Mar

10

Pitch Counts in the Bigs and the Cape

Posted by Greg | Filed Under News | 1 Comment

Big league managers and pitching coaches in the World Baseball Classic, like their colleagues in the Cape League, are learning the pain and the gain of having great pitching talent on their tournament squads but having to answer to coaches for the controlling teams.

George Vecsey’s column in today’s New York Times observes that Team USA’s pitching coach has a bunch of MLB pitching coaches on speed dial during the WBC.  Those controlling pitching coaches don’t want their precious pitchers overworked — or underworked.

All teams in the WBC must limit their starting pitchers to 70 pitches in the first round, and must then hold out those starters for four days with a sliding scale for fewer number of pitches. Little League has also introduced stringent pitch count rules, which as I can attest as a Little League coach add a degree of complexity.

How do Cape teams manage pitch counts with their prospects?

Comments

One Response to “Pitch Counts in the Bigs and the Cape”

  1. Capeman on March 11th, 2009 10:15 am

    I’m sure there is some discussion between coaches about pitch count but I think there is more conversation about HOW a pitcher is used. Often, you see a weekend starter on a big time college team be a relief pitcher on the Cape. You also see many closers develop on the Cape and you’d have to think that throwing a kid out there every day to close games when he hasn’t done that before is definately a discussion between coaches.

    Take Justin Masterson from the Red Sox. He was a starting pitcher at a small school and came to the Cape as a dominating closer.

    Another thing you often see on the Cape are kids that didn’t pitch too many innings as freshman but are projected as starters. There first real string of starts as a college pitcher is often on the Cape and therefore, they have fresh arms and probably don’t have the same concerns with throwing as many innings.

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