Today’s blog is written by Bumsrap. Thanks for a day off…
Pitching Depth
In 2008, Cole Hamels seemed unhittable for much of the season and the post-season. He was 24 years old in 2008 when he pitched 227.1 innings in the regular season plus 35 more in the post season. That was 63 more innings total from the previous year. His worst year of his career was 2009. Here is a link to an analysis of his 2009 year that concludes that he simply had great deal of good fortune in 2008, and a great deal of bad fortune in 2009. I think he needed a year to fully recuperate from the extra innings he pitched in 2008.
Apparently there is a thing called “the Verducci Effect” which states that pitchers under 25 years old who pitch thirty or more innings than the previous year are particularly vulnerable to injuries. In Hamels’ case, that means that he would be vulnerable to injury in 2009 because he pitched 63 more innings in 2008 than he did in 2007.
What might that tell us about the Dodgers pitching staff?
- While Keshaw and Maeda are older than 25 I would like to see their innings in 2017 (regular and post season combined) to not be more than their highest innings count to date and I would do that by skipping starts during the season.
- Urias, Stewart, Buehler, White, Alvarez, and Oaks, should not pitch more than 25 innings than they pitched the previous year.
- McCarthy, Ryu, and Wood should pitch between 120 and 150 innings total.
That plan would change the perspective many of us have on depth and potential trades.
Let’s Talk About Sleep
It has to be difficult for baseball players to return to their homes and hotel rooms after a game and not let the roaring crowds and their performance keep them awake.
Not sleeping enough and not sleeping well is not OK. WebMD says this about lack of sleep:
1) “Decreased Performance and Alertness: Sleep deprivation induces significant reductions in performance and alertness. Reducing your nighttime sleep by as little as one and a half hours for just one night could result in a reduction of daytime alertness by as much as 32%.”
2) “Memory and Cognitive Impairment: Decreased alertness and excessive daytime sleepiness impair your memory and your cognitive ability — your ability to think and process information.”
If the Dodgers want to optimize performance through improved diets and exercises, I would think they would be interested in helping their players sleep better and relax more. Technology exists that creates an “acoustic brain mirror” for the brain. Read-only, non-invasive sensors are placed on the scalp to listen to brain rhythms with great precision. Software translates this brainwave activity into sounds of different pitch and timing. These sounds are played back to a person through earbuds, in real time. This self-reflection process supports the brain to bring itself to a deeply relaxed state. From this state, the brain tends to reorganize its own rhythms, on its own terms. Learn more here.
Rants
- Just-in-time (JIT) seems to apply to the Dodgers as Gonzales and Ethier are going to be nursing injuries all year and Bellinger and Toles are going to replace them just-in-time.
- Kazmir will once again rise like the Phoenix and pitch this year.
- Seager may become Mr. October but will never be known as Mr. March.
- There are a few players that have had 30 30 seasons with 30 steals and 30 homeruns but Joc might become the first 30 30 player to have 30 bunt hits and 30 homeruns.
— Bumsrap
Discussion (43)
Disagree, not disagreeable
I also have a feeling he will tell us even more than that…
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Just a hunch!
Mark – Anyone – Help… Can you give me the starting rotation for OKC opening day… Thanks
Kershaw in mid-season form already? 7 IP, 0 R, 1H, 11 K.
Interesting AB by Puig watching the gametacker. After Joc and Grandal failed to score two baserunners, Puig was up with runner’s on 2nd and 3rd. After going 0-2, I believe, he fouled off a slider, he took a curve in the dirt, and he took a change-up in the dirt. At 2-2 he singled to RF to score two runs and advanced to 2nd on a throwing error. Without seeing it with my eyes it appears to be the type of AB’s the coaches would be looking for. I don’t know how well the ball was hit, but he didn’t let the pitcher get himself out.
Nice post Bums, good points made. I think all of the starters could use extra time between starts except Kershaw. Roberts said he won’t go with a 6 man rotation but it makes some sense. It would either leave the bullpen or the bench a man short so perhaps using the 10 day DL and the shuttle makes even more sense for the brain trust. If they all stay healthy it’s a bit clogged up for now. I think Joc would get to about 10 bunt hits and they would stop shifting. What a great way for the USA to win their first WBC in Dodger Stadium with a dominating performance by Stroman. Nice way to go out for Leyland too. 300 innings is a thing of the past but I miss the old days of a 4 man rotation. More spots for more average pitchers and many more teams with rotations to fill. Koufax, Drysdale, Osteen and Sutton was a hell of a rotation back in the day even though it lasted just one year in 1966. 3 Hall of Famers!
