×

COLUMN: New pitch-count rule has right intention, but raises questions

Having good or even just competent pitching is essential in baseball.

A team has to stick to its rotation if it wants to progress smoothly through the season. If one pitcher has a hiccup, other guys have to step in to pick up the slack, which can complicate the rotation.

Sometimes coaches keep pitchers in for a little longer than they should in order to keep an edge against an opponent, but this can come at the cost of said pitchers’ health. Because pitching requires an unnatural motion of the arm, serious damage can occur without proper precautions.

With the never-ending debate about pitch count and how many is too many, the MSHSL has established a pitch-count rule that limits the amount of pitches a player can throw per game, effective this season. This new rule mandates that players who throw a certain amount of pitches are required a designated amount of rest before they can pitch again.

Throwing anywhere from 31 to 50 pitches requires one full day of rest beginning the day after the outing, while 51 to 75 requires two full days of rest and 76 to 105 requires three. If a player faces a batter before reaching that 105-pitch threshhold, he is allowed to finish the batter if his pitch count exceeds that number but must come out immediately afterward.

“Definitely, [it’s safer] without a doubt,” veteran Sleepy Eye St. Mary’s coach Bruce Woitas said. “There’s been a lot of coaches who didn’t abuse kids to begin with in a sense, but there’s probably some coaches who’ve been leaving the kids out too long — especially early in the year. But this will be a good rule, it’ll be interesting to see how things go.”

Right off the bat (no pun intended), I can tell this rule is going to be more effective in protecting the players’ arms than the previous inning-dictated mandate. Woitas, who has served numerous positions within the Minnesota State High School Baseball Coaches Association, said the association and the MSHSL were already talking about implementing a rule like this for some time now.

But a big question that arises, however, is how much are teams really going to stick to keeping a precise pitch count throughout the entire season?

I keep pitch count whenever I cover baseball games and aside from a few momentary daydreams or bouts of stunning déjà vu, I always manage to keep track of every pitch with no problem whatsoever.

The home team already keeps an official book for every game, but there is no guarantee that every team has already been keeping track of pitch count.

Sure, it is not difficult to start keeping track of pitch count. But say a student manager accidentally messes up while keeping book, which leads to a disagreement in between innings with the other bookkeeper and leads to the game slowing down. How will this affect the pace of the game?

Meetings between bookkeepers are required under the new rule with the home book serving as the ultimate decider in case any disagreement arises. Even though teams have not yet begun playing, there is already talk that this will drastically slow games down.

However, Woitas said this will likely not be the case.

“I foresee it will be very quick,” Woitas said. “It will be, ‘Hey, we had this number of pitches,’ and if there’s a discrepency, the high school league established that whoever’s the home team, we’d have to go by their count. Umpires have nothing to do with it. I really don’t see it slowing down the game at all.”

There is a dishonesty factor that needs to be discussed. Sometimes assistant coaches keep book for games, so what if he or the head coach somehow manipulates the book or fails to report the correct number of pitches in order to keep a player on the mound longer?

Of course there are checks in place to ensure that these types of things do not happen and the penalties are severe — a team must forfeit the game on a first offense and the head coach is suspended along with another forfeit in subsequent violations.

But if a team is running low on pitching and is facing an important conference game, how will this new regulation affect its personnel?

“There are some concerns because small schools sometimes don’t have enough kids that can throw,” Woitas said. “There are some concerns from the small schools that they might have to play less games versus the 20 games that you can play.”

Luckily, the maximum number