Rivas for Exalted Ruler of the Marinerverse GT 9.11.25

[D-train]

Naylor has the highest OPS at T Mobile in stadium history minimum 50 PAs.

[D-train]

According to Mariners senior manager of baseball communications Alex Mayer, of 443 players with at least 50 plate appearance in a single stadium this season, Naylor’s .724 slugging percentage and 1.162 OPS at T-Mobile Park entering Wednesday were both the best in the league. He was also hitting .379.

https://sports.mynorthwest.com/mlb/seat ... rk/1821812

[Hy Feiber]

the BP has to be taxed, I gave up a few games ago but haven't there been a number of extra inning games recently?

25 innings in two days.

On the radio yesterday they were lamenting the massive pitch count of 95 that Logan Gilbert had. What a fucking joke these guys have become. Nolan Ryan could have had 95 pitches in the fourth and punched his manager in the face if he tried to take him out in the 8th! I can't believe that these many years later we now have a starting staff made up of five Erin Bedard's, but we do. 78 pitches and the manager starts to shit his pants and warm everyone up because in about 12 more pitches the starter's shoulder will be ruined for life.

I couldn’t agree more, the more money these guys make the more they’re treated like pussies.

But after years of these stupid pitch counts, the severe injuries are greater now than ever before.

On a related issue, it must be tough to be a major-league baseball fan these days, when half of your team is from AAA because of all the injuries.

What the hell?

[Donn Beach]

2009, Nolan Ryan has taken control of the Rangers, and his first order of business is to do away with pitch counts. He went about changing the entire approach, how his pitchers trained, how they were managed. Do you guys remember that? It was the rallying moment for the anti pitch count crowd which is quite large actually, the same arguments then as there are now. And it went absolutely nowhere, its completely forgotten. Talk about a conspiracy, the powers behind pitch counts must have really dug some dirt up on the guy

this is a good article, two really interesting guys discussing it, Joe Posnanski and bill James talking Nolan Ryan's crusade to end pitch counts.

first, some of the history, Christ, isn't that unimaginable today?

On June 25, 1975, Kansas City's Steve Busby pitched 12 innings in a game at California, winning the game 6-2 when the Royals scored four in the 12th. Busby was 25 years old at the time. His career record before that game was 52-35, and he had thrown two no-hitters. His career record after that game was 18-19.

Buck Martinez, the Royals catcher in that game, would say later that he was trying to tell manager Jack McKeon for several innings that Busby wasn't right. McKeon, under pressure to keep his job, put winning that game ahead of keeping Busby healthy. McKeon was fired less than a month later (July 23), and came to be widely blamed for destroying Busby's career because of that game.

Fidrych the next year threw 24 complete games at the age of 21. He was never good again.

on to Nolan Ryan and his campaign

Joe: Nolan Ryan threw 26 complete games in back-to-back years -- 1973 and 1974 -- and he threw 300 innings in each of those years. As far as I know, nobody counted pitches then, but can you even IMAGINE the number of pitches Nolan Ryan must have thrown in, say, 1974? The guy set the modern record that year with 383 strikeouts -- here we are, 35 years later, and that record still stands. But Ryan also walked 204 batters that year -- nobody has come CLOSE to that number in the last 35 years. According to Tom Tango's pitch-count estimator, Ryan AVERAGED 134 pitches per start that year, and almost certainly threw more than 200 pitches on a couple of occasions.

And he loved it. That, undoubtedly, is what drives him now. Ryan believed that the game belonged to the starting pitcher. It was his. Ryan HATED 1987 -- that was the year when Houston manager Hal Lanier put Ryan on a strict pitch count (Ryan did not complete a single game that year). On one level it worked: Ryan led the league in ERA. On another, it did not: Ryan finished the season 8-16. You have to think that year is part of what's driving him to recapture a little bit of the 1970s.

Bill James: I think that what Ryan is doing CAN succeed, because he is doing battle with an empty suit. There's really no basis to the belief that a mature starting pitcher can't throw 150 or 160 pitches in a game -- when he's feeling good, when he's throwing freely and not fighting anything -- without negative consequences.

When you introduce hard facts into a discussion, it changes the discussion. The pitch counts introduced by USA Today became a weapon of the critics. Whenever a young pitcher got hurt, someone could always point to this game when he threw 162 pitches on a cold day in Detroit, or these two games in July when he threw 150-plus pitches twice in six days in hot weather, or ... SOMETHING. Every time a pitcher got hurt, somebody could point to something that the manager had done to cause this injury.

It is my view that, once conventional wisdom about leaving pitchers in the game stampeded into a full-fledged retreat, it ran right past the point of reason, without any real effort to balance the discussion by taking account of the costs of pulling pitchers out of the game too early and too often.

