pitcher changes

[carolinablue]

Just wondering what you guys think of the LL pitch count rule. I know it's been around for about three years now. I haven't done a lot of small diamond games this season but a couple of weeks ago I worked three LL major games. It seemed like every other inning ( in the middle of the inning, and a lot of times in the middle of an at bat ) the coaches were changing pitchers. The games really didn't seem to have much rythm to them because of this and it took forever. I did a lot of major games last season and didn't encounter this. Has anyone else noticed this.

[LMSANS]

The only LL I do is JR and SR. While I understand the intent of the rule, I'm glad we don't have to get involved.

Now there are usually 4 - 5 pitchers a game for each team. I get a kick out of the 2 coaches at the end of each half..."I got 19" "I got 23" "OK 19 it is"

They must really focus on this at the coaches meeting, cause every one of them is aware of it.

[Mr Umpire]

As an umpire, I hate it. It delays the game for no reason. But, coaches have been doing this for years even without the count. A new pitcher every inning for some teams. No pitcher ever gets a good feel for the mound and adjust while settling in.

As for the intent, I am for it. Some coaches will win 1 single game at all costs. Even if it means to win a 12 yr old game and ruin the 12 yr old for the rest of his life. There are so many times I want to tell the coach to remove the pitcher when he is obviously hurting a little bit. But, they let it escalate to the point of the kid crying b/c he is in so much pain.

[catoblue]

Having coached LL for 14 years, I DISAGREE with the way the new pitching rules are set up.

This year, it's a little better with the Option 1 or Option 2 rules, but still stinks for coaches, players, and umpires. Innings take way longer than they should and there is never any rythm established. I've had kids that took 30 pitches to get themselves where they were hitting their spots. With the new rules, that's when they only have 10 pitches left if you want to pitch them again that week.

Having a maximum number of pitches a kid can throw in a game is a good thing. Associating pitch count to days rest, also a good thing. The numbers they used, dumb.

Pitching changes happen mid-inning all the time now because the magic number is 40. In Option 1, 40 or less means the "and a game" part of the days rest isn't in-play. Option 2, 40 or less means only 2 calendar days rest instead of 3. With 2 or 3 games/week, and a limited number of kids that can put the ball through the strike zone, coaches can't afford to lose any of the kids that really ARE pitchers for a whole game. Hence, when they hit 40, there is a pitching change, be it middle of the inning or even middle of an at-bat. Once the coaches have used up their "real pitchers", then the walk-fest starts. Net result is a game the ends due to darkness, or in our league's case, hitting the 2 hour time limit - and rarely in the 6th inning.

[someoneinca]

I love the intent of the rule but otherwise hate it. Before the pitch count rule, coaches would have kids throwing 80-100+ pitches in the LLWS. This was ridiculous.

I hate that minor league teams now have to have 5+ kids that can put the ball in the strike zone. It's very hard to find a couple kids that can do it, but now you have to have a bunch of them. Before the pitch count rule you could have 2 or 3 pitchers per team and be fine. Now almost half of your team needs to have pitching skills.

[kylejt]

"Before the pitch count rule you could have 2 or 3 pitchers per team and be fine. Now almost half of your team needs to have pitching skills."

And how is teaching kids to pitch, at ages 8,9,10, a bad thing? Good teachers (that's what coaches are supposed to be) should embrace this rule.

Some coaches hate it because they can't ride 2 or 3 pitchers for the season. Good baseball teachers can develop more pitchers, and will do better over the course of the season. In the long run, it will give more kids an opportunity to pitch, and in a LL sense, that's a good thing.

If you're just an umpire, it will make games go longer, and it will dilute the quality of strike-throwers. So you may not care for it IF that's your only perspective. And, if you're not a good baseball teacher, this rule is probably not to your liking either.

Me, I take a bigger view of things, and see it as a benefit to the kids.

I managed 13-14 PONY team a few years back, where half the kids never got a chance to pitch in LL. Never. How stupid it that? I taught every one of them to deal for me.

[someoneinca]

It's not a bad thing to have a lot of pitchers. My league is just really small and I find that that makes it that much harder for the coaches to have enough pitching. I have also noticed that I do not see nearly as many strikes and I do not get 6 innings in any more.

For the record, I am not a coach. Just an umpire.

And I definitely see the rule as a benefit and support it. I just don't like the number of skilled pitchers teams are now required to have.

[catoblue]

"Before the pitch count rule you could have 2 or 3 pitchers per team and be fine. Now almost half of your team needs to have pitching skills."

And how is teaching kids to pitch, at ages 8,9,10, a bad thing? Good teachers (that's what coaches are supposed to be) should embrace this rule.

