Thursday, September 12, 2013
Gerrit Cole’s pitch count limit?
It's simply lazy to always talk about pitch counts on a game basis, and then switch to innings at the seasonal level. Cole has faced 392 batters in MLB in 2013, throwing 1435 pitches, or an average of 3.66 pitches per batter. That's below average, and that's what you'd expect of a pitcher that doesn't strike out or walk many batters.
If you do strike out and walk many batters, that means you are getting to 3 strikes or 4 balls, which means you are pitching deep in the count. If you don't do either K or BB, chances are, you aren't getting deep in the count.
Cole is also a good pitcher, meaning he doesn't face as many batters per inning as the average pitcher. So, Cole: throws fewer pitches per batter, and faces fewer batters per inning. This means that IP is not a proxy for the number of pitches thrown. And what we care about is number of pitches thrown, not number of outs. That's what IP is: number of outs (divided by 3). If a player gives up 9 hits in an inning, it's still one IP. So, why the fascination with IP? Laziness, that's all. Not even inertia, because it's obvious that pitches is better.
Anyway, I don't have Cole's minor league pitches thrown handy, but seeing that he didn't strike out or walk many there either, he probably averaged close to 3.66 pitches per batter. In all, he's faced 660 batters, and thrown close to 2400 pitches.
The Pirates GM says he's got a hard pitch count for him. Jordan Zimmerman and Strasburg, following TJ, were around 2600 pitches I think. My guess therefore is that Cole might be up to 3000 pitches as his limit. He's averaging 90 pitches per start, so if we give him three more starts in the regular season, and one start for each series, if they make it to the World Series, that's 6 starts at 90 pitches each, or 540 pitches. That puts him right close to 3000.
That's my pure guess there.?
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