The New Age Pitcher Pulling Has to End

I’m going to start this blog by bringing in my thoughts on modern soccer. I promise this is going somewhere; there is a pretty strong comparison to how front offices treat a pitcher. Even though I began watching soccer in 2013, I think I caught the tail end of the good times. The whole “last chopper out of Vietnam” is incredibly an overused trope but very correct in this situation. As I became familiar with the beautiful game, a maniacal bald man was trying to erase the beautiful from the beautiful game. The total football dream of Johan Cruyff was realized through his successor; a way worse Rule of Two.

Because of the total football tactical renaissance, club soccer has become boring. Total football’s goal is to flatten out the skill differences between the different positions. As a sociologist would theorize the flattening out of human physical traits as races mix, so has the positional directive in soccer. Look at England, playing with the attacking prowess and individualism of a lemming, yet are in the final at the Euros. Look at fullbacks, who are now just wingers who have to run back faster. The obsession with tactical perfection has destroyed the individualism and fluidity that made soccer the beautiful game.

A Statistical Obsession

At the end of high school, as others read/listened to Curtis Yarvin or Chapo Trap House to become incredibly annoying and opinionated, I read Moneyball. That’s not to say I didn’t form incredibly annoying political opinions from commentators too focused on popularizing theoretical structures and not enough on realistic solutions. It just meant that when someone talked about how good a player was at the lunch table, I had to check Baseball Reference to make sure their opinion was correct. I had to wait to form any opinion until the guys at FanGraphs had told me my opinion.

As I’ve grown, I’ve tried to take the AJ Hinch approach (as described by Tim Kurkjian after the 2017 World Series) — use data and analytics but trust my eyes and ears. Except I stopped playing baseball in sixth grade and do not have the natural instincts to be a scout. In that way, I am forever attached to advanced analytics.

Now, the problem around how a manager treats a pitcher is not an advanced analytics problem. I mean, the idea of focusing so heavily on pitch count and theories (times-through-the-order penalty) is more popularized now with younger managers and front offices. Pitch count could be counted as the first advanced analytic showing up in the ’60s. I wasn’t around until the late ’90s, and don’t think I became woke to analytics until the mid-2010s. Turns out (according to message boards, the real gatekeepers of sports knowledge) networks started showing pitch counts in about 2010. There were issues with old-school pitchers and pitch counts back in the late 2000s. And maybe it’s because that 100-pitch count cutoff is fully arbitrary. In reality, it should change from pitcher to pitcher.

I wanted to give a very short history lesson to allow some context for why pitch count means something now. Just a quick disclaimer before getting into the stats portion of the blog – stats have been a little wonky since 2020. 2020 was weird for obvious reasons. I’ll chalk 2021 up to everyone getting back into the normal routine, or something (there’s probably a better explanation). (2021 also saw 7 no-hitters and 2 combined no-hitters. Something just up that year). Before 2022, sticky stuff was banned. So a weird three years that does a good job of screwing everything up.

With all that said, it’s not a revolutionary statement to say pitch counts are going down. I have two sets of data I find incredibly interesting. The first from FanGraphs:

And this chart, from the blog Phillies Baseball Fan. Whoever wrote this blog (Steve Potter) meticulously aggregated starting pitching data. He is a hero and I want to highlight the work it took. This is an average of the past four decades. If you want to see the full year-by-year breakdown, read the blog.

The odd past four years doesn’t take a key insight away — pitch count was hovering around 95 per start until about 2018. Even though 2024 is back up to the 86s, I am fully under the impression it’s going to keep going down. On this season, the pitches-per-start is down to 86. Only a .2 drop, but a drop nonetheless.

And it’s this obsession by managers and front offices about this 100-pitch cutoff. If anything, we should see injuries dropping, but this season has been inundated with pitchers dropping like Biden in the polls. We have entered this baseball era where we are both obsessed with stats and also incredibly focused on an arbitrary number.

An End of Pitcher Records?

Paul Skenes is the best pitcher in baseball. His PR is also a testament to how far we come after Kris Humphries was verbally murdered by every NBA fan. That may speak more to Livvy Dunne’s standing in the cultural zeitgeist over Kim Kardashian. This is all moot when discussing Skenes’ ability on the diamond. And that ability is unparalleled, as he’s about to start for the National League in the All-Star Game. Paul Skenes is destined to make records.

Just not a no-hitter this season, apparently.

This country used to make steel, and now we can’t even let a dominating pitcher throw 110 pitches. This feels like a moment where you throw in a Sean Dyche “woke nonsense” meme. In 2017, after the USMNT lost to Trinidad and Tobago to miss the 2018 World Cup, Taylor Twellman went on TV and yelled, “What are we doing?” It feels like we need a similar rant on television, because what is happening? Why is this arbitrary line created in the 1960s stopping a young pitcher, who can easily throw more pitches?

I get maybe trying to rest his arm because Skenes has to start again. But that’s what the bullpen is for. That’s what the week is for. The man is about to toss the second no-hitter of the season at only 22. But because the base analytics said “he has to come out” he was robbed of that. I know Skenes told the media he understood, but that’s what he’s supposed to say. Starting a proxy war with the manager in the media is a great way to see AAA again.

I know I entitled this section “An End of Pitcher Records?”, but I don’t think that’s true. There’s been a drop off of no-hitters (replaced with combined no-hitters). At the same time, the 2010s were kind of laced with a lot of no-hitters, so this feels like baseball is reaching some equilibrium again. We’ll see pitchers set records as they throw faster and have a longer career. Sure, Nolan Ryan will stay standing atop the mountaintop of no-hit success, but that was already a record that was never going to be broken.

At some point, though, the pitch count revolution will need to be investigated. There’s a theory at the back of my mind slowly growing like a tumor. That theory is that we’re slowly but surely moving away from a base starting pitcher meant to go for 6 innings, and to a system of specialized situational pitchers. A total football-ing of the starting rotation and bullpen. This may be a slippery slope theory cooked up in the depths of darkness as I watch a centerback take a ball up to midfield. But I feel as though the pitch count evangelization is only the canary in the coal mine of a problem coming up from the bellows of a baseball hivemind. Surely, though, I’m wrong.

The Paul Skenes situation is so annoying as a pitcher enjoyer. He’s so much better than a 100-pitch limit. I’m not saying every game should see him hitting 120, but situational awareness needs to be put in place. Imagine if Ronel Blanco was pulled after the 8th because he was too close to 100 pitches (he threw 105 in his no-hitter). The analytics revolution may be in need of a serious mini-revolution.

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