Some coaches hate it because they can't ride 2 or 3 pitchers for the season. Good baseball teachers can develop more pitchers, and will do better over the course of the season. In the long run, it will give more kids an opportunity to pitch, and in a LL sense, that's a good thing.

If you're just an umpire, it will make games go longer, and it will dilute the quality of strike-throwers. So you may not care for it IF that's your only perspective. And, if you're not a good baseball teacher, this rule is probably not to your liking either.

Me, I take a bigger view of things, and see it as a benefit to the kids.

I managed 13-14 PONY team a few years back, where half the kids never got a chance to pitch in LL. Never. How stupid it that? I taught every one of them to deal for me.

Kyle... It's all well and good in theory to want to have everybody get a chance to pitch, and I would LOVE it if I could have a roster full of kids that could get a pitch across the plate. In fact, I've never met a coach that wouldn't love to have their roster full of pitchers.

As for riding 2 or 3 kids through the season - Any coach with a clue knows that is a stupid approach. Any smart coach knows that More pitchers is ALWAYS a good thing.

We all know that everybody wants to be the pitcher, just as in football, everybody wants to be the quarterback. The harsh reality is that NOT everybody has the aptitude or ability to play those positions. I've taught close to 120 kids to pitch at an acceptable level over the last 14 years. Based on that, I'd rate myself as a reasonably good teaching coach. Guess what, the current rule is not to my liking either.

Every year, the whole team starts out working on pitching. In a typical year, with a typical 12 or 13 player roster, by the time the first game rolls around, it is clear that there will be 1 or 2 GOOD pitchers, 3 or 4 OK pitchers, another 1 or 2 MARGINAL pitchers, and the rest, have no business on the mound. That means a team will typically have somewhere between 5 and 8 kids with the ability to play F1. That's the reality of pitcher development at the LL level, and has nothing to do with how well a coach can "teach".

The kids that don't pitch, more often than not, have skills that are well suited for other positions. There's the kid that can scoop the nastiest throw out of the dirt at first, the little speedster with the good glove that can get a jump and track down anything hit to his part of the outfield, the kid that gobbles up grounders at short... the list goes on and on. Me - I was always a catcher, never had an aptitude for pitching and never threw a pitch until my first time throwing BP for my LL kids (a traumatic experience for all of us!).

Baseball is supposed to be FUN. Sitting through a walk-fest because kids that have no business pitching are on the mound due to the current pitch-count rule, makes it NOT FUN for players, coaches, umpires, and anybody watching the game.

I'm of the "winning isn't everything" mindset when it comes to youth sports. As a coach, teamwork, sportsmanship, learning. and giving 100% effort are my priorities for my team. If we win, that's a bonus. That's how I've always coached my kids. However, LL IS a competitive sport. Putting in pitchers that shouldn't be pitching, sabotages everything I try to impress on the kids. How? The kids get bored watching repeated BoB's. They get down on themselves because instead of losing and feeling good that they were at least somewhat competitive, they get slaughtered by a team that doesn't even bother swinging their bats. How much teamwork, sportsmanship and effort goes into standing in the field and watching the parade of runners being walked around the bases?

I haven't even touched on safety concerns where every 3rd batter is HBP because kids just can't throw pitches.

Now, do I think that LL needs to protect kid's arms by requiring days of rest based on pitch count? ABSOLUTELY!!!! Do I think they've got it right with the numbers they're using right now? Absolutely not! (but they're not too far from where they should be)

Essentially, they went overboard with the changes. Days rest is all that should be specified, using the same days rest as the old rule, only based on an average of 20 pitches/inning. The "and a game" (Option 1) or added "extra day" (Option 2) in the 2009 rules are where the issues stem from.

Based on my experience, I'd estimate that the average number of pitches/inning is in the neighborhood of 20 (seems to be corroborated by LL's counts). Using the old rule, based on innings pitched converted to pitch count, would work out as follows:

1-20 pitches, 0 days rest; (Same as current rule)

21 - 40, 1 days rest; (Same as current rule)

41 -60, 2 days; (Different, in that "and a game" has been removed)

61 - 85, 3 days rest (Different, in that "and a game" has been removed)

Not too far off from the old rule or the new rule. A balance between the two that should allow games to build up some rhythm and keep it fun for all involved, while at the same time, protecting kids from the rat-coaches that would otherwise run a kid into the ground all season long.

[carolinablue]

There seems to be, at least in our league, a basic difference in philosophy between the minor/major coaches and the jr/sr coaches and I guess in part due to the age and ability of the kids. The jr/sr coaches seem to be more willing to allow a kid who is pitching well to remain in the game until he has exhausted all of his pitches. The younger lvel coaches are changing pitchers when the hit the 0 days rest point automatically regardless of game circumstances ect... I haven't seen the respective schedules of the divisions and frequency of games could be the reason.

