In one of her recent "mailbags", Astros beat writer Alyson Footer was asked right off the bat if we should be at all concerned about Roy O's pitching for Team USA in the World Baseball Classic. She answered that due to the pitch counts and the fact that Davey Johnson was an experienced manager, Cecil Cooper and the rest of us shouldn't sweat it.
In the 2006 Classic, major league pitchers actually were not used all that often. Over the course of Pool Play, the Second Round and in the Final Round, Bartolo Colon and Jae Weong-Seo led MLB pitchers with 14 innings pitched. The fact is that over a span of three weeks this is less than what a relief pitcher could expect to throw in a major league season. So I agree with Footer that this isn't the reason to be worried about future health issues with Oswalt.
What does strike me as being important, and is backed up in a study done by Nate Silver, is that these pitchers that do participate are away from their coaches that watch them every day of every summer and can pinpoint where their mistakes are with mechanics, delivery, etc. Silver notes that out of 26 pitchers that participated in the WBC in 2006, 19 had April ERAs above their PECOTA projection. While there have been several rule changes going into this year's classic, including an increased pitch count limit for each round, it's not the extra innings thrown that are the most bothersome by-product for major league pitchers.
0 recs | 4 comments
Yes, I'm concerned.
When you see what happened (during the regular season) to the pitchers who pitched for WBC last time, how can you not be concerned? There is no reason to believe that the pitch count protection will be better this time than last time. In fact, as you note, the pitch count limits by round have increased (admittedly, not by much). So, I can’t really buy Footer’s argument; it sounds like a MLB approved sound byte.
I think the reason that 14 or 15 innings is more significant than the actual number is due to the pressure of the WBC situations. A good argument can be made that the impact of pitch counts and innings pitched is connected to the competitive pressure of those situations (e.g.,, leveraged innings are tougher physically than mop up innings). Roy O doesn’t want to go down in the books as a pitcher who lost a game for USA; he will treat this like an important game in the pennant race. Pitchers don’t normally have that kind of pressure during spring training games. I’m sure that Roy is competitive enough that he wants to win his spring training games, but he knows that his reputation isn’t on the line if he has a bad game.
clack - February 22, 2009
given the amount of pressure
it may be that with the change in routine, pitchers find themselves throwing in unfamiliar scenarios (like you said) and would ignore or not recognize tell tale injury signs that otherwise they (or their coaches) would pick up on
Evan Hochschild - February 22, 2009
Yes I'm concerned
Last time pitchers in WBC suffered during regular reason.
Pitchers should not participate in WBC .
Batters should not participate in Home Run Derby.
Joe in Birmingham - February 22, 2009
meh
I think the HR Derby thing is a myth. The WBC probably hurts pitchers, but it will take a few more of these things to definitively answer that.
Only_A_Lad - February 22, 2009
You must Login with your SB Nation account and be a member of The Crawfish Boxes to post a comment.