OK, so he didn’t say it in exactly those words, but Brian Schneider made his feeling known tonight about how the Mets should handle Mike Pelfrey — without the kid gloves.
It’s an interesting debate, especially after Pelfrey threw his first complete game of his career. He’s now at 154 innings for the year. He threw 152.2 last year in the minors and majors combined.
As I said earlier and I’m sure many of you know, statistical evidence says pitchers who throw 30 or 40 more innings than the year before often have arm trouble — either now or in the future. If Pelfrey has six or seven starts left and averages about six or seven innings a start, he will exceed that threshold. And that’s even before team thinks about pitching him deep into the playoffs.
It’s something to consider.
Anyway, we asked Schneider what he thought of watching Pelfrey late in the season. Here’s what he said:
“We’re in the thick of things. It’s hard to take innings away from someone who helps you out so much.â€
It’s hard to argue that if you’re a member of the team or a Mets fan. But remember what happened to Clay Buchholz last year with the Red Sox. The Mets aren’t known as graduates of the Bill James school of baseball, but it’s worth watching from now until the end of September.
15 Comments
I don’t know. You don’t want to overwork the guy, but he is pitching well now and has been one of the better starters we have in 2008.
As they say, if you have a shot to win it you go for it. You never know if you will ever get back to the dance.
#$! Bill James,#$% sabermetrics and give him the ball.He doesn’t throw a lot of high torque pitches, that is one thing Mr. James doesn’t put in his precious little formula, so I say let the man pitch.
“Statistical Evidence” can be found to support any argument one might wish to make on any subject. This is how ML pitchers learn to put in the innings over a long season. Using the flawed logic above, it will take Pelfrey 10 more years to top 200 innings in a season!
Actually, the Jacket used to factor torque into the equation when he took his pitchers for an annual visit to Alabama to have their motions evaluated for potential future damage.
And that’s something that’s being lost in the current Warthenmania: The young arms weren’t being blown out on Peterson’s watch. So, perhaps there was a method to his madness when he didn’t want Perez stepping backwards before delivering a pitch. Maybe Warthen will get short-term results at the expense of long-term health.
If Mets can open a lead, I would not be suprised if they go to an occasional extra starter in Sept. to reduce inn for all the guys.
Tiff, I’m no BB pitching mechanics guru but it would seem to me that by stepping back OP actually gets more of his whole body into the picth b/c his body comes more fw as he release the ball and reduces the strain on his arm and shoulder. Secondly, by OP starting from the center of the rubber now (as opposed to the first base side under Peterson), I think he also reduces how much he comes across his body. This would also limit OPs strain on his shoulder. Also, OP has stated that he was thinking all the time about mechanics under Peterson. Perhaps that put strain on him too.
The fact that OP has refound his velocity would indicate that he indeed is getting more of his bigger muscles (legs, back) into the pitches.
Lastly, SNY showed the Mets starters were 6th in the NL in inn/start before the AS break (5.8 I believe). Since the AS break (w/Warthen), they are 3rd at 6.2/game. Not a huge increase.
If Warthen was really pushing them, I’d think that # would be dramatically higher. I did not chk pitches/game, but I’d think it was not that much higher either.
what the hell does this have to do with sabermetrics? the same bill james who has written out against pitch counts?
DURRRR STATS ARE THE DEVIL AHHHHHHHHHHHH
stats are just liessssss ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh
go with your gut!!!!!! unless your gut is hungry. then you gotta eat a big ass hoagie!! mmmmmm hoagies.
ignorance, now there’s the ticket!
Tiffany: Only one problem with your Jacket comment that I can see. Both Mulder and Hudson have had terrible arm problems. Even though it happened with other organizations, how do you know it wasn’t from Peterson’s teachings with the A’s?
JD: I’d have to look for it online somewhere, but someone on ESPN or maybe CNNSI did a study which showed that there was no correlation between extra innings pitched from one year to another. I’ll try to find it and give you the link.
I couldn’t find the article, but just taking a basic look at the Mets starters, it’s a walking contradiction. Santana never had an issue (knock on wood,) but Pedro did later on his career. Oliver Perez hasn’t had an issue, but John Maine has. My basic opinion? Every player is different..they work out differently, they throw the ball differently…it’s very difficult to throw a blanket on all pitchers.
Statistics do show that ramping up innings pitched early in a career does have a detrimental effect.
Look at Gooden, and Generation K for example. They threw a lot of innings early on, and flamed out. There are other examples for other teams as well (Wood, Liriano).
Pelfrey is an interesting case since he does not throw a lot of breaking balls, so, as others noted, there is less torque on his arm. So the innings could in theory go a little higher. However, his pitch count is now close to what he threw last year.
As for Schneider, he would hate Sabermetrics, since they show how awful he is. Both at the plate and behind it. For a guy who is supposed to be a defensive specialist, he is poor at blocking pitches in the dirt, and has dropped several throws from the outfield this year.
I worry that puching Pelfrey too far will have bad implications for the future. A ring would not make the pain of a shortened career go away.
If you look at Santana’s pitch counts in Minnesota, they rarely pushed him beyond 110 pitches during his years there. So, while he might have thrown some innings, he didn’t run up high pitch counts.
And while it’s damn-near impossible to find definitive attribution for the arm problems suffered by Mulder and Hudson, it’s worth noting that both have been away from Peterson for—what?—four or five years. I don’t know how you could blame the Jacket for that, especially when they were healthy during his tenure with them.
As for usage patterns and injuries to young arms, I seem to remember the data suggesting that it was pitch counts—and not innings pitched—that was the tell-tale indicator. Specifically, once you get over 100-110 pitches, those subsequent pitches tend to do more damage than the ones preceding them.
yea, the defensive stats that most sabermetrically inclined people use have schneider as terrible.
oh wait, they have him as being really really really good.
oh, and he has a really good OBP against righties, or in general.
yea, stat people would hate him.
why doesn’t everyone just ask me what their opinion should be and I’ll tell them, because leaving it up to your own devices just isn’t working.
Yes Tiffany, I would agree that pitch counts would have more of an effect than innings pitched. John Maine would have been out of the game in the 5th or 6th inning last night given the amount of pitches that Pelfrey threw last night.
Ed: For Generation K it simply could have been that they weren’t that good to begin with, even though Paul Wilson was the #1 pick. I think in their case, they were just rushed into the limelight too quickly and it hurt them. With Gooden I still believe it was the drugs that did him in.
What about Joba? the most protected arm in MLB history has his arm barking. As to the peterson love, What good is having a healthy arm if you are getting bombed all the time. Pelfry is a big strong kid, and its not like they are asking him to pitch 250 innings. This race looks like it is going down to the wire and pelfry is going to be needed. Anybody read Shermans article in the post today about how the maligned mets minors are the ones actually producing while the yankees hyped up youngsters are so bad that they are going to use pavano in an important game? Im lovin it.
Ray: If I recall reading correctly about Joba, he had arm problems in college which is one of the reasons why he dropped in the draft. His college ERA went up one run from 2005 to 2006. So maybe that was a precursor to future problems.
College arms tend to get abused (more so than high-school pitchers who go to the minors in their late teens and early twenties) because college coaches are interested in winning games, not protecting pitchers for long, big-league careers.
But that is the $64,000 question: Do you want a short, outstanding career or a lengthy, less spectacular one? Would you have rather seen Dwight Gooden win 15 games per year for 20 years—or were his two dominant seasons enough?