Under The Knife Special 03/03/20
Quit Counting
Early in my career, I was not a believer in pitch counts. I argued against the use of Keith Woolner and Rany Jazayerli’s model, called Pitcher Abuse Points (PAP), though I changed my mind after talking with the authors. Between the introduction of PAP in 1999 and 2010, the game fundamentally changed. Look at the pitch counts from 2001 (if you can) and see if where someone in 2019 would have ranked. It was much worse elsewhere. Complete games and high pitch count games were replaced by a 100 pitch count moat that few could cross.
Yet somehow, one of the only measures that has universally made it on-screen during baseball telecasts is pitch count. Even with Moneyball and Baseball-Reference, a simple counter is on-screen with virtually every telecast, including national broadcasts from ESPN and MLB Network. OBP? Sure, sometimes. OPS? Sure, sometimes. We’ll even see some announcers use WAR or WOBA. But pitch count is universal.
I think the reason is that it’s simple. Everyone understands what’s being shown, rather than having to teach anything. Things like WAR and WOBA are relatively easy to understand, but the scale is often difficult at first. Even casual fans know batting average, but have trouble scaling it for the modern game. Ask a casual baseball fan “what is a good batting average?” and I’ll bet that almost all will say “300.” There’s a round-number bias and even among younger fans, there has been no real adjustment to the run environment.
The problem is that pitch count is universal and that the round number of 100 is universal as well. There’s actually some science there, discovered in the 1950’s by Paul Richard, one of the first progressive general managers in the game. As a proxy for fatigue, it works better than … well, guessing. But that’s all it is.
There are of course better ways now, but sensors and direct measures are barely used at upper levels of baseball. Workload management is done with guesses and “eye tests.” Pitch counts are still enforced by a tyranny of fear; a manager willing to let a pitcher go past 100 often has to justify it by saying he’ll get extra rest or something similar rather than being able to give an objective answer or actually being able to explain something. Heck, just hand that off to a pitching coach or the sports science staff!
It gets worse with relievers. Absent a long inning, is there any reason to even check a middle reliever’s pitch count, let alone put it on the screen? I’m not a fan of seeing pitch count up there for starters, but once that starter is out, could we please take the count graphic with him to the clubhouse?
There’s better ways to do this, so here’s a couple suggestions:
Dump pitch counts and go to throw counts. Broadcasters could very easily watch pitchers doing their warm ups, bullpens, and then shift to the game. Showing that would be a new angle and likely interesting to many. The analysts back in the studio could talk about how someone looked in the pen or that they really stretched out their long toss.
Dump pitch counts and go to torque. ESPN could easily put together a model using a Motus sensor or Kinetrax data — I heard Boog Sciambi discussing the system on Monday’s “All Access” broadcast — to show how hard a pitcher is working. I’m not sure if Kinetrax can be done in real time, but MLB’s new Hawkeye system is alleged to have similar, real time capabilities.
Dump pitch counts and put a pitcher in the dugout. No offense to Buster Olney, Ken Rosenthal, or any of the other dugout reporters, but I think this might be the perfect place to put an ex-pitcher. Put one of the analysts like Pedro Martinez down there and let him talk to pitchers during the game. If you don’t think we could learn something from that, you’re crazy. Heck, it might be the perfect role for John Smoltz as well.
There’s probably other ways to do this and I’m curious if you have any ideas. The fact is that putting pitch counts on the screen adds nothing. I’m not sure which producer decided we needed this graphic or how it got universal. My guess is that it was simple, understandable, and felt a little advanced without actually being so. If it’s that easy to put on, it’s that easy to take off.
Broadcasters, stop counting and start doing something better.
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