That being said, I don't think the issue is the total pitches allowed but rather the days rest requirements that are the issue. I think LL could look at this and maybe make some revisions that could solve the problem somewhat and still keep the integrity of the rule.

As a side note, when I coached, If I had a kid dealing on the mound there was no way he was coming out unless his arm started hurting or we were up big. The way it is now, the good pitchers seem to rarely get the satisfaction of pitching a complete game gem.

[LMSANS]

Around here, at the LL-jr/sr level, the pitchers are pitching for their school teams and are not allowed to pitch for LL or travel teams until late May. This is mostly respected by the daddy coaches in LL.

Oh, and I never was interested in pitching or quarterbacking. As a catcher I was the on-the-field manager of my teams from when I was 12. The pitcher worked for me.

I couldn't throw a football very far and knew it.

[catoblue]

Oh, and I never was interested in pitching or quarterbacking. As a catcher I was the on-the-field manager of my teams from when I was 12. The pitcher worked for me.

I couldn't throw a football very far and knew it.

We must both be "oddballs". I loved being behind the dish and had no desire to pitch - likewise, I had a lot more fun as a linebacker than I ever would have had as a QB

As a LL coach, however, it's very few and far-between that I have more than one kid on the team that doesn't constantly bug me with "Coach, can I pitch?".

Now to carolinablue's point - there absolutely is a different philosophy when talking Majors/Minors vs. Jr/Sr.

In large, that comes from skill level. In Majors/Minors, the kids are trying to simply hit the strike zone. In Jr/Sr, they're placing pitches. Also, kids that stick around to play Jr/Sr league are all really into baseball, whereas about 1/4 of the kids in the lower divisions not athletic at all and are there because mom & dad made them play or because their friends are playing - not because they're "into" it. Not surprisingly, that correlates pretty closely to the percentage of kids that have no business playing F1.

By the time kids get to Jr/Sr league, probably 90% of them can hit the strike zone with some consistency, and probably 50% of those kids can place their pitches. This makes it a lot easier to run a starter to his full pitch count, because most teams have 3 or 4 kids that can work in a rotation, and another 4 or 5 that can do some relief work. With Majors/Minors, a Lucky coach will have 3 kids that can consistently throw strikes, with 1 or two that are starting to place pitches or change speeds. The other kids that pitch often struggle, but the experience helps them improve over the season. Where the problem with the rule comes into play, especially in a small league like ours, is there just aren't enough kids to field a decent pitcher every game unless they are pulled at 40 pitches.

This is especially true for the first half of the season. During the second half, as the weaker pitchers improve, we can get away with running one kid his full count each game - in a kind of rotation.

The "and a game" (Option1) and the "extra day" (Option 2) part of the rule is the real killer.

Option 1 sitch: Kid pitches Monday night, throws 50 pitches and is inelligible to pitch the next game on Saturday!

Option 2 sitch: Game Wednesday, kid throws 50 pitches, next game on Saturday and the kid still can't pitch. Two days is plenty of rest for only 50 pitches. They throw that many 3 times/week in practice. They throw the ball that many times when the kids are playing catch to warm up before the game!!!

I think that in typical Williamsport fashion, LL over-reacted to somebody complaining about a coach running a kid into the ground. Yes, they needed to make a change to prevent that from happening any more, but they over-did it. Simply changing from innings pitched to pitch count was all the change that was needed. Going by innings, a kid could throw 200 pitches in a game on a bad day (with a jerk for a coach). Limits based on the number of pitches is definitely the better way to go. The problem I have is that they went too far by extending the rules with regard to required rest. For the most part, the days rest based on innings worked well for years (yes there were exceptions). Translating 1 inning to 20 pitches is all they needed to do to protect kids arms and provide incentive to develop more pitchers.

[LMSANS]

My 80 year-old father (a good ball player in his day) often complains about the major league pitch counts. He likes to bring up things like what would have happened to Bob Gibson or Sandy Koufax if they were limited in their pitch count? Of course, I also wonder how many times they threw 100 pitches in a 9 inning game?

Sorry for the distraction.:WTF

Edited May 1, 2009 by LMSANS
grammar

[mstaylor]

My league was part of the pilot program so I have been dealing with it since the inception. This was not a kneejerk reaction to something that happend on TV. LL studied it with help from sports Drs association. They then had a two year pilot program in the Eastern Region.

They have changed the rules just about every year since trying to find a good balance. In the pilot, once you reached max pitches you had to have 4 days rest. When it came into system wide use that was cut to three days. The game was added the next year and this year it is an option year.