AC – What’s your starting rotation at OKC to begin the season… I’m imagining the AAA players are earnestly waiting to face em!!
I like Bums point about the bunt hits. Not only will the 30 bunt hits do wonders for his average, but if they stop shifting on him, he gets back all the pull-side hard hits that he lost due to the shift (the most dramatic example of this is AGON – it seems like every game he hits one hard up the middle or in the 3-4 hole that gets countered by the shift).
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If Joc winds up batting 8th, then it shouldn’t matter that he’s not a threat to steal. It’s interesting that the Dodgers coaches don’t teach their players to read the pitcher better. I know FAZ tends to discourage stealing but this lineup has great fastball hitters and the threat of a steal is a great way to force the pitcher to throw more fastballs.
Warren Spahn must be turning over in his grave thinking about pitch and innings limits for pitchers. Starting in his age 26 season, for the next 17 years he never pitched less than 245 innings in any one season. During that same time span(or Spahn, as the case might be) he never threw less 16 complete games in any one season. In his 2nd and 3rd minor league seasons, he pitched 212 and 248, innings, respectively. Then he took 3 years off to serve in the military. Perhaps he was a freak of nature. But then again maybe the way pitchers were allowed to pitch back then, allowed them to throw more innings. Bob Gibson, Steve Carlton and the others mentioned certainly had very successful careers despite their heavy workload. Maybe Kershaw can be that type of pitcher for the Dodgers.
There comes a time when a bad investment becomes a sunk cost. The Dodgers figured out when they couldn’t get anymore value out of Carl Crawford either on the field or via trade. The next player they’re going to have to make that decision on will be Kazmir.
I believe he will start the season on the DL and either continue to work with Honeycutt or stay back at Camelback. I think he will do a full minor league rehab assignment. He will have to show the Dodgers that his body can not only regain velocity but also be able to physically handle throwing at that velocity without breaking down.
Kazmir will have to do 5 starts between Rancho and OKC. At that point if he ever gets to that point the Dodgers will have to decide if he has value or if he’s a sunk cost.
I have never understood the way that baseball has treated pitchers over the past 40 years or so. I would be more inclined to believe that pitchers need to be treated as if they were made out of cut glass and needed to be wrapped in velvet and kept in a secure place if there was evidence that pitchers were less injury prone now than previously, but the opposite is true.
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From what I have read, the best predictors of pitching injuries are:
1 – history of prior injury (thus the Dodgers’ predilection of signing the old and infirm has been largely unsuccessful)
“As BP’s Carleton found in a separate analysis, perhaps the most significant predictor of a pitcher getting injured in the future is simply whether he was injured in the past. On its face, that’s not especially useful,7
but it plays into another old hypothesis that might be worthy of new life: the “injury nexus,” formulated by Carroll and FiveThirtyEight editor-in-chief Nate Silver way back in 2003. The idea of the injury nexus is that pitchers are especially vulnerable to catastrophic damage during a very specific, formative time in their careers, before they hit the age of 24. One big medical theory as to why: Pitchers’ bodies aren’t completely mature until roughly that age, putting them at greater physical risk of injury.”
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https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-mystery-sabermetrics-still-cant-solve/
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2 – Age – pitchers under 24 who have big increases in their workload are more susceptible to injury.
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I don’t buy pitch counts or innings limits. Any cursory look at any list of pitchers reveals the 100’s of pitchers who have thrown over 300 innings. As recently as 1971, Mickey Lolich threw over 370 innings for the Tigers. (Wilbur Wood threw 376 innings in ’72 but he doesn’t count as a knuckler.) Gaylord Perry and Steve Carlton both pitched over 340 innings in the ’70’s as well. – Perry did it twice. Robin Roberts, Phil Niekro (at 39!), Nolan Ryan, Sandy Koufax, Denny McClain, all have thrown over 330 innings in a season.
