I asked this Q in the GDT yesterday when this graphic was shown. Patti was impressed while I was a little concerned. But since you posted this in the Davey thread are you putting this on him or the pitchers who have conniption fits at the first hint of removal?
Nice job with the screen capture btw.
You have to factor in more than just pitch count. I remember this discussion came up a bunch last year with the bullpen tire fire and Max regularly going 115+ pitches because he had to get through 7 or even 8 innings and everyone was afraid his arm would fall off. Pitch count is not a metric you should evaluate imdepemdently. It’s just like asking “how long is a piece of string?” Impossible to know without more info.
In our starters’ case, those pitch counts translate into lots of innings, not a lot of hits relatively speaking, and not a lot of runs. Gio throws the comparisons both for number of innings and number of hits, but that’s Gio and he’s always been that way. If you compare their numbers to, say, Yu Darvish, who has been struggling this year, you’ll see what I mean. Darvish is throwing a ton of pitches too, but also giving up a ton of hits and runs and not going deep into games. Meanwhile, Alex Cobb (who was deeply coveted by many on this forum) is averaging around 80 pitches/game, but he’s only gone 6 innings twice, given up lots of hits and runs, and gotten lifted before the 5th in 4 outings. His average pitch count is lower because he’s getting lit up then taken out of the game. So there’s more to the story than just the number by itself.
That said, there’s almost surely an element of Bad Bullpen in the decision making for specific outings, but our guys have shown year after year that they can handle these work loads, especially Gio and Tanner whose delivery seems to be a lot less physically abusive than Max and Stras. This is why Stras pitches from the stretch these days (his “inverted W” full windup is really violent) — to help him better handle the workload.
