Pitch Counts

I know this is an age old conversation, but as a High School Baseball Fan when is enough enough. Thru the course of the this season I have seen pitchers throw anywhere from 80 to 140 pitches in a game. This last week alone we had pitchers at 138, 115, 90, 109.

This is not an exception this is becoming the norm. As I do keep the stats for our High School it is becoming a real issue at least in this area. I have also heard parents talk about it more and more. These kids may or may not continue there career after High School but I am sure there are long term effects.

So i am not sure there is an easy solution but I do feel we need to protect kids.

Just venting a little....

Thanks

 

You'll get all sorts of thinking on this subject, but in my admittedly non-medical opinion it depends on the kid. If he has good mechanics and has never had arm trouble, he might be able to safely throw ~130 pitches. I also think it is more important to get enough rest between starts than to focus on number of pitches. Seems like everything you read warns of the repetitive strain on kids who don't get enough rest between starts.

 

NC Badger...I am with you on this one. It has been something that has always bothered me about high school baseball. For me it's fairly simple...... it seems to me that when a pitcher starts to reach 100-110 it's time to go. Are there exceptions, sure Verlander, Sabathia, and I'm sure of a handful of others.

Here's the difference for me....these guys have coaches that specifically work with pitchers only. These guys do this as their profession which means that they are working a full-time job doing this with workouts, training regimens, charting their throwing not only in games but outside of games as well. They have access to equipment and medical personnel that the typical high school doesn't even have a clue about much less access to.

Since I have no life, I decided to look at the top 5 pitchers thus far in 2013 and their outings.
Highest Pitch Count in a game - 121
Lowest Pitch Count in a game - 90
Avg Pitch Count per inning for these 5 guys - 15.2

Take that average and multiply by 7 innings for a high school game and you are looking at 106 pitches equivalent for a MLB player .

You will be hard pressed to make me believe that a high school kids arm is prepared, trained, conditioned, and mature enough to throw as many/more pitches in a 7 inning timeframe as a MLB player.

 

Little League worked with Dr. Andrews and Andrews Sports Medicine to come up with the following pitch count limits.

Age 17/18 105 pitches per day
Age 13-16 95 pitches per day

Pitchers ages 15-18
76 or more pitches - 4 days rest
61-75 pitches - 3 days rest
46-60 pitches - 2 days rest
31-45 pitches - 1 day rest
1-30 pitches - no days rest needed

Admittedly these are probably conservative, are for little leaguers rather than high school pitchers and do not factor in at what part of the season you are in and the weather. At the same time, I am sure both Little League and Andrews have a lot more data to work with than the rest of us and no doubt had some pretty smart folks working on it.

Arm safety and health are critically important and these seem like at least a good place to start.

 

IMO

I have seen multiple 120+ pitch games this year .. usually in tight games where the coach(es) are wanting to keep their starter in (either due to lack of good relief or trying to reward starter)

One thing I've noticed consistently is the decreasing effectiveness of the starter for HS kids once 90+ pitch count is hit

I can see once you get to playoffs to start cranking up pitch counts, but I would think a team would be better off during regular season to get work for other pitchers and keep starter arms fresh

 

It is truly criminal what some coaches do to players. I've seen MS age kids in the 120-130 range and a coach should be ashamed to do that to a young kid.
I pitched at the HS, collegiate and professional ranks and have NEVER thrown over 135 pitches in a game.....and that was as a GROWN MAN. I do private instruction as a pitching coach as well, so I understand that training makes a HUGE difference but pitch counts take their toll on even the best trained arms. I've lost games as a coach for taking kids out to protect their arm....and I've never regretted it.
A player's career is short enough and it is the coach's job to guide the young man, both physically & mentally, through his journey as a player. Sometimes, this means taking a pitcher out in spite of himself, even though the competitive juices get flowing for coach and pitcher alike.
Tough to take out your ace.....but tougher still to look his parents in the eye knowing that the surgery that they are going to pay for and the long rehabilitation that they are going to go through with him is something you may have been able to avoid had you had the courage to protect him.

 

The thing that really bothers me is pitchers throw a 30 to 40 pitch bull pin and then throw 90 pitch games! I think 85 maybe 90 to complete a game is plenty of pitches. If you throw 90 pitch in the pin then u should be fine! I also know that a lot of the arm problems comes from a young age. Dr Andrews is the best Dr around. It would be nice if the travel teams would have the same pitch counts and the same days rest as LL is doing.

 

I agree that pitch counts can be an issue, especially in travel ball. I think also the issue is allowing the young men to throw curve balls at such an early age. I coached in a 13u travel tournament 2 weekends ago and the last 2 teams we faced threw 70% curve balls at us. At 13, we should be teaching these kids location with the fastball and a change-up. JMO

At the high school level pitch count is important and shouldn't be abused too early, but I do believe that they should increase as the season progresses

 

Wow Great discussion on this. Here are a couple of take away points.

1. Arm Care is vital for any player. That includes rest. I know my son is shut down for about 4 weeks in Aug and about 6 weeks starting in December. He is also on a Rehab work out with his pitching coach from his travel team.

2. Pitch counts need to better monitored. One thing that I think we forget is not only the pitches that thrown in the game but the warm up in bull pen prior to the game and the actually pitches between inn. I counted last night and our starter threw 40 pitches in the bull pen before he even went to the mound.

Thanks for all who chimed in I am glad I am not the only one that thinks it might be getting out of hand. Thanks again!!!!

 

Baseball has been played forever kids played in the yard a back lot or park and played for fun and you never herd of arm injurys pitchers used to throw 9 innings on 3 days rest now they can't throw 5 inn in a week if they throw more than that then somebody is ruining little Johnnys arm so he can't play nintendo or the wii what has baseball come too.