ShysterBall had a post yesterday about the science of pitch counts, citing an article that suggested that teams should look a little more closely at how their pitchers tire during the game.  Sometimes a simple pitch count doesn’t tell the whole story.

However, the most interesting part of the post to me was a section that highlighted a couple of guys and their ridiculous pitch counts.  First was Washington’s Tom Cheney, who in 1962 threw a complete game…in 16 innings.  It took 228 pitches to get the job done.  That would make CC Sabathia blush.

The second example was Nolan Ryan, which was not surprising.  Ryan would routinely flirt with 200 pitches in a game.  He’d walk a lot of guys, strikeout others, and rack up huge pitch counts.

These kind of things are absolutely unheard of these days, in fact last year we all complained about how the Brewers were abusing CC by making him go for 120 pitches in a game.  Then you have guys like Harden who are almost sure injury cases when they pitch over 100 in consecutive starts.

Of course the change in the culture has its pros and cons.  It must have been awesome to watch a guy like Ryan simply never give in and reach back for a heater at 170 pitches.  On the other hand, guys like Harden wouldn’t exist in the majors.  The kid is a strikeout machine and after being pushed like that, he’d be out of the league within a couple years back then (or now if Dusty was in charge).

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Tags: Badassery, MLB, Nolan Ryan, Pitch Counts, Rich Harden