with a career HR/PA rate of 1.3%. Heck, his doubles rate was only about 1 per 30 PA. He'd swing at most anything (5% walk rate and 12% of those were IBB**). He wasn't even particularly tough to strike out (13.1% vs lg 15.0). How often are you reaching back for everything you've got against Javier?

Now the days of Javier have sorta returned. About one-third of qualified batters so far this year have a SLG under 400. There tend to be two differences vs. Javier -- first they nearly all manage OBPs of at least around 320; second their BAs are lower but their ISOs are higher so they will hit meatballs a bit better than Javier. Will pitchers start taking it a bit easier? (Probably not, the nerds won't like it.)

Wow, some incredibly bad lines this year. Jean Segura 192/259/237 ... Abreu 220/275/289 (that doesn't seem possible) ... Baez 224/265/320 ... Rosario 236/286/330 (very Javier) ... Kike 228/296/356

** Javier's most common spot in the lineup was #7 actually but that's still where most of his IBB came. He was being IBB'd to get to the #8 hitter which suggests that guy was usually much worse than Javier ... and that guy was followed by the pitcher. He also has really weird batting order splits with 1500 PAs leading off with a 652 OPS, 2200 at #7 with a 635 OPS and 1500 at #2 with a 711 OPS. His BA was 30-40 points higher at #2 with a BABIP of 322. That doesn't appear to be age-related as his #2 PAs are clustered early, middle and late.

I assume the #8 “hitter” almost all the time was Dal Maxvill and his career OPS+ of 57.

Wow, some incredibly bad lines this year. Jean Segura 192/259/237 ... Abreu 220/275/289 (that doesn't seem possible) ... Baez 224/265/320 ... Rosario 236/286/330 (very Javier) ... Kike 228/296/356

Austin Hedges has given the Pirates 125 PAs of .174/.235/.220.

Maxvill was a good player - in 1968.
91 OPS+ and won a Gold Glove at SS.

otherwise, not so much.

I love his late-career arc after his tenure as Javier's keystone mate.

at age 33 in late August-1972, the Cardinals decide they've seen enough offensive ineptitude from Dal and trade him to the future World Series champion Oakland A's for two buckets of used baseballs. he was coming off OPS+ seasons of 39, 38, and 60 (in an amazing 1299 total PA), and he's ringing up a 62 in 1972.

The A's may have feared he wasn't completely worthless at SS, so they gave him every-day time at 2B in September (21 starts at 2B, 2 at SS) to seal the deal.

This was a "Murphy Brown's secretary" position for Oakland - Larry Brown led with 44 starts at 2B, Tim Cullen got 43, Dick Green 22, Maxvill 21, Ted Kubiak 18. all five men were in their 30s, and none of them got even 160 PA.

OPS+
Green 115 - but only 157 PA, as Charlie Finley sometimes PH for his 2B multiple times in the same game - in one game, he used 4 different players at 2B (light-hitting 1B-OF Mike Hegan a 145 OPS+ in 98 G, 91 PA, only 6 starts all season)
Cullen a career-best 88 in his final season in MLB (hey, respectable!) before quitting at age 30 to become a stockbroker
Maxvill 67
Kubiak 51
Brown 38
(blink-and-miss-it cameos at 2B included catchers Gene Tenace and Larry Haney, OF Curt Blefary, and 3B Sal Bando)

Maxvill went 1 for 8 as the A's beat the Tigers in the ALCS.
both Maxvill and Cullen were active for the WS but never got off the bench. A healthy Green went 6-for-18 in the WS.

Maxvill is back in 1973, somehow, but fortunately as a rarely-used scrub before the Pirates looked at his 34 OPS+ right before the All-Star break and decided he was just what they needed to make a run at .500 (they went 80-82, with Dal tossing in an unsurprising 40 OPS+ in a surprising 73 starts at SS. maybe if he could hit, the Pirates would have erased the pennant-winning Mets' 2.5 game lead as the season ended). Maxvill replaced an over-the-hill Gene Alley, whose last start of the season came 2 weeks after Maxvill arrived (tough for Gene, who in his own final season had a 60 OPS+ - yet he was left as a late-inning defensive replacement after the Pirates inevitably hit for Maxvill).

