I was at the game Tim pitched in Philly. I watched him warm up and he definetly took more then 15 pitches.

I think I'm less worried about Lincecum is because of his routine that has suited him well through high school and college, and his dad seems to know what he's doing. Lincecum's been used to a heavy pitching load in prior years and hasn't sustained major injuries (as far as I know of).

I'm also of the opinion that the whole 100-pitch mark should be the time at which you automatically look to pull your pitcher at an opportune time. I agree they shouldn't go too far past 100, but I think it's more important to see how the kid is holding up at that point in the game than go with an arbitrary number of pitches.

This SI piece seems pretty knee-jerk. Why is pitching 200+ innings bad if the pitching count is low? Tiny Tim has been pitching so many innings because of his 1.03 WHIP, meaning he doesn't face many batters.

I think the Giants have actually shown considerable restraint. Anyone who has followed Tim knows he's had strictly enforced pitch counts since he got in the system, including shutting him down early in the minors last season. Apparently that didn't fit into Verducci's story line.

Whoops, meant to say I'm of the opinion that the arbitrary pitch count limitation is silly.

I don't think Verducci spent much time looking at the game logs of Lincecum's starts. He' usually a thorough reporter, which leads me to believe this was a rush job to counter (or ride the wave of) the hype of the NYT story.

It's such a different world these days in terms of pitch counts that you can't really compare. At first glance, BP's "pitcher abuse points" rankings make Bochy look like a particularly sadistic Dusty Baker.

Average "pitcher abuse points" per start in MLB:

2. Zito
7. Morris
9. Ortiz
11. Lowry
13. Cain
45. Lincecum

If these numbers mean anything, shouldn't we be more worried about Cain, who is a shade younger than Lincecum?

Don't worry, the numbers don't mean anything. If you take Morris' average total, it would have only ranked 30th among starters with 10 or more starts in 2002, and 65th in 1997. No pitchers have thrown 130 pitches in a game this season, but 21 different pitchers did in 2002, and 40 different pitchers did in 1997.

The Billy Martin/Dusty Baker approach has been eliminated from the game. This is a good thing, but it's no reason to get excited about 113 pitches in seven innings.

>shouldn't we be more worried about Cain

to be honest, I AM a little worried about Cain. Apparently his velocity was down in his start at Shea. Let's see what happens tonight. If he continues to look tired, it's time to skip his turn in the rotation.

Actually, I consider Verducci one of the worst and don't read him anymore. When I was reading him, he was out front in the "lynch Bonds" march and never missed an opportunity to diss Barry. I found his writing intellectually dishonest, slanted, and designed only to promote his own career.

Lincecum's warm-up routine has been discussed in the media, he still wants to stick to his 15 pitch routine, but the Giants has been pushing him to throw more pitches to warm up, so anyone who views him since he came up will probably see him throw more than 15 pitches.

Also, Verducci cannot just take his college ball innings and compare it to his pro ball innings. Lincecum regularly pitched way above 100 pitches while in college, his PAP was horrendous according to stats I've seen before, in the hundreds of thousands while most pitchers were in the tens of thousands or less.

Boyd's World reported for Lincecum:

* in 2005, he had 3 games 133+ pitches, 6 games 121-132; 430,068 PAP; 16 games started for 104.1 IP. One game 165 pitches! http://www.boydsworld.com/breadcrumbs/2005_ncaa_pap.html

* in 2006, he had 2 games 133+ pitches, 7 games 121-132; 321,533 PAP; 22 games, 17 starts, 125.1 IP. http://www.boydsworld.com/breadcrumbs/2006_ncaa_pap.html

Seems like he threw a lot in relief in 2006 to get so many games and yet lower PAP.

Wow, just found out that the 165 pitch game ALONE accounted for 274,625 PAP, so that could explain the difference. 133 pitches would account for 35,937. 121 pitches, 9,261.

Based on the 120+ game counts, Lincecum threw at least 250-300 extra pitches just for those games alone. Lets call the 3 extra games, for another 20 IP. Given that he threw over 120 pitches in over half his starts, I think it's safe to say he threw between 100 and 120 pitches in the other starts. That's 7-8 starts for another approximately 100 pitches, or another game, another 7 IP. That's roughly 27 IP in additional innings pitched, based on pitch count relative to the 100 pitch target for a start in the majors. So his 157 IP was more like 184 IP, if you convert all the extra pitches he threw in college relative to a "regular" MLB starter.

210 is still much higher than that, but now only 26 IP more. And I was being conservative there, I could have counted more for the games that he didn't throw over 120 pitches in it, he was probably closer to 120 than he was to 100 pitches for the other games. Plus the innings he pitched in relief, he probably threw more pitches there per inning than an MLB reliever would.

It's like I've been saying, I totally understand why people have been saying this, but the more important thing to me is that he says that he is so painfree after the game that he doesn't need to ice his arm at all. If he is painfree, how harmful can a high pitch count be to him?

I'm worried about Cain as well, he did have elbow arm problems his first year as a pro, though nothing since that I know of, so I'm hoping that he's 22 and took in a little too much nightlife in NY that night and was out of sorts for that game.

Oh, and I don't care much for Verducci's writing either, particularly since he suffers from SI's institutional hatred of Bonds, it's like they all got chipped with a "Must... Hate... Bonds" microchip that influences all their writing.

Plus, does SI matter anymore, besides from their swimsuit issue, do anyone really read their articles anymore?

Nice analysis ogc.

