How the Hell ...

[Ceetar]

same stat is in the Pitch F/X Pitch Discipline pagefor pitchers as well.

Edinson Volquez,Jeremy Hellickson,Edwin Jackson,David Price,Hisashi Iwakuma are the top five. 25.7 for Volquez this year.

ahh, right, that's filtered by qualified so Paps drops out. hang on..

Papelbon comes in 8th this year (min 30 IP) with 28.9.

Joel Peralta (Rays) leads with 31.8.

Latroy Hawkins at 55 is the slowest Met, 25.3



If you go cumulative from 2007 with 100IP, Papelbon is second with 30.7. (Must be something about the Sox/AL that makes it worse) But Rafael Betancourt leads with 30.8.

Hawkins is 27.2 and 10th on the list.

[Ceetar]

This is fun. Mike Pelfrey, minimum 30IP in a season, is tied for the fastest season ever in 2007 (72.2ip) at 15.9 second with Mark Buehrle (who's the best cumulatively as well).

Jose Valverde in 2012 took 32.8 seconds between pitches, or more than TWICE as long!
'12 Peralta 32.3,
'11 Papelbon 31.9,
'07 Betancourt 31.9,
'13 Peralta 31.8,
'12 Broxton 31.8

were also twice as long.

[Frayed Knot]

Pelfrey surprises me as I don't remember him as being particularly fast (or slow). Buehrle does not; given three guesses for quickest worker in MLB I would have picked him twice then passed on the third.

Relievers are definitely slower as a group. Even when they're in with no one on they tend to act as if the fate of the western world is riding on each pitch. Another thing I've noticed recently is that many of them seem to have developed the habit of coming down off the mound after the delivery as if the catcher would have trouble reaching them with the throw back unless they were some ten feet or more in front of the rubber. That means they then have to walk back before each pitch but, because they don't want to walk on their landing area, they wind up taking the great circle route around the mound and climb back to the top via the 1st base side. That alone makes it to where they don't even begin to look for the sign until 10-15 seconds are spent, and if they, as many do, have a hat-removing/sweat-wiping/deep-breath-taking/uniform-adjusting routine they've grown accustomed to then that time-span can easily get doubled.

[Edgy MD]

It's a little tough to compare starters with relievers, pitches with guys on bases with pitches with the bases empty. Good research needs good controls.

I haven't clicked and read deeply. Maybe they do have controls.

[Ceetar]

Edgy MD wrote: It's a little tough to compare starters with relievers, pitches with guys on bases with pitches with the bases empty. Good research needs good controls. I haven't clicked and read deeply. Maybe they do have controls.

You can break it up by splits, which probably helps. I didn't dig that far, I was just grazing the surface as I noticed it while looking at Ike Davis' OSwing%

[Guest LeiterWagnerFasterStrongr]

The numbers seem to square with my memory; over the weekend, I remember thinking during the Volquez/Mejia game that Eddy V reminded me of Trachsel, if Trachsel tried to strike out every-damn-body.

[Fman99]

bmfc1 wrote: Stop adjusting your batting gloves after every pitch. If you step out of the batters box without having hit the ball, it's a strike. Throw the ball already, you're going to have to so just do it. No more mound visits unless you are changing a pitcher--baseball is the only sport where the manager or a coach can stop the action and hold a meeting on the playing field. Most of all, if baseball is really serious about this, then cut the commercial time between innings--90 seconds is all we need (this will never happen). And no more "God Bless America" in the middle of the 7th inning.

This.

[Frayed Knot]

Somehow, our 3 hour 41 minute disaster in which Matsuzaka was only part of the problem didn't even turn out to be the slowest game of the day on Monday.
The Angels beating Tampa 11-2 (the Rays 5th straight loss btw) really put the word Labor into Labor Day by managing to clock in at 3:58. And while I realize that 13 runs, 17 hits, and 14 walks takes a while to play out, that still doesn't explain what they were doing for just a few clicks short of four hours.

And if you add those two games to the one where Minnesota scored four in the 9th to beat Houston 10-6 (3:32) and the Dodgers out-lasting the Rox 10-8 (3:38) and it all adds up to Four 9-inning games on the same day that took over 3-1/2 hours. Only two of the other eleven managed to clock in at under 2:45

[Frayed Knot]

If it seems like I'm getting obsessive about this topic it's only because I am.