Have they found the perfect solution, probably not, but I don't think they are that far off. The problem is coaches need to figure out how to manipulate the rules without out coaching themselves. They get so hung up on keeping all their pitchers for every game they forget how to coach the game. Many times they would be better off letting a kid go to his max and short relieve the rest of his players.

[carolinablue]

When I coached, I always tried to win the game I was in and worried about next game, next game. Didn't always work out, but most of the time it did.

[catoblue]

My league was part of the pilot program so I have been dealing with it since the inception. This was not a kneejerk reaction to something that happend on TV. LL studied it with help from sports Drs association. They then had a two year pilot program in the Eastern Region.

They have changed the rules just about every year since trying to find a good balance. In the pilot, once you reached max pitches you had to have 4 days rest. When it came into system wide use that was cut to three days. The game was added the next year and this year it is an option year.

Have they found the perfect solution, probably not, but I don't think they are that far off. The problem is coaches need to figure out how to manipulate the rules without out coaching themselves. They get so hung up on keeping all their pitchers for every game they forget how to coach the game. Many times they would be better off letting a kid go to his max and short relieve the rest of his players.

We were in on the pilot too - and thought it stunk then just like we do now.

As a small, rural league, we just don't have the numbers of kids that yield a decent number of pitchers.

We start letting a kid go his max from about midway through the season-on. Waiting until the "short relievers" have developed enough so that we aren't faced with a walk-a-thon. If we were to follow that model in the first half of the season, we'd be looking at football scores, or even worse basketball scores!!! By keeping everybody available during the first half of the season, we prevent that scenario, but slow the game down with lots of pitching changes.

These kids can be so hot & cold early in the season, so you work through all your pitchers to find the ones who are hot that day. You don't want to pull them too soon, as they may suddenly heat up, but you don't want to go past 40 because you don't know who will be hot or cold next game.

[mstaylor]

I never saw a problem with it. I umpired and spectated through all the permeatations and I just didn't see a big difference. LL has always had teams with pitching and teams without it, whether innings or pitch count it's all the same.

Under the old inning system you could throw 6 innings a week but only use a max three twelves. I think it was only a total of twelve innings among them, I would need to pull an old book to verify.

Under the pitch count system, you can pitch every kid on your team, twelve or not. How long and how many pitchers is up to the manager. This is why you get the big bucks. It is also up to the league to decide which option to use.

How many pitchers do you normally see in a game?

[catoblue]

I never saw a problem with it. I umpired and spectated through all the permeatations and I just didn't see a big difference. LL has always had teams with pitching and teams without it, whether innings or pitch count it's all the same.

Under the old inning system you could throw 6 innings a week but only use a max three twelves. I think it was only a total of twelve innings among them, I would need to pull an old book to verify.

Under the pitch count system, you can pitch every kid on your team, twelve or not. How long and how many pitchers is up to the manager. This is why you get the big bucks. It is also up to the league to decide which option to use.

How many pitchers do you normally see in a game?

Old rule was 6 innings in s "calendar week", so Saturday between that Saturday game and the Monday game, the clock reset (bad rule for protecting arms).

Switching to pitch count makes all the sense in the world to me - the changes to days rest is the part that doesn't.

Going with pitches thrown = set number of days rest is the way it should be to protect kids from rat coaches that run them into the ground. No argument at all from me there. I just think they took the days rest too far.

Drop the words "and a game" from option 1 and you've got a good rule that protects kids arms without hurting the game.

Option 1

0-20 no days rest <- works for me

21-40 1 day rest <- still works for me

41-60 2 days and a game rest <- remove the "and a game" and works for me

61-limit-by-age 3 days and a game rest <remove the "and a game" and works for me.

Option 2

0-20 no days rest <-still works for me

21-40 2 days rest <- huh? Why do we jump from none to 2? In option 1, 1 day is plenty

41-60 3 days rest <- again huh? why the extra day? In option 1, with Tuesday/Thursday games, the kid can pitch again on Friday that says to me me that 2 days rest is sufficient for that many pitches.

60-limit-by-age 4 days rest < again, huh? with option 1, a team with M/W/F games, can pitch a kid his full count on Monday and he'll still be eligible to go again on Friday, so that says to me that 3 days rest is sufficient.

So a league picks one or the other, and that is where the problems start. Option 1, the kid has to sit a game for anything over 40 pitches, regardless of how many days rest he gets. We've had Monday/Saturday games where a kid throws 50 pitches and would have 4 full days off, but still couldn't pitch Saturday because of not meeting the "and a game" criteria.

With the added days rest in Option 2, leagues are more likely to go with option 1 because nobody wants to lose a pitcher for 2 days when they only threw 20+ pitches, or 3 days when they throw 40+.