Policy Manual for Managers?

Why do today's managers allow pitch count to dictate policy?

• No one even kept track of this for decades. Managers relied on what the pitcher told them or allowed performance to decide for them. Men are the same human beings ... if anything, they should be MORE "bionic" today because of the advances made in physiology. Now we have managers coddling the pitcher like he's some kind delicate piece of art. If he's pitching great, why not leave him in? Yesterday Sveum used 'pitch count' as the excuse to pull Dempster between the 8th/9th even though he was pitching a gem w/ a 3-0 lead ... Cubs lost.

• Answer:

  Monitoring pitch counts has become part of "the book", and no one much goes against the book -- because, if you're going by the book, you cannot be faulted when the game doesn't go your way. I am convinced that how pitch counts are used, for starters anyway (does it even matter for most relievers?), is still in its immaturity. It should be getting better, establishing different baselines for different pitchers, hanging values on different pitches thrown to work up to a "pitch score" instead of a raw count (maybe a curveball is worth +2 from a fastballer? A knuckleballer, a rarer breed than ever, could go to 140). There's innovation to be yet introduced. But, to your Q, why is this tail wagging the dog? Well, it hardly matters for SPs who are getting pounded -- that's easy to tell when to take them out. But if the P is cruising along AND getting near his limit (or at least the limit his manager and/or pitching coach are imposing), then unless he has a rare achievement at stake -- a no-hitter, a shutout, a strikeout mark within reach -- he's probably too valuable to risk exhaustion and, far more dreaded, injury. Many of those pitchers represent millions of dollars, literally hanging by a rotator cuff; mitigating that risk with a hard-count hook might be a business decision more than a baseball decision, but that doesn't make it wrong, just unpalatable. The daily goal is for the team to win. No matter how much the SP factors into that plan, if he's getting up there in pitches and is being counted on for more games later, and there's pretty good options in the bullpen, personal achievement should step aside for team achievement. ---------- To add something I neglected. Some wise baseball man, probably Branch Rickey, once said to the effect that it is better to trade a player a year too early than a year too late. This is how pitch counts SHOULD be used -- decide, based upon reliable data from the pitcher's history (combined with real-time observation), when he is getting close to running out of gas. Pull him out before that one pitch that lands in the second deck. Of course you'll never know if you're right, but you can defend the decision as having been made from a position of confidence. One of the continuous themes of the history of mankind is the search for reliable predictive information; baseball should behave no differently in this regard. If your ace's history is that he goes downhill after 110 pitches and collapses at 120, then 105 isn't a poorly-chosen limit to impose. I have watched games where the SP comes back out in a late inning, he's been looking thin, but there's a shutout within the realm of reach, but as soon as he gives up a hit, bang, he's outta there. Now, maybe his pitch count that night factored in, maybe it didn't (if he's well up there, 110 or more, it probably did but probably didn't matter), but the manager gave him a chance at whatever with a very short lease. And most pitchers understand this. The win is the primary goal.