Pitch count, smitch count: Old Hoss snickers at the silly itch

On Tuesday, New York Mets right-hander Zack Wheeler threw a career-high 118 pitches at Yankee Stadium. He must have gone deep into the game, right? Wrong.

He was gone after 4⅓ innings, leaving with an 11-5 lead and not lasting long enough to get the win, which the Mets did in a 12-7 final.

All but 33 of Wheeler’s 118 pitches were thrown with men on base, and all of the innings were extended:

“He’s got a win on the line,” Mets skipper Terry Collins said, as reported by The New York Times. “A lot of people, you can say what you want, but wins are wins at the end of the year, when your name is next to some wins. So I thought, well, let’s see if he can go out there and do it.

The outing caused a bit of a freakout over Wheeler’s labor: His age, his upside, the total number of pitches, the fact that he had never thrown that many before, the high-stress circumstances of those pitches, the pointlessness of those pitches, and the anachronistic, stat-chasing reason that he was left in.

We don’t know all the facts about pitcher stress points*, and it’s unknown whether there’s some psychological benefit to a presumed future act getting a show of confidence or building up his glam stats. But it’s a suitable start for a freakout. It looked exhausting, and there didn’t seem to be a great reason for it.

Naturally, our standards for a freakout start have changed since 1998, when Rany Jazayerli introduced Pitcher Abuse Points. In 1996, for instance, Mets 23-year-old presumed future ace Paul Wilson threw 121 pitches in 4⅔ innings and no one made a fuss. At the age of 22, Greg Maddux threw 167 pitches in a 1988 game for the Cubs.

But with teams taking pitch counts far more seriously now than they did in 1998, and everyone freaking out over pitch counts far more quickly now than they did in ‘98, I wondered what the evolution of the most egregious outings looks like over the past decade and a half.

I wondered what Old Hoss Radbourn would say about these abuses of pitchers, so I asked him. (Really, I did. These are really his responses.) Going backward:

Old Hoss: I think the sorrier state of affairs is not that Wheeler was “abused” as much as a meager five innings is enough for a hurler to earn a victory. One does not earn one’s stripes by giving up in the thick of things. By this rationale, had McClellan squatted for a few more months along the Antietam Creek he could be named victor of our great civil war.

Old Hoss: I say if this bonny lass wants to go for a no-hitter then by god let it happen.

Old Hoss: I am trying to think of a scenario involving “King” Kelly naming me his hero that doesn’t involve him slipping a dirk ‘twixt my ribs while my guard was down. Here is how such a conversation would go in my day.

Kelly: “Radbourn. How’s the arm? I assume it is quite well. You have only thrown 276 pitches and are due for a win in but three more innings.”

Me: (stoic grunt of manly assent)

Kelly: “Good. Had you said anything else I’d cut you down and forfeit the game. I won’t stand shirkers on my club.”

The man may have been a Papist, but in his heart he was a cold, stoic, emotionless Protestant. That glorious b*st*rd. (Not mine.)

Old Hoss: Flags fly forever, S. Miller. Note: This actually isn’t true, and I remember profanely desecrating the champion’s flag of the 1886 St. Louis Browns. I only hazily remember the details — they involve a gunny sack, two pounds of pemmican, a tin of bile beans, and Julia Ward Howe — but I do know that flag never flew again.

Old Hoss: Having an extra gear late in the game means you’re a lazy vagabond who loafs about early on. Pull it together, son. All nine innings count.

Old Hoss: Out of respect to me and my fellow corpses it’s high time we put the objectionable phrase “dead arm” to rest.

Old Hoss: Of course, rest was granted to him in the very next game, where he was abused into throwing but 98 pitches and in the process gave up five runs and helped earn himself a nice inning-free vacation a bit earlier than planned.

Old Hoss: I have lived my life by adhering to a certain code. I enjoy opium and women in equal measure. I do my best to finish a game I’ve started. I never borrow another man’s tobacco. And I pay no attention to Brad Penny.

Old Hoss: Matt Cain has gone 78-78 since the beginning of the 2007 season. If this isn’t a sign he was grievously injured then I’m not sure what is.

Old Hoss: It is worth noting that Carlos Zambrano is a crazy man and were I his manager, I would remove him from the mound only when accompanied by an armed pack of Gurkhas.

Old Hoss: “His previous start, a 1⅓-inning start, had also been stressful.” Tee-hee. America’s decline in one easy phrase. I suppose he blamed this stressful start on his parents' divorce.

Old Hoss: Even I am not bitter and vile enough to say anything other than this one is awful. Perhaps Prior was a delicate flower who could just not handle “Dusty” Baker’s vampiric fangs in his shoulder anymore, but by god it was fun to watch him fire the sphere.

Old Hoss: I have been dead for far too long to worry about the “abuse” of players like “Nate Cornejo.” I am enough of a man of letters, however, to realize that you have wholesale invented the word “labrum” and wonder what secret you are trying to cover up. Had this man merely been leeched of his excess black bile I am sure he would have been right as rain.

Old Hoss: 137 pitches in 9 innings … is pretty economical by my own modest standards. “Wasn’t much of a prospect?” Chad Griffin Durbin has a World’s Series ring. Do you have a World’s Series ring, Sam Miller? Then again, I don’t have a ring, either. I was given but two rashers of bacon and a crippled yearling for my role in winning the 1884 Series.

Old Hoss: This makes my heart swell with pride.

Old Hoss: I assume he was playing in a “retro” game that featured eight balls to a walk. Otherwise, this is a bloated waste of everyone’s time. If you’re going to throw 63 pitches in an inning there’d better be at least five opponents who will never be able to father children again due to errant inshoots that found their true target.

Old Hoss: I like the cut of this man’s jib.

Many thanks to Old Hoss Radbourn for classing this joint up.

*While it’s generally assumed that stressful innings, like those Wheeler threw, are more likely to lead to injuries, they fall into the “we just don’t know” abyss. Dodgers head athletic trainer Stan Conte at the 2014 SABR Analytics conference talked about the inconclusive studies the Dodgers had done. “We have to define stressful innings. Pitcher themselves when you ask them, they talk about stressful innings as first and third and no outs. Bases load and no outs. Whether or not that puts more stress on their anatomy, not just their head but their anatomy, the pitchers would say yes it does…. We looked at stressful innings as a pitch count of say over 23 pitchers and we saw no correlation with that. When we looked at stressful innings we didn’t see that.”