Dadawg_77
07-01-2004, 09:42 PM
Sox manager Ozzie Guillen has been vocal about wanting to see his starting pitchers pitch out of jams, and he's applied that in his managing. Sox starters are second in the AL in pitches per game, fifth in Pitcher Abuse Points (http://www.baseballprospectus.com/statistics/pap_pitcher_team2004.html), and tied for second in Stress Score.
The thing is, I don't think Guillen is coming close to abusing his starters. For despite those lofty rankings, Guillen has been adept at keeping his starting pitchers from the kind of high-pitch-count games that rend arms. Sox starters have gone past 121 pitches just three times all season, tying them for 14th in MLB in that category. It's those games, what Rany Jazayerli and Keith Woolner dub Category IV and V starts (http://www.baseballprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=1477), that pose the greatest danger to pitchers. (For all the attention paid to "100 pitches," there's no one who actually advocates using that figure as a guideline at the major-league level. The entire discussion would be enhanced if people would let go of that notion.)
What Guillen has done is gotten his starters into the 110-121 pitch range more often than any manager in baseball. Sox starters have thrown that number of pitches 28 times in 74 starts; just three other teams have surpassed 19 "Category III" starts, in the vernacular. As the work of Jazayerli and Woolner showed, throwing this number of pitches is well within acceptable usage.
So the White Sox' high PAP scores are not the result of abuse, but the result of care. Guillen has extended his starters from the 90s into the 110s more than his peers, but he's stopped well short of anything that could be termed abuse. This has enabled him to get more work from his better pitchers at a low level of risk, while keeping the bottom of his pitching staff out of game-critical situations. Much of Guillen's positive press stems from his affability and his quotability, and if the Sox do win the Central, he'll get a disproportionate amount of credit because of that. But his handling of the pitching staff is the execution of a plan, and it's one that has had a positive impact on the Sox' season. He is striking as good a balance between the team's needs and his pitchers' capabilities as any manager in the game, and for that he deserves a ton of credit.
http://www.baseballprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=3029
The thing is, I don't think Guillen is coming close to abusing his starters. For despite those lofty rankings, Guillen has been adept at keeping his starting pitchers from the kind of high-pitch-count games that rend arms. Sox starters have gone past 121 pitches just three times all season, tying them for 14th in MLB in that category. It's those games, what Rany Jazayerli and Keith Woolner dub Category IV and V starts (http://www.baseballprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=1477), that pose the greatest danger to pitchers. (For all the attention paid to "100 pitches," there's no one who actually advocates using that figure as a guideline at the major-league level. The entire discussion would be enhanced if people would let go of that notion.)
What Guillen has done is gotten his starters into the 110-121 pitch range more often than any manager in baseball. Sox starters have thrown that number of pitches 28 times in 74 starts; just three other teams have surpassed 19 "Category III" starts, in the vernacular. As the work of Jazayerli and Woolner showed, throwing this number of pitches is well within acceptable usage.
So the White Sox' high PAP scores are not the result of abuse, but the result of care. Guillen has extended his starters from the 90s into the 110s more than his peers, but he's stopped well short of anything that could be termed abuse. This has enabled him to get more work from his better pitchers at a low level of risk, while keeping the bottom of his pitching staff out of game-critical situations. Much of Guillen's positive press stems from his affability and his quotability, and if the Sox do win the Central, he'll get a disproportionate amount of credit because of that. But his handling of the pitching staff is the execution of a plan, and it's one that has had a positive impact on the Sox' season. He is striking as good a balance between the team's needs and his pitchers' capabilities as any manager in the game, and for that he deserves a ton of credit.
http://www.baseballprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=3029