johnson hasnt allowed a hit to anyone in their first at-bat this year, pretty cool imo

leaving him in for a no-hitter at 120+ pitches would have been lolbad

don't want to hijack...but he hasn't been finishing pitches. tough to locate when you throw all arm.

how are you coming up with 125 pitches?

pitch counts are important in little league where kids arms aren't in good shape. Telling a professional baseball player, whose job it is to throw a baseball, that he can only throw xxx pitches in a game is ridiculous. Japanese pitchers throw 100 pitch bullpens. Everyday. Why aren't they having arm problems? because their arms are properly conditioned to throw 150 pitches in a game. If JJ looked tired, if his mechanics started to deteriorate, or if his results suffered, pull him, but don't pull him because of a meaningless tally.

and throwing a no-hitter is def a big deal, any time a player on your team has a big game, whether its a 3hr game, hit for cycle, great defense, or a great pitching effort, it boosts the team and motivates the rest of the players to try and match that performance. calling a no-hitter a meaningless is lol.

pushing your ace with a history of injuries who you have tons of money tied up in is lol. its not a tally in the sense that 109 is fine and 110 is arm falling off, its an unnecessary risk in a 5-0 game.


do you have any evidence that teams play better in the games following a nohitter/cycle?

i think pitch counts are probably a good idea even if they don't prevent injuries because they force managers who will naturally make bad decisions to make better ones in close and late situations. a fresh average reliever will outperform an elite starter who is at 100 pitches/3rd or 4th time through the lineup. therefore in close and late situations it is almost always better to use a reliever. and well it doesn't really matter as much in the games that aren't close.

my guess is teams might be able to eliminate hard pitch counts if they employed smart managers but they don't seem to want to.

4 batters left (assuming that he got the batter out @ pitch 109 instead of a single and getting pulled) * 4 pitches per at bat average. no good?


edit: and to the people saying injury prone.. doesnt look that bad to me from kyle's injury db. nothing looks serous since his elbow surgery 3 years ago

i have no clue at the professional level, but in high school and college teams definitely play better, especially when you have guys who play with a lot of emotion and have fragile psyches - it can make a big difference from a player's perspective. As far as statistical evidence, i have no clue but i wouldn't be surprised if a team performed slightly above the mean over a large sample after a player has a unreal game.

don't want to sound like a prick, but did you play baseball beyond high school? there are some advanced things in the game that take place from a game-flow perspective that I think the casual player or fan can't really understand.

I wasn't even talking about the team playing better because their player bossed it/had a milestone - but that could be worth looking up. i meant just $$ to the team because of a milestone event, in particular one from one of your foundation players.

my fault. got confused by the assuming the out thing dunno what i was thinking.

edit:
could you try to describe these things?

Do you have any data to back up the bolded? I'd be really interested to read a study that shows Japanese pitchers have fewer arm problems than non-Japanese pitchers. MLB teams would probably be interested in that, too.

http://www.pitching.com/articles/vie...cher-matsuzaka

i mean it would take days to explain everything but i think the two biggest things that cannot be statistically quantified are timing and focus.

hitting is timing, pitching is offsetting timing. i'm sure everyone's heard that. timing applies for pitcher's too. i think a lot of saber people think of baseball like poker with variance and standard deviation in regards to streaks and slumps. the reality of the situation is that someone who is hitting the ball really well is timing it up well, seeing pitches well, guessing pitches well. pitchers who are pitching great have their mechanics down perfectly, their arm feels good, and they are pitching with confidence. yeah there is definitely a good amount of luck involved, but it's not completely random when you see a avg player hitting out of his mind or a great hitter going through a slump. what separates a great player from an average player is the great player's ability to make adjustments in their swing/delivery, and make those adjustments rather quickly. a minor leaguer or a bad player either cannot adjust as fast, or just can't adjust at all.

which leads me to the second topic. focus.

it takes a lot of focus to play a 162 game season. it takes a lot of focus to play 9 innings. alex rodriguez says the main thing he tries to do every game is remain present for each pitch. that means 100% focus on each play, thinking of nothing but the situation, and how he will react to it. obv some are better than others at this. the great players are able to keep their focus for every at bat, but so many players waste ab's late in games, lay up fastballs over the plate when down by 8 runs, etc etc. there may be no such thing as clutch hitting, but i can tell you that most players are way more dialed in late in the game when the game is on the line than in the second inning of a 7-0 blowout.

as far as gameflow goes, hitters make adjustments within each at bat, and there is constantly a mental game going on inside the heads of the pitcher, catcher, and hitter. it's very similar to HU poker in that regard.

so to bring it all together, a pitcher throwing a no-no is going to be a lot more dialed in late in the game than he normally would - his adrenaline is off the charts, and his focus is impeccable.

using statistics is a great idea in baseball, but i've noticed that most sabermatricians don't account for the variability and dynamic flux of each statistic, or why that statistic is the way it is. they just measure it.