The problem with the move toward pitch counts was that there was never any logic or research that said that limiting a pitcher to 100 pitches would prevent injuries, as opposed to 130 pitches, or 130 for young pitchers and 160 for mature pitchers, or as opposed to getting the pitcher out of the game at the first sign of a problem, or as opposed to improving his training regimen. I am opposed to making decisions based on fear, and in favor of making decisions based on logic and research, and therefore I support what Nolan Ryan is trying to do.

I always admire people who have the courage to confront the conventional wisdom ... I mean, people within the system. Those of us on the outside ... it's easy for us to say whatever we think, because there are no consequences to it. It's much harder to say, "I think the conventional wisdom is full of beans, and I'm not going to go along with it," when you're inside the system and exposed to the possibility of actual failure. I think the people who do this drive the world to get better, whereas the people who snipe at anybody who dares suggest that the conventional wisdom is malarkey are, in my view, gutless conspirators in the mediocrity of the universe. To me, what Ryan is doing is the clearest and boldest example of challenging the conventional wisdom from within the system that I've seen in years, and I'm applauding.

and where are we today, the 100 pitch limit is more the holy of holies than ever, go figure

good article
https://www.si.com/more-sports/2009/06/ ... itchcounts

[D-train]

Great stuff! Thanks for posting. That's always been my contention that they just come up with stuff based on nothing. And expect everybody to believe it because it kind of makes sense that less pitches means less wear and tear. But then there's no evidence whatsoever and they is even a study done to dispute it.

[D-train]

The one that really gets me is that a picture has to build up from season to season like they're arm remembers how many pitches it through the prior season or innings. Which is complete nonsense.

[Donn Beach]

Great stuff! Thanks for posting. That's always been my contention that they just come up with stuff based on nothing. And expect everybody to believe it because it kind of makes sense that less pitches means less wear and tear. But then there's no evidence whatsoever and they is even a study done to dispute it.

But what happened, if they are bs then Ryan and the rangers should have been able to have found an inefficiency to exploit with more rational training regimes but nothing came from it.

[D-train]

Great stuff! Thanks for posting. That's always been my contention that they just come up with stuff based on nothing. And expect everybody to believe it because it kind of makes sense that less pitches means less wear and tear. But then there's no evidence whatsoever and they is even a study done to dispute it.

But what happened, if they are bs then Ryan and the rangers should have been able to have found an inefficiency to exploit with more rational training regimes but nothing came from it.

They probably just considered Ryan to be an old school Unicorn and figured that he was about the only one that could throw that many pitches so him thinking everyone could was crazy.

[Donn Beach]

Great stuff! Thanks for posting. That's always been my contention that they just come up with stuff based on nothing. And expect everybody to believe it because it kind of makes sense that less pitches means less wear and tear. But then there's no evidence whatsoever and they is even a study done to dispute it.

But what happened, if they are bs then Ryan and the rangers should have been able to have found an inefficiency to exploit with more rational training regimes but nothing came from it.

They probably just considered Ryan to be an old school Unicorn and figured that he was about the only one that could throw that many pitches so him thinking everyone could was crazy.

Ryan was in charge, he was president of the rangers, he banned pitch counts. I don't think anybody was just patting him on the head. He in fact went about changing the minor league system, I never figured out what happened. Remember the deal with long tossing, it was going to be a different way to develop pitchers, that is a more retro way to do it.

The new president sought a middle ground for the Rangers. Ryan presided over Maddux’s hiring, huddled with the training staff, and met with key front office personnel, all in an effort to improve the team’s run prevention. After much consultation, the Rangers implemented new, more challenging workout programs. They also ramped up the intensity of throwing routines, aiming to build stronger, more resilient arms. Those changes, combined with a greater emphasis on defense and a new generation of homegrown pitchers, produced an 87-win Rangers club that was one of the biggest surprises in baseball in 2009. Texas allowed 740 runs last season, the team’s lowest total in a non-strike-shortened season in nearly 20 years.

could have asked Scott I guess

Ryan wants no part of any pitching program with the word “Rules” in it. Led by Maddux, bullpen coach Andy Hawkins and strength and conditioning coach Jose Vazquez at the major league level, and director of player development Scott Servais and pitching coordinator Danny Clark at the minor league level, the Rangers have implemented some system-wide programs. But, says Maddux, they’ve also remained flexible, responding to specific pitchers’ needs. That’s a big departure from the military tendencies of many teams, which treat everyone the same, regardless of ability or body type.

[Donn Beach]

AI, he banned pitch counts but then they rose again from the dead

Controversial Directive:
In 2009, as part of the Texas Rangers organization, Ryan sent a directive to ban pitch counts for starting pitchers, a decision that caused a stir in the baseball world.
Support Gained Over Time:
The strategy was controversial at first, but the Rangers' success and the general longevity and ability of pitchers to handle long outings in the past eventually led to more support for Ryan's viewpoint.