BoSox at Rays last night -- a 2-0, 9-inning game with a total of 8 hits, 4 walks, and, although six pitchers were used combined, there was just one in-inning pitching change
Game time = 3:09

Now I didn't see any of this game so maybe there was a swarm of bees mid-game that I don't know anything about ... but THREE-OH-NINE?!?!
That's the type of game that used to routinely take TWO:09 and even now shouldn't possibly take any longer than 2:39

I'm tempted to say that I have no idea what those guys were doing out there but unfortunately I think it's become all too clear. And, unlike many of the Boston games over the last decade or so, you can't blame it on network TV, you can't place part of the blame on the Yanquis, and they no longer have either Josh Beckett or Dice-K on their roster.

[Frayed Knot]

A tale of two playoff games played 40 years (minus a day) apart.
Oct 6, 1973 - Game 1 NLCS, Mets @ Cincy
Oct 5, 2013 - Game 2 ALDS, Tigers @ A's

	Oct 6, 1973	Oct 5, 2013
Total Runs Scored	3	1
Combined Hits	9	12
Walks	4	5
Ks	19	22
Pitchers Used	4	6
Total Batters	65	67
Time of Game	2:00	3:23

So two games playoff games, both of which ended in 'walk-off' wins in the bottom of the 9th, one with one out, one with no outs.
Both had roughly the same amount of "action": two more pitchers used in yesterday's game and also two more batters faced. Pitch counts are not available for the 1973 game but yesterday's had one more walk plus three more strikeouts.
The major difference: this year's game took just shy of 70% longer to play.

[Guest John Cougar Lunchbucket]

The longer commercial breaks are one thing, but I would guess pitch counts are another. That one guy fouled off like 7 pitches in one turn at bat vs Verlander. I don;t know if that happened in Seaver's day, for whatever reason.

[metsmarathon]

todays game had 122 + 159 = 281 pitches total thrown (includes throws to first and the like), per bbref.

no data on number of pitches in the '73 game

[Frayed Knot]

I agree that the number of pitches per game is probably higher today than it was back then, although without data it's hard to know that.
I also suspect that mound meeting are up (even with Posada's retirement) both the pitcher/catcher ones and the ones involving visits from the dugout.

But still, when a 1-0 game with a minimum of hits that doesn't even go the full nine innings can't end in under three hours there's almost no hope for most other post-season contests to get in under three and a half or four.

[Edgy MD]

Frayed Knot wrote: I agree that the number of pitches per game is probably higher today than it was back then, although without data it's hard to know that.

No, but runs-per-game are certainly known data. And if that's higher, and walks-per-game are higher, and strikeouts-per-game are higher, it would take a colorful statistical miracle for pitches-per-game to not be higher.

[Frayed Knot]

The only stat that's appreciably different is strike-outs -- today's game features nearly 45% more than in 1973.
Then I think there's the inference that the lessening of stigma attached to the strike-out in turn leads to fewer 'just put it in play' type of defensive two-strike swings which leads to more AB-lengthening foul balls en route to that increased K-rate. Or maybe not, maybe a higher pct of Ks today are of the 3-pitch variety for those same reasons.

Walks per/game were actually around 10% lower in 2013 as compared to 40 years earlier while runs scored are virtually the same.

[Edgy MD]

Yeah, I just meant if.

[Frayed Knot]

And in the case of these specific two playoff games that we're comparing, we know that the difference in walks (1) & Ks (3) & batters faced (2) was only minimal and that there was actually one fewer out needed to decide the longer game.

So if we figure that between-inning commercial time is about double now (a mandated 2:55 now as compared to an estimated 90 seconds then) then the 17 half-inning breaks accounts for an added 25-1/2 minutes. Throw in another two minutes say for the lone in-inning pitching change (one on Saturday, none in the '73 game) plus maybe two more for some miscellaneous shit I'm not thinking about right now (was there an 'Up With People' display during the 7th inning stretch?) and we've still accounted for less than 30 of the extra 83 minute difference.
That's either a heckuva lot of extra foul balls and deep counts or a whole lotta standing around.

[Benjamin Grimm]

I wouldn't discount the "whole lotta standing around". I'd be curious to know the average number of seconds between pitches in 2013 compared to in, say, 1978.