Heading into 2009 I can't say there is anyone on the Yankees' staff that I'm not concerned with besides Chien-Ming Wang. And that includes the two newest additions, CC Sabathia and A.J. Burnett, who may both be the biggest concerns.
Over on RotoAuthority, Tim Dierkes from MLB Trade Rumors discusses a club I was not aware of; the "3400 Club," which is a group of pitchers who threw more than 3400 pitches last year. A list that the two newest Yankees pitchers find themselves on top of. Here's some more from Dierkes:
As I said, this is the first time I'm hearing about the "3400 Pitch Club." So please forgive my ignorance to the subject, but apparently it's a pretty big deal. Tomorrow, Dierkes is going to post the 2007 list, a group that had a very rough 2008. I'm very interested to see that list.Longtime RotoAuthority reader finite24 brought up an interesting topic recently: injury risk the following season for pitchers who threw 3500+ pitches. I decided to dig more deeply into this topic, pulling the benchmark down to 3400 pitches thrown in a season. I included playoff pitches, as well as an estimate of minor league pitches thrown by Brett Myers this year.
First up, your 2008 class (19 pitchers):
... How great is the injury risk for these guys? I'll go into detail on past years' results in future posts, but I'm seeing anywhere from 15 to 61% of those in this "club" deal with significant injury the following year. Best I can estimate is that anywhere from 3 to 12 of these 19 will be significantly injured in 2009.
- Cole Hamels - 3914
- C.C. Sabathia - 3912
- Brett Myers - 3781
- Jon Lester - 3738
- Tim Lincecum - 3682
- A.J. Burnett - 3650...
Hopefully the Yankees will take every precaution necessary not to burn out these two pitchers, because their success will make or break the 2009 Yankees.
What do you guys think? Is this a real concern, or is it much ado about nothing?
14 Comments:
When it says anywhere from 15-60 percent of these guys get injured the following year, it makes me think this is bogus. Look, obviously working more often increases the risk of injury, but when there is such a wide net cast it means that there are other reasons for concern here.
Obviously Sabathia, who put on a ton of innings, and Burnett, who is always a risk, need to be watched. But what pitchers don't?
I agree with Rob. Much ado about nothing. We signed the best pitchers available. Case closed.
sabathia has been throwing alot of pitches every year and he's held up. i think he should be fine. burnett i would be a little nervous about, but he may have just gotten over being injured every year. he said he used to throw the ball as hard as he could all the time in his first few years, but last year he he became more of a pitcher, and stayed healthy for most of the year.
Only time will tell....
Anon, I happen to side more with you than the others. I'm not so quick to dismiss this as nonsense just yet. I'm interested to see what the list from 2007 shows tomorrow.
Dan,
I'm interested to see how many pitches CC threw last year - another reason I'm looking forward to tomorrow's list.
She-Fan,
Yes I totally agree that they got the best pitchers available, and that's exactly what they should have done. Even if the risks were increased they still made two good moves (Although I still have five years for Burnett).
None of this means these guys will be injured, I know that. But, at the same time if it increases their injury risk at all it could turn out to be a problem.
thats the biggest load of crap ive ever heard. 15-60%? thats like saying the Yankees will have a payroll between $40 MM and $400 MM *just an example* it just seems that he's pointing out the obvious. If you pitch alot, you're a higher injury risk. if your already an injury risk, than your an injury risk. I don't believe it.
Greg,
CC threw 3581 pitches in 2007, including playoffs. If you go espn.com and go to his Game Log, it gives you the total for the year.
http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/players/gamelog?playerId=4553&year=2007
"CC threw 3581 pitches in 2007, including playoffs"
Which is good news because now we know it didn't affect his 2008 season...
And I too am interested in seeing the list for 2007...
if u cant wait here the top 20, not sure if it includes playoffs:
1 C.Zambrano- 11 J.Blanton
2 D.Haren- 12 Dice-K
3 J.Peavy- 13 J.Vazquez
4 S.Kazmir- 14 B.Webb
5 A.Harang- 15 B.Arroyo
6 CC- 16 B.Zito
7 G.Meche- 17 J.Lackey
8 D.Cabrera- 18 Pettitte
9 D.Willis- 19 L.Hernandez
10 J.Francis- 20 D.Davis
the top 16 threw more than 3400, with Zambrano having 3689
the top 10 in the playoffs were:
1 Beckett
2 Dice K
3 Schilling
4 CC
5 J.Francis
6 J.Westbrook
7 Carmona
8 D.Davis
10 L.Hernandez
obviously my previous list was just for the regualar season, so we'll wait and see the total pitches tomorrow. I know for sure Beckett went over 3400.
sorry 6 was Ubaldo Jimenez, slide 6-8 down 1 slot
Thanks Dan, and yes Dierkes included playoffs in his list.
"Anywhere from 3 to 12 of these 19 will be significantly injured in 2009."
The low end of this estimation, 3 of 19, isn't probably that far off from being average for all pitchers in general, not just ones with high pitch counts from the previous season.
The other thing to consider, and in my opinion the much more critical factor, is a pitcher's historical durability, as well as recent durability. CC has always been a fairly healthy guy, and is therefore a much lower risk that a guy who's been historically injured.
And while AJ has historically had issues, he was healthy in 08, which to me takes precedence over high pitch counts.
I think much of these numbers and analysis are simply small sample size. When you're talking about a group of 15-20 pitchers, any sort of statistical analysis is subject to an incredibly large margin of error, as well as signficant stastical aberration.
Point being, that even if 20% of all pitchers who threw 3400 pitches in 07 got injured in 08, it could be nothing more than a bit of coincidence and bad luck. When dealing with such a small group, it's hard to determine the real cause-effect relationship here.
I mean, I could make up a study that examines all pitchers who drink over 3 cups of coffee per day. If there are only 20 such pitchers, and they just happened to stay extra healthy in 2008, would I then be able to make the legitimate claim that pitchers who drink more than 3 cups of coffee per day are more likely to stay healthy in 2009? Of course not.
So while throwing a significant number of innings/pitches in the previous season may have some correlation, there needs to be a lot more study done on this to make accurate predictions based on it - if predictions can even be made based on such evidence. There are far too many factors that go into a pitcher's health (historical track record, age, etc) to draw conclusions based on one sigle thing like workload in the previous year.
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