Friday, January 23, 2009

2007's 3400 Club

Just a follow up on yesterday's post about pitchers who throw more than 3400 pitches in a year.

Today, Tim Deirkes posted the 2007 list on RotoAuthority. Here's some of his breakdown:
  1. C.C. Sabathia - 3892
  2. Daisuke Matsuzaka - 3865
  3. Carlos Zambrano - 3774
  4. Jeff Francis - 3771
  5. Dan Haren - 3635
  6. Brandon Webb - 3623
  7. Jake Peavy - 3610
  8. Scott Kazmir - 3609
  9. Aaron Harang - 3590
  10. Gil Meche - 3578
  11. Doug Davis - 3574
  12. Daniel Cabrera - 3563
  13. John Lackey - 3495
  14. Dontrelle Willis - 3491
  15. Andy Pettitte - 3487
  16. Joe Blanton - 3483
  17. Javier Vazquez - 3463
  18. Bronson Arroyo - 3431
  19. Barry Zito - 3411

Let's take Davis out of the mix since he was diagnosed with thyroid cancer the following year. That leaves 18 pitchers in this group. 10 of the 18 had serious injuries in 2008. Specifically I'm referring to Dice-K, Zambrano, Francis, Peavy, Kazmir, Harang, Cabrera, Lackey, Willis, and Pettitte.

There is reason to believe the 2007 class was an anomaly though. 2005 and 2006 data indicated following-year injury rates of 15-25%.
He also noted that CC Sabathia has thrown almost 8000 pitches over the last two years (7804 to be exact), and that he likes "Sabathia as much as the next guy...but he was three pitches away from being the MLB leader in pitches thrown in each of the last two seasons. At some point pitching far more than any other human has to take a toll."

Hopefully he's wrong, and from the comments posted here yesterday I assume most of you think he is. We'll find out soon enough.

5 Comments:

Anonymous said...

10 of the 18 had serious injuries in 2008. Specifically I'm referring to Dice-K, Zambrano, Francis, Peavy, Kazmir, Harang, Cabrera, Lackey, Willis, and Pettitte.

Whoa whoa whoa. They had "serious" injuries in 2008? I beg to differ. They had injuries, sure, but many of those guys threw 150+ innings, some were even close to or above 200 innings. Not that 150 innings is anywhere near a full season, but still, to me, "significant" injuries cause you to miss a lot more than 5-7 starts.

Kazmir made 27 starts, Pettitte made 33, Matsuzaka made 29, Harang made 29, Lackey made 24... These guys hardly had "significant" injuries.

Greg Cohen said...

Just pointing out that those were Dierkes' words and not mine. Just wanted to make sure everyone knows that.

Anonymous said...

accidentally started swapping in "significant" instead of "serious"

Anonymous said...

Yeah, once again, I should have made it clear I was questioning the article author and not you Greg.

Greg Cohen said...

Don't worry, I knew where you were coming from. I just want to make sure everyone knows who said that.