Note: This following is a post adapted from one I posted on my personal blog awhile ago. I hope to have similar baseball content and essays up in the coming weeks.
As a Seibu Lion in 2006, Daisuke Matsuzaka started 25 games, throwing 13 complete games and logging 186 innings. This works out to 7.44 innings thrown a start. In comparison, Twins workhorse Johan Santana averaged 6.88 innings per start this year, a significantly lower number. The majority of major leaguers don't average over 7.
In fact, the only people (I believe) who have averaged as many innings per start recently are Randy Johnson and Curt Schilling as Diamondbacks, Livan Hernandez and Mark Buehrle (both before this year).
The Bill James Handbook for the 2005 season only has 2 starts in which pitchers threw more than 140 pitches, and both were by Livan Hernandez.
We all hear about pitchers and routines. Teams use different strategies in working their pitchers on off days and counting pitches during starts. And while 100 pitches is an arbitrary cut off point, many managers and pitching coaches seem to be sensitive about letting their pitchers work beyond that number.
It has been well documented that Matsuzaka works with high pitch counts. Averaging 138 pitches in 2005 and 144 pitches per nine innings in 2006 places Matsuzaka significantly above the point at which most managers will keep their pitchers in the game. I put emphasis on per nine innings because in the past, articles on Yahoo! and The Sporting News have reported that as per game averages, which would be drastically different.
Which got me to wondering. How is Matsuzaka reaching 140 and 150 pitches per nine when his walk rate is that good? He doesn't allow that many hits per inning either. Matsuzaka's WHIP was 0.925 in 2006, meaning on average, he allows 0.925 men on base an inning. Is this in fact irregular? Is Matsuzaka in any way inefficient?
138 pitches each 9 innings works out to 15.33 pitches per inning. 144 per 9 works out to 16 pitches an inning. But if he's throwing an average of 15.33 pitches in an inning, and he's only facing an average of 3.925 hitters, that means each hitter will see 3.905 pitches per at bat. Instinctively, this seems a bit high to me.
.jpg?t=20120527181101)
Article comments
1 - Tuffy
Maddux was never a strikeout pitcher, really; he 'pitched to contact', getting hitters out on weakly-hit balls and keeping the ball in the park. That keeps pitch counts down.
How do you think Matsuzaka and Nolan Ryan compare in approach and results?
2 - Will
I agree that Maddux was never a strikeout pitcher, but his K rates were pretty respectable, usually around 6-7 per 9 IP. But you're absolutely right about his pitch counts being low because of the contact he induced (and his miniscule walk rate).
Now I would be very interested to see how many pitches it usually took to Maddux to strike out a batter. I'm going to look for this, as even though Maddux is an extreme example, it could be an interesting stat to see.
As for Ryan and Matsuzaka, the results weren't all that similar (high K's aside if we compare across leagues), although Ryan had some low WHIP years due to minimizing hits despite his high BB/IP rate.
But approach? That's kind of interesting actually. Ryan's heater was great, sure, but he got pretty good later on in studying hitters but not compromising his stuff (i.e., if he knew someone couldn't his a change, he wouldn't rely on that information if his change wasn't working well on a particular day).
From what I've seen of Matsuzaka, he's similar in approach in that he seems to have a very distinct game plan when he pitches.
Ryan, of course, did like the high heat, which apparently Matsuzaka does as well. The key there is control of course. Miss high and they don't swing, miss low and the hitter punishes you.
If you've seen the analysis of his delivery on Hardball Times, it would be interesting to compare his time to the plate with Ryan's - it strikes me (harr harr) that they would both have very quick deliveries after the windup.
3 - Tuffy
At MLB.com, Will Carroll put together a video comparison of Matsuzaka and Clemens. Once you get past the fluff of the early delivery, everything involving the push from the rubber forward is identical. Considering how often Ryan and Clemens are stapled to each other and presented as a set, the comparison of Matsuzaka and Ryan intrigues me.