Why Are Yanks Pitchers Throwing So Many Pitches?
Here are the Yankees pitchers, to date, in terms of innings pitched, batteres faced (PA), pitches thrown, pitches thrown per inning pitched, pitches thrown per batter faced and pitches thrown per seven innings pitched:
PITCHER IP PA Pit P/IP P/PA P/7IP A. Claggett 1.6 16 60 37.5 3.75 263 Damaso Marte 5.3 30 117 22.1 3.90 155 Edwar Ramirez 17.3 86 355 20.5 4.13 144 Mark Melancon 3.3 18 64 19.4 3.56 136 David Robertson 20.3 85 386 19.0 4.54 133 Jose Veras 25.6 118 482 18.8 4.08 132 Chien-Ming Wang 42.0 206 742 17.7 3.60 124 Brett Tomko 17.3 71 301 17.4 4.24 122 J. Chamberlain 84.6 378 1462 17.3 3.87 121 J. Albaladejo 23.3 105 401 17.2 3.82 120 Andy Pettitte 103.3 456 1752 17.0 3.84 119 Philip Hughes 49.3 211 829 16.8 3.93 118 Brian Bruney 15.3 66 257 16.8 3.89 118 A.J. Burnett 101.0 432 1687 16.7 3.91 117 Mariano Rivera 34.6 135 565 16.3 4.19 114 Phil Coke 36.3 139 565 15.6 4.06 109 CC Sabathia 114.6 470 1774 15.5 3.77 108 Alfredo Aceves 40.0 156 577 14.4 3.70 101
Ideally, you want you pitcher to only throw about 15 or 16 pitches per inning pitched. For a starting pitcher, this would mean that he would throw 105-112 pitches over seven innings. And, as you can see from the chart above, only Mariano Rivera, Phil Coke, CC Sabathia, and Alfredo Aceves come close to that targeted rate. (A.J. Burnett is just outside this mark, for what it’s worth.)
But, clearly, Chien-Ming Wang, Joba Chamberlain and Andy Pettitte seem to be laboring more than you would want to see from your starting pitchers – in terms of P/IP – and this is why they’re only going five or six innings per start.
It’s O.K. to have one guy in your rotation be a five-and-fly kinda-guy. But, when you have three pitchers like that in your rotation, eventually, you’re going to cook your bullpen.
Now, granted, some of this may be the fallout of the new Yankee Stadium – where pitchers without the “stuff” of Rivera, Sabathia, and Burnett, or, without the command of Aceves, have to work harder and throw more pitches.
Nonethless, it seems like too many key pitchers on the Yankees are having to work too hard – in terms of the number of pitches that they have to throw, etc. And, if New York is smart, they’ll figure out what the issue is here – and address it, with a correction, soon.
feels like joba throws even more pitches then that
I’d be curious to know if there’s a home/road disparity on P/IP for guys like Joba and Pettitte who are getting rocked at home all the time.
1. Strikeout pitchers, especially younger pitchers with command issues, like Joba, Hughes, Bruney, Robertson (who seems to go 2-2 or 3-2 on everyone before he gets them). Also Burnett had serious command issues earlier. Yanks lead the league in pitcher’s K’s, and are also 3rd in walks allowed.
2. The ballpark. More pitches to avoid contact altogether.
3. Pitchcalling; for example, calling for more offspeed pitches, which are usually harder to command. Possibly due to #2 above.
4. Chien-Ming Wang’s collapse to ineffectiveness. If he had been right this season, the team average would be measurably lower.
Corrections? For the young pitchers, let them mature. That’s all you can do, besides culling out the ones you don’t think can make it, and fobbing them off on someone else before their trade value is gone altogether.
Wang? Hope he heals. However, the odds are now very low he’ll ever be back to what he was.
Pitchcalling? I dunno; Jorge’s a proud dude. But you might have to take away pitchcalling from him and give it to the bench, or the pitchers. Or just phase him more to DH next year.
The ballpark….ah, now this we have covered before. They were probably going to do something about this for next year anyway.