Pitch counts

[Guest Yancy Street Gang]

I know that there's debate over whether or not too much emphasis is being placed on pitch counts these days, but like it or not it's now a part of the game, and probably will be for years to come.

I've had a problem getting a handle on what's a high pitch count at different points in the game. I know that if a pitcher has thrown 110 pitches, he's probably not going to be in the game much longer. But how many pitches is "a lot" after four innings? Or after six? And if a pitcher throws 35 pitches in the second inning, how quickly does he have to get through the subsequent innings to be back at a normal pace?

In Monday afternoon's IGT, I raised a question about the average number of pitches that a batter sees in a plate appearance. Seawolf (I think) directed me to ESPN's expanded stat page. I did some pasting into Excel, and came up with a few numbers. They're current through (I assume) the end of Sunday's games, and only apply to the 2006 season. It's a pretty big sample size, though, and should be enough to let us get a handle on modern day pitch counts. (I wonder, though, how different the results might be for 1980, or 1960, or 1940.)

Anyway, here's what I found.

Through Sunday, 569,729 pitches had been thrown in the major leagues.

This covered 151,164 plate appearances.

Therefore, the average hitter sees 3.77 pitches per plate appearance.

The average number of pitches thrown in an inning is 16.39. Doing a little math, the average number of plate appearences in an inning is 4.35

So if a pitcher throws 35 pitches in his first inning, for example, but then throws only 8 in each of the next two innings, he'll be back on a normal pace.

Given the average number of pitches per inning, an "average" complete game would involve about 147 pitches, which is probably why we see so few of them. To get a complete game, a pitcher has to keep his average number of pitches per inning at around 13 or fewer. Much more than that and he won't be allowed to finish the game.

I also filtered out the Mets pitchers, based on the team that ESPN listed them on. It seems that they're listing all pitches thrown by the player for the season, so we'll see the innings that Oliver Perez pitched for Pittsburgh, and Orlando Hernandez for Arizona. For some reason Jorge Julio is still listed as a Met, so we're seeing his Arizona innings as well. So these Mets totals aren't really exclusive to the Mets, but it will give us a general idea of the numbers that our guys have put up.

Name	Pitches	P/PA	P/IP
Tom Glavine	2690	3.89	16.7
Steve Trachsel	2373	3.80	16.9
Orlando Hernandez	2326	4.10	17.8
Pedro Martinez	1897	3.84	15.5
Oliver Perez	1561	4.03	19.3
Aaron Heilman	1217	3.98	16.6
Jorge Julio	1079	4.30	18.7
Billy Wagner	1032	4.20	17.1
Darren Oliver	1024	3.82	15.4
John Maine	1023	4.18	16.6
Roberto Hernandez	964	4.08	18.4
Duaner Sanchez	852	3.72	15.4
Pedro Feliciano	819	3.72	15.9
Alay Soler	789	3.79	17.5
Chad Bradford	709	3.56	14.4
Brian Bannister	598	3.96	17.6
Heath Bell	437	3.87	17.3
Mike Pelfrey	379	3.83	17.8
Jose Lima	367	4.03	21.2
Victor Zambrano	366	3.77	17.2
Henry Owens	89	4.68	22.3
Royce Ring	67	3.72	16.8
Bartolome Fortunato	61	3.39	20.3

[Guest Edgy DC]

I always aim at keeping things under 15 pitches per inning. And consequently, root for my team to drive the opposing pitcher over 15. If my team goes in order in the first, but it took the other pitcher 19 pitches to do it, I'm kind of cheery.

[Guest Yancy Street Gang]

And if a batter fouls off a bunch of pitches and ends up with a 12-pitch at bat, he's pretty much used up the pitcher's allotment for the entire inning.

[Guest Edgy DC]

So, Bradford throws the fewest pitches/inning, and likely pitches the fewest innings per outing. His motion is easier on the arm, but tougher on the back. If he can stave off back trouble, he might pitch until he's 50. As long as he can, you know, stay effective.