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I have no trouble with being very careful with a young pitcher like Julio Urias who simply hasn’t thrown enough innings to build up arm strength yet, but any pitcher who has been properly handled, especially one over 24 shouldn’t be babied – the way to get strong is to exercise more, not less! A guy like Kershaw, in his prime at 29 who has been properly handled his whole career doesn’t need to be treated with kid gloves.
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As to the Braintrust’s Injured Pitcher Brigade (Kazmir, McCarthy, Hill, et al), they can’t be counted on and are more likely to be reinjured as demonstrated above. If you want to be careful with them, fine, although it may not matter.
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As an aside, I am amazed at the hypothesis that somehow ulnar collateral ligament surgery (AKA “Tommy John”) – the inside of the elbow, is somehow related to thoracic outlet impingement (where a neurovascular bundle between the clavicle and 1st cervical rib becomes compressed) due to too much work. Maybe, if recovery from TJ surgery resulted in a change in pitching mechanics, but if the Mets let that happen, they weren’t paying attention.
I don’t know when Pederson will steal 30 bases. He was a base stealing threat in the minors, but since he has been with the big team, he doesn’t even try much. When he first came up, he had little success in stealing, and that has shut hin down in that department. As I recall, the pitchers had his move from first figured out right away.
USA wins the World Games. Nice.
Great post by Bums. There was an argument that adding Cole Hammels to Greinke and Kershaw would have resulted in the Dodgers getting past the NLCS and into the WS. The cost to the Dodgers would have been Urias and/or Seager. I personally am not sure that having Hammels would have made things turn out differently. As much as I love Kershaw, I think the Dodgers success in that series rested on his performance (or lack thereof). At this point, I am enjoying the forward view with the Dodgers flexing their young stars and their loaded farm.
“The Verducci Effect” makes alot of sense. AlwaysCompete is correct, “the SP is the greatest injury risk, and the largest investment”. Dodgers look like they got the goods, young studs, got to protect them.
Not sure I agree with your sleep worries. I have never known any 20 – 36 yr old that had any problem sleeping (and soundly) when they wanted to. Problem was, they wanted to stay out late partying and chasing the ladies. Maybe a little “Saltpeter” in those 21st century meals would be helpful.
Get it done Kazmir.
Bums, GREAT job. In addition to your Hamels example, you can also look at the 2015 Mets. Jacob deGrom, Matt Harvey, and Noah Syndergaard who had 216, 216, and 205.2 IP respectively (including playoffs and minors). In addition, Steven Matz pitched 155.2 innings. deGrom (2010), Harvey (2013), and Matz (2014) all had TJ surgery., and 2015 was their heaviest load. Remember there was a big “disagreement” between Mets FO and Scott Boras about limiting Harvey to 180 total for 2015. In 2016, injuries curtailed the starts and innings for Syndergaard (30 & 183.2), deGrom (24 & 148), Harvey (17 & 92.2), and Matz (22 &132.1). Most analysts link the heavy load in 2015 to the injuries in 2016. Some conjecture that Harvey will never be the same again. Did the heavy 2015 workload one year from TJ surgery recovery have any effect on his Thoracic Outlet Syndrome injury in 2016?
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With the workload the Cubs pitchers have had the last two years, it will be interesting to see how they hold up in 2017. I will be surprised to see if both Lester (33) and Arrieta (31) continue at a 220 IP pace as they have done for the last two years. At 38, can Lackey match last years 201 IP? Hendricks has averaged 200 for the last two years. They have gone relatively injury free the last two years, and with nothing really in the pipeline, they are going to need repeat performances again 2017.
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Kershaw will get close to 200, and Maeda should match last year’s 185.2 total (including playoffs). But I do not see any other Dodger pitcher approaching 180 IP. In today’s market, the SP is the greatest injury risk, and the largest investment. They need to be protected for both baseball and economic reasons. While some may ridicule the number of SP the Dodgers went through last year, they still won 91 games. So if they have 10 starting pitchers again this year, is that a problem or is it a sign that FAZ actually does know how to build a team (40 man vs 25 man). I think the latter.
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One change to your limitation of 25 IP greater than last year for Urias, Stewart, Buehler, White, Alvarez, and Oaks, Buehler only had 5 IP last year. He will be limited, probably close to 100, no more than 120.