The Mets front office is a lot like congress. People don’t trust them. So when it was announced that Zack Wheeler has a torn UCL, the first thing everyone did was point their fingers at management. We all watched the games last year. How many times did Terry Collins leave Wheeler on the mound past 100 pitches? For a prized, 24-year-old arm, it didn’t seem like the Mets were going out of their way to protect him. And now with rumblings that he was pitching in discomfort, what gives?!
Yesterday, Ken Davidoff published a piece for the New York Post calling into question the Mets’ usage of Wheeler based on his high pitch counts. He cited the fact that Wheeler reached or surpassed 110 pitches 13 times last season, a lot more than any other age-24 pitcher, the next closest being seven times. I looked it up, and sure enough, of the 24 pitchers in the majors last season who were 24 or younger, Wheeler’s 110-pitch count games were clearly the most.
Then, I made the same search for the 2013 season, and found a different story.
As is often the case, looking at just one year of data can tell a misleading story. In 2013, just two seasons ago, we find a long list of pitchers age-24 or younger who had multiple 110 or greater pitch count games.
The two names that stick out from the list being Matt Harvey, who obviously injured his elbow late in the season, and Patrick Corbin, who followed the same fate as Wheeler, feeling tightness in his elbow during spring training last year, and ultimately, required Tommy John surgery.
Besides Harvey and Corbin, however, we find many success stories. Chris Sale had fifteen 110 or more pitch count games in 2013, this following his age-23 season when he had the second most with eight. He is still pitching strong (a recent foot injury notwithstanding). Madison Bumgarner is another name from 2013 who pitched through lengthy games. We all know how his story ended the following season.
If we look back a year further, at 2012, we find another interesting name who often made 110 pitch or more starts. That is Clayton Kershaw. Sixteen times, twice as many as the next most frequent pitcher, Kershaw tossed at least 110 pitches in a game, he too, in his age-24 season.
What does all of this tell us? It tells us that it’s a guessing game on whether Wheeler’s high pitch count games led to his injury. We have a few cases where we can see pitchers with a lot of high pitch count games, later injured, but we also have some of baseball’s best pitchers, at the same age as Wheeler, or younger, who were used just as much, or more, and are still going strong.
Statistics courtesy of Baseball-Reference. Follow me on Twitter @OverWhitestone.
Another original article from Metsmerized Online!