sure, the A's win the WS again in 1973, but something was missing, apparently. so when the Pirates released Dal in 1974 after a typical 4-for-22 start (all singles), the A's quickly snatched him back up. he's a late-inning defensive replacement with a 49 OPS+ in Oakland - and shamelessly accepts another WS ring and cash grab. of course he also had two with the Cardinals, 1964 and 1967.
had a .114 AVG with 2 RBI in 80 postseason PA, including 0-for-22 in the 1968 WS that the Cardinals lost in 7 games. did I mention that he's a good fielder?

ok, he's 36 years old in 1975, but of course the A's still want them some more Maxvill, so on Aug. 29 he signs up for one more stint. didn't play in the minors that year, and his SABR bio doesn't explain which co-ed softball league he presumably was MVP of.
2 for 10, slash line of .200/.200/.400. surprised he didn't play in the ALCS !

as for where Maxvill batted:
1050 starts batting 8th
20 batting 7th
19 batting 9th (DH arrived in 1973)
5 batting 2nd (wtf, he hit .154 there with 0 HR)

#15 1969 Batting 8th for the Cardinals: .189/.286/.242 (8 IBB), Batting 9th: .184/.230/.246, PH: .169/.278/.221

Javier had 296 PAs and 10 IBBs batting 7th.

Austin Hedges has given the Pirates 125 PAs of .174/.235/.220.

Sure but he's just a half-time C. Those guys I mentioned were actual hitters once. (OK, Rosario borderline actual.)

Isn't the problem with all this pitcher workload stuff that we don't tend to know about a lot of guys who get overworked, because most of us don't follow HS or even college baseball that closely and survivor bias comes into play?

In 2013, I saw a D3 pitcher, Andrew Richards throw 153 pitches in a 12-inning relief win and then start the team's next game later that same night. He faced 70 batters that day, and probably threw 200-220 pitches total, after which the season ended.

His ERA jumped two full runs from 2013 to 2014. In 2015, he was back to his 2013 tricks. His ERA dropped, and in the conference tournament, he pitched six innings in relief in one game, then started the next day and threw a complete game.

I don't know that this is a sign of the danger of overwork or not. Was his 2014 affected by how he ended 2013? But then he got better in 2015. Can we even tell, since he never pitched in that kind of setting again?

But do we not think there are countless examples of this kind of work all throughout lower divisions and in the pre pitch count HS era that we never heard about and result in injuries and ineffectiveness?

His BA was 30-40 points higher at #2

Is this because of sac bunt attempts that turn into hits? Since if you do that and make an out, you don't get charged a PA, but if you end up on base anyway, you do get a hit.

Since if you do that and make an out, you don't get charged a PA,

Well, you should. If you're trying to bunt for a base hit, rather than laying down a sacrifice, and you get thrown out at first it should be an AB. I'm not sure how many scorers have ever followed Dick Young's lead, however.

the number of max effort pitches probably hasn't changed much at all.

Maybe, though I doubt it. But regardless, max effort in one era doesn't mean it has the same effect on the elbow or shoulder (or anything else) as it does in another era. Throwing a ball at 100 mph requires more torque on the arm than throwing it at 90 mph. There's also the fact that pitchers are throwing more, a lot more, breaking balls than previous generations. So far in 2023, the Nationals have thrown fastballs 53.8% of the time, leading the league, 15th is Boston at 47.8%, last are the Angels at 40.6%. 20 years ago, Atlanta led the league at 70.2%, 15th was Philly at 63.8%, and last was Oakland at 58.4%. Even the most fastball heavy teams would place well below the least fastball heavy orgs from prior generations. There is absolutely zero doubt that pitchers today are putting more stress on their arm than anyone who threw to Julian Javier.

#21 No way bunt singles make that kind of difference. Or to be more precise, well he had an additional 61 hit (compared to his BA in all other position) and 35 sacs. If he could hit .635 on sac attempts he really ought to have bunted a heck of a lot more. (And he had plenty of sac at other positions)

Maybe of low relevance -on July 2, 1963, 42-year-old Warren Spahn threw something like 231 pitches in 15.1 innings while losing 1-0 to Juan Marichal on a Willie Mays HR. Spahn has said that being allowed to throw that many ruined his arm. Perhaps, but not that year, as his 15 starts after 7/2 were slightly better than his initial 18 (including the marathon). Post-July 2nd ERA 2.32 vs. 2.84, WHIP 1.014 vs. 1.206, FIP ~3.30 vs 3.57 - season total was 3.41. The wheels fell off in 1964, but even then, he often would allow only 1-2 runs thru 6 or 7 then get slammed. By late season he pitched mostly in relief. Then 1965 was worse