No and for all I know it could be true, I was just wondering if there was any data to back up if a team has improved play after a significant event. There could be all of these "advanced things" and game-flow changes but at the end of the day is there a marked difference in performance? Its an interesting question. I would definitely believe that mlb players are affected less than college/high school.

personally i think the pitching staff is not nearly as good as people claim. lester and bucholz are the only solid arms in that rotation imo. and the only guy in that bullpen that comes to mind is daniel bard. crawford seems like a guy that might not be able to handle the pressures of playing in boston, ellsbury has a lot of problems against lefties, and jd drew looks washed up. having varitek at C once or twice a week really hurts them too, he looks terrible back there i don't care if he's the captain. and saltalamacchia is inexperienced and may be having some trouble with pitch calling and there may be some trust issues with the pitchers, plus he's never really impressed me to begin with. and scutaro is not a major league shortstop imo.

gonzalez, pedroia, youkilis and prob crawford will end up hitting this year, but thats only 4 guys and the others are a big Q mark. plus the media scrutiny and fan lash outs only make it worse.

theo epstein should be ****ting his pants. i don't see the red sox making the playoffs, and frankly, i never did.

you would have to assume that their consistency and composure as a whole is much, much better than an amateur's, given the fact that they are PROFESSIONALS. but there are definitely a few head cases out there, mark my words. i doubt that any improvement would be substantial, i agree with you for the most part. there is def merit tho to leaving a pitcher in to throw a no-hitter/pg.

sinker, 100%.

There's no data about injury rates there, just anecdotal evidence about Matsuzaka, which is kind of funny since he's been on the DL four times with shoulder/arm injuries since that was written.

I'd still love to see evidence that Japanese pitchers suffer fewer arm injuries, other than Bobby Valentine saying it's so.

there hasn't been a whole lot of research done. If you had the time I'm sure you could look at all of the pitchers who went down in japan, do the same for the mlb, adjust them based on IP, season length, and player pool, and you'd have an answer, and i'd be willing to bet the japanese have less arm problems.

and the reason dice-k has been on the DL so many times, and he's stated this publicly before this season, is that they interfered with his bullpens and workout routine, cut it down to american standards, and that's why he's struggled and had so many injuries.

http://www.weei.com/sports/boston/re...le-find-middle

he was never injured in japan. of course the red sox blame his injuries on overuse in japan, but thats just bs. the reality of the situation is that even baseball prospectus is in the dark in regards to arm conditioning, and all of the studies and scientific research is skewed because it is all based on the american pitcher, who throws 1-2 30-50 pitch bullpens per week, doesn't play enough longtoss or bullpen properly, and then goes out and throws 100 pitches every 5th day. mlb pitching coaches know a lot about PITCHING, but they are idiots when it comes to training. they just do what "worked for them," even though back in the 60's and 70's there were 3 and 4 man rotations and no regard for pitch counts. today's climate just doesn't make sense.

for example, i calmly explained all of this to my pitching coach, showed him the articles, etc etc. and he still thinks i'm an idiot who's gonna blow out my arm. btw haven't missed a start in 4 years.

how much

well you sound pretty confident so maybe not that much! never heard of a well-known pitcher in japan going down, ever. have you?

Wins
AJ Burnett - 3
Boston Red Sox - 2

http://insider.espn.go.com/nfl/draft...ory?id=6336331

god this is just beautiful

footballoutsiders does some ******ed backwards looking analysis where they note that:

Between 1998 and 2005, every quarterback drafted in the first two rounds was an NFL success as long as he hit two baselines in his college career:

(1) 33 games started
(2) 58 percent completion rate

the list of QBs that fit is extremely impressive

so they develop the lewin career forecast system

The LCF projected the NFL success of any quarterback taken in the top two rounds using two numbers: college games started and career completion rate. We couldn't figure out a way to identify sleepers, because quarterbacks chosen at the end of the draft didn't really show any predictable patterns that differentiated between Tom Brady and Tee Martin.

so now instead of looking for patterns in like 25 data points they're actually making predictions

ANYONE WANT TO GUESS HOW THOSE PREDICTIONS TURNED OUT

lol

here is what aaron schatz wrote to defend his system's total failure:

"the issue is that four-year starters coming off a strong college career are suddenly being badly misjudged by scouts and drafted too early."

yes, his system is still sound, it's just that all the busts it predicted as successes should have been drafted in rounds 3-7 and thus been exempt from the system

do you think the reason those QBs were overdrafted was the LCF's overwhelming acceptance among GMs