The other point I'd like to add is that Tim's delivery is so unorthodox that the "analysts" are probably way off in their assessments. Every pitcher has different mechanics that take a different toll on their different bodies. So following the same rule for different pitchers is silly.

Should we be careful with Tim - sure. But as of right now I see nothing that concerns me. The simple fact that Tim doesn't ice his arm suggests that he isn't putting very much stress on it. If anything, I would be more worried about his right oblique than is right arm.

I get sick when some uninformed douchebag starts talking about MY phenom. Especially when you can tell that they haven't done adequite research. And then he suggests that Tim has a "bored" look about him? How annoying. From what I can tell, Tim has confidence....a presence about him that suggests he is ahead of his time. Maybe he was bored in the interview, bored with Verducci and his garbage journalism.

Yeah, BawLa, maybe Timmy is getting some early insight into why Bonds disdains the media

this sucks:

Bonds held out of lineup with shin splints

PHOENIX (AP) - Barry Bonds was held out of tonight's San
Francisco Giants' starting lineup for the series opener against
Arizona because of shin splints that have been bothering the
slugger. Bonds' knees are aching, too.
The Giants don't expect their cleanup hitter will go on the
disabled list. That would disrupt his pursuit of Hank Aaron's home
run record of 755. Bonds is ten from breaking Hammerin' Hank's
mark.
Giants manager Bruce Bochy (BOH'-chee) says the slugger's knees
are "really sore."
Bonds has one home run in his last 61 at-bats dating to May
tenth. He has 12 homers.

(Copyright 2007 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)

AP-NY-06-05-07 2030EDT

Good point BawLa. Well, Timmy is probably bored by how many times reporters ask him about his unorthodox delivery, about his small stature, about "yeah, ha ha, I look like a batboy, gee, I've never heard that one before...", about his dad scuplting his delivery, about his long tosses, about his backflip, about his Gollum impersonation voice, etc...

There have been a number of interesting studies on this topic. I remember reading a great article that theorized that the older a pitcher is when he becomes a workhorse, the longer he will be able to pitch effectively. Nolan Ryan was the poster child, he never threw more than 152 innings until he was 25.5, and we all know how that worked out. Roger Clemens was 24 when he first broke the 200 inning barrier, although I suspect he has sought pharmaceutical assistance to defy the ravages of time. Maddux threw 200+ at age 22 and I think most anyone would take his career. Tom Glavine was 24 when he crossed the 200 IP barrier.

Cain concerns me. 190 innings at age 21 was probably not the wisest move, particularly given the pitch counts that kid runs up. It wouldn't surprise me in the least if Cain has a dead arm. Lincecum seems to be a rare bird, but I think the Giants are playing with fire if they run him out there for more than 200 IP this season.

Although Cain is being lit up right now, at least Jon Miller noted that one of his pitches was 95 MPH.

Unscientific observation, but I got the book Graphical Pitcher and it lists pitches thrown by year, and I noticed that pitchers who go over 3500 pitches or so in a season tend to have a bad year either the next year or the year after that. Like I noted, no hard data, but I was flipping through the book and one time I decided to see when pitchers seem to tank, according to the metrics they use to judge pitcher's performances.

Unscientific observation, but I got the book Graphical Pitcher and it lists pitches thrown by year, and I noticed that pitchers who go over 3500 pitches or so in a season tend to have a bad year either the next year or the year after that. Like I noted, no hard data, but I was flipping through the book and one time I decided to see when pitchers seem to tank, according to the metrics they use to judge pitcher's performances.

Cain was just short of that, around 3300 pitches. Maybe the next time I have time, I will look over that again the same way for young pitchers, but there's not many like Cain.

Is it just me or is CAIN becoming PAINful to watch?

And this umpire is just KILLING me!

I loved Friday Night Lights (like everyone else, it seems), but Bissinger irks me because in his baseball reporting he thinks in the style of a pre-McCarthy political reporter: If a person in a position of authority makes an assertion, Bissinger's default position is to believe it's unassailable. That's what led to the unreadable Three Nights in August, and it's painfully on display in his interview with Boog Schiambi about the Wood piece.

Will Carroll comments
Clay Davenport follows up

That interview was bizarre. Boog , whom I've never heard before, got instantly testy. When Buzz asked him "how many innings did Mark Prior throw in the minors," Boog took it as an affront -- how dare you start quizzing me on my show! Then there was weird behind-the-scenes stuff about one of Boog's radio colleagues, which I didn't understand, then Boog hung up on Buzz. Whatever you may think of the quality of Bissinger's work , that was a ridiculous interview by Boog.

hey Mike, I was at the bullpen watching Tim warm up before the game in Philly and I noticed the same thing. I didn't count the pitches, but I'd say it was around 30. However, I did notice that he seemed pretty disinterested about half way through like he was done in his mind. The other thing I found interesting was that he warmed up with some long-toss (about 15 throws) with Benjie out in the OF before they went to the bullpen.

I think you're right, David, listening to that interview I was shocked at Bissinger's apparent utter disdain for any kind of statistical research. I think Sciambi (who's the Braves play-by-play guy on FSN, by the way) might've been wrong for just hanging up on him like that (although I have no idea who he was calling a "the worst scumbucket ever", and if it was an employee on the station, maybe he had to), but he was right to criticize Bissinger, who didn't appear to have one fact to back up his information. I would think a pulitzer prize winner could at least spend some time on The Baseball Cube before just assuming whatever La Russa or Riggleman's feelings and recollections were 100% accurate.