More pitches = better for the pitcher?

I just came across this article:

http://www.pitching.com/articles/view/pitch-counts-japanese-pitchers-and-red-sox-pitcher-matsuzaka

I apologize that it's hard to read and kind of kooky besides. But he may have a point.

Nowadays, most pitchers seem to be on a strict limit of 100-110 pitches per start, rarely going over. I'm not saying that pitchers don't get tired or can't lose effectiveness over an outing, but is it maybe true that tossing 150 pitches in a start does not necessarily lead to arm injury?

Apparently 100-pitch bullpen sessions are common in Japan, and we all know that during the 60's and 70's they had 4-man rotations and a ridiculous amount of complete games (by today's standards)....you can find boxscores of pitchers staying out for 13+ inning games. AFAIK injury rates weren't particularly high in that period.

Take Strassberg for example...they coddled him, and yet he went down anyway. Do we just blame injuries on overuse because it makes logical sense, or is there actual data to back this up??

AFAIK injury rates weren't particularly high in that period

This sentence is doin a lot of work.

Are you suggesting that with Strasburg, he might even have been UNDERused to the detriment of his stamina or health?

Is there evidence that pitchers pitch harder or faster in the modern era?

Pitching is harder now than 30, 40, 70 years ago. More batters work the count, and there are fewer automatic outs/no-power guys who stay in the lineup for their gloves.

This sentence is doin a lot of work.

Are they higher than they are now? Pitching injury rates have always been high.

Are you suggesting that with Strasburg, he might even have been UNDERused to the detriment of his stamina or health?

There's a chance that maybe his arm wasn't conditioned enough since they didn't let him throw enough. The point is that the whole idea of "let's coddle him so he doesn't get hurt" failed because he got hurt anyway, which kind of showed that they really don't know what would cause the guy to get injured. I really have no idea what would have happened.

Pitching is harder now than 30, 40, 70 years ago. More batters work the count, and there are fewer automatic outs/no-power guys who stay in the lineup for their gloves.

If you watch an NFL game from the 70's or 80's, you might be shocked at how relatively small the lineman are. Nowadays your average NFL player can just destroy people. I guess I hadn't thought that baseball might be the same way.

pitching mechanics and hence pitching injuries are highly individualized. because of this, no one really knows what the best way to prevent injury to a specific pitcher is. and if any team does have an idea about it they're gonna keep it under wraps for competetive advantage.

interestingly, the Rays don't seem to have had any major pitching injuries in 4 years, but that could just be fluke good luck, and it probably is.

BP used to do a detailed injury projection of each team every spring, don't remember seeing it this year. Oh, it was Will Carroll, I'm pretty sure.

if you look at the IP leaders going back many decades it's littered w/quality pitchers who led the league in that category (and were superior otherwise) and were shortly thereafter in serious decline, many of whom never recovered and some of whom were fortunate enough to come back just as strong. the NL list since 1980 is a laundry list filled with a lot of "best pitchers in the game"-level dudes who ended up disappointing in the long run; the leaders were guys like valenzuela, andujar, mike scott, gooden, hershiser, viola, smoltz, schilling, jon lieber, arroyo, webb, santana, wainwright. obv smoltz and schilling came back just as strong as before but in schilling's case it took him a couple of years to regain form and in smoltz's case he was done as a starter for four years.

jury is still out on the last three (arroyo doesn't belong actually, he's been vv good since then and pretty healthy.)

and going back further, i think you can look at guys like marichal, koufax, robin roberts, and some others and see a pattern of decline too. but who knows, pitchers break down all the time even when they're handled with caution. there are probably some guys out there who could toss 300 IP season after season and be absolutely fine but then again pitching has changed so much that maybe their arms would all fall off.

Marichal pitched 295+ at 25, 27, 28 and was still excellent for 279 innings at 33.
If you look at his game logs for 1963 (321 IP at 25), though, the two highest pitch totals are 137 and 113 - presumably he was kept under 100 or 110 pitches for the majority of his starts.

Nolan Ryan is usually held up as one of those workhorses of the '50s-'70s, but he only broke 300 IP twice, nearly did it at 30 (299 IP) and pitched about as much as today's elite pitchers do from then on. He just lasted forever.
The first high-inning year for him where I find pitch counts is '88 (220 IP) and he was throwing a lot of 115-120+ pitch games - even though his average start is an inning or two shorter than Marichal in '63.

Robin Roberts pitched ~1950 innings in six years ('50-'55), was already declining at the end of that and was never the same again aside from 1958.
based on his early '50s start, it looks like Robin Roberts would have been ~120-130 pitches per complete game

yes but you wonder if marichal had been "coddled", as nolan ryan might say, perhaps he would have been effective for a few more years. but pitching is kind of an unnatural thing to be doing every few days and some people are simply going to not last as long as others, there's probably no way to absolutely make sure people last until they're 40. ryan was a freak of nature, just like randy johnson and a select few others. mechanics probably can't determine it either (mark prior's mechanics were said to be "perfect" and indicative of how he would likely avoid serious arm injuries, lol)

are there pitch counts for Ryan in his early Angels years, when he was (i think) still walking 150+ while striking out 300+?

I just found Posnanski's article about Strasberg after his big injury, this is really brilliant :

http://joeposnanski.si.com/2010/08/24/all-too-familiar/

I see what you're saying about the IP leaders but I wonder if the rates of injury among them are higher/lower than your everyday 180 IP guy? If a guy throws 230 innings and has arm trouble, can we say with any certainty that it wouldn't have happened if he only threw 160? Or would Nolan Ryan himself have been broken had he thrown 330 innings in a season?

In my mind, Ryan has always been the biggest statistical outlier in the history of the game.

speaking of Posnanski and pitch counts, "The Retirement of Gil Meche" is a classic of baseball writing iyam:

http://joeposnanski.si.com/2011/01/18/the-retirement-of-meche/

(as a companion piece to this one - http://joeposnanski.si.com/2010/07/27/meche-ing-with-sasquatch/ )

pretty much i feel like pitch counts are the equivalent of wearing a seatbelt -- yes, some ppl that get into car accidents while wearing seatbelts get gravely injured or killed but that doesn't invalidate the theory behind wearing a seatbelt in the first place

xp I love that article...this quote always gets me

Well OF COURSE Meche wanted to stay out there, but that’s why you have a MANAGER, someone who MANAGES to walk out to the mound and say, “Great effort Gil, but you know, I had to be insane to let you pitch the sixth inning in the first place, I have to get you out of here now.”

Throwing a lot of pitches isn't the problem, pitchers are more likely to get hurt by throwing a lot of pitches in high pressure situations or by overexerting themselves when they're fatigued. Breezing through a 120 pitch CG six hitter isn't the same as throwing 120 pitches in 6 IP and having to deal with runners on all night. Or if a pitcher sits for a while between innings, he might get pulled no matter how many pitches he's thrown because he's more likely to come out "cold", overthrow, and get hurt.

Re: Strassburg, I don't think anyone really knows how to keep pitchers healthy, and if they know then obv they're not telling (e.g. the Rays, whatever the Mariners have been feeding Felix Hernandez). Or maybe it's all just luck/genetics.

Brisbee, Keri on the TJ epidemic

http://www.sbnation.com/mlb/2015/3/17/8231383/zack-wheeler-mets-injury

http://grantland.com/the-triangle/tommy-john-epidemic-elbow-surgery-glenn-fleisig-yu-darvish/

Jeff Passan on his new book The Arm (BP podcast)

http://www.baseballprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=28829

@joe_sheehan
Doc (Gooden) threw 218 innings as a 19-year-old in 1984. Nineteen-year-olds have thrown 118 innings, total, this century.