Today, my beef is with managers babying pitchers, by keeping them on strict pitch counts, instead of just letting them keep doing what they do best: pitch.
Tonight, Stephen Strasburg is making his long-awaited major league debut against the Pittsburgh Pirates at Nationals Park in Washington, DC.
It's a sure thing that the phenom will throw his first major league pitch at around 7:05 pm, but it's yet to be seen how well he'll actually do.
Ever since being drafted first overall by the Nationals a year ago, and signing a four year, $15.1 million deal - the most ever for a rookie - a month later, everyone in baseball has been awaiting Strasburg's debut.
Strasburg has been on a very strict pitch count since he first started in the minors, with the Nationals' Double-A club, the Harrisburg Senators. The longest he has pitched in a game is 6.1 innings, and he has usually been taken out after five or six innings, despite dominating almost every team and hitter he faced. Many have expected the same thing tonight, as ESPN's Tim Kurkjian reported that Strasburg will likely only throw either six innings or about 90 pitches, no matter how well he is doing.
The pitch counts, the call-ups, it's all been part of a carefully structured plan that the Nationals have laid out for their hopeful soon-to-be-ace; but was it really the right choice to baby Strasburg so much? With the way things are going in Texas it certainly doesn't seem so.
Former flamethrower, Nolan Ryan, now an executive with the Rangers, and Rangers pitching coach Mike Maddux are on a mission to go back to the time when pitch counts weren't carefully monitored and when starters pitching for almost the entire game, instead of just six innings, was the norm.
Even in 2000, pitch counts weren't even close to as strict as they were today. According to Sports Illustrated, during the 2000 season, there were 466 times when a pitcher was allowed to throw 120 pitches or more. Last year the number went down all the way to 92. And for what reason?
Many argue that with deeper lineups, and recognizably smaller strike zones, that pitchers today have tougher, more tiring starts than pitchers during Ryan's era. But, one of the main reasons for deeper lineups and improved hitters was steroid and amphetamine usage. With steroids being rigorously tested now, hitters are less likely to hit the monster homers that make a pitcher and manager's guts wrench, and with amphetamines being banned, hitters have a tougher time staying alert and catching up to pitches.
The steroid fueled hitting boom is over, with evidence being shown in the amount of perfect games lately as well as the amount of dominant pitchers in the game today. This season, there should have been three perfect games, had Jim Joyce's now infamous call during Armando Galarraga's start. Pitchers are once again dominating hitters, instead of vice versa.
Another shred of evidence supporting the fact that pitchers are once again dominating is team ERA over the past few years. Every year since 2006, the leading team ERA has dropped. In 2006, the Detroit Tigers led all of baseball with a team ERA of 3.84, while so far this year, the San Diego Padres lead with a 3.02 ERA; last year the Los Angeles Dodgers led with a 3.41 ERA.
Showing pitchers tough love has certainly worked for Nolan Ryan and the Rangers, who went from perennial AL West bottom feeders, to being just 0.5 games out of first place in the division. Not bad for a team whose rotation consists of Rich Harden, C.J. Wilson, Scott Feldman, Matt Harrison, Colby Lewis, who are not necessarily the Roy Halladays are Tim Lincecums of the league.
But of course, it's not as if Ryan and Maddux have their scrappy starters going eight innings every outing.
"What we're trying to get rid of is that thing in pitchers' heads of how many pitches they have," Maddux told SI. "I'd be out there asking how they feel, and they'd say, 'Well, how many pitches do I have?' And I'd say, 'Doesn't matter—how do you feel?'"
Since the inception of their relaxed pitch count, Ranger starters went from a league-low 5.4 innings per start in 2008, to 5.9 innings per start last season, good for a tie for fourth in the American League.
It's time for managers to loosen the reigns on starters a little bit. It's ridiculous how many times as a Yankee fan, that I've seen Joe Torre or Joe Girardi take out a starter doing perfectly fine and put in a reliever that came close to blowing or actually did blow the game. And it was all because the starter just had to be taken out after throwing 100 pitches.
What's the difference between today's starters and starters back in the 80's? I thought that man had evolved, became stronger, more durable. It certainly seems that way with big guys like C.C. Sabathia and Roy Halladay becoming more and more of a norm for pitchers in baseball, as opposed to the skinny Nolan Ryan and Orel Hershiser type-pitchers of the 80s. So wouldn't you expect the bigger, stronger guys to be the ones that are able to pitch longer?
The bar is too low for pitchers these days. Guys like Strasburg may not be able to reach their full confidence level if the game is being taken out of their hands with three innings left, and a heckuva lot of baseball to still be played. If they were allowed to keep pitching without having to worry about their pitch count or when the manager was going to come out of the dugout, then just maybe, they'd be able to focus on the hitter and their own gameplan, the things that actually really matter for a pitcher.
I know an arm can only take so much abuse, especially when it comes in the form of a pitching motion - one of the most unnatural arm motions there is - but if pitching coaches and managers slowly allow starters to pitch deeper into games, then starters could get used to throwing more, and become more durable.
Neither babying nor abusing a pitcher's arm has proven to be the outright more effective method. Different things work for different people. But the last thing that major league hitters are going to be doing to Strasburg is babying him, especially with him being a guy who already has so much fame without having thrown a single pitch in the majors. My bet is that Strasburg comes out against the Pirates, throws six outstanding innings, and eventually has a wonderful, Cy Young Award filled career. The real shame however, is that when this game and possibly his career are over, we'll never know if, without a pitch count, he could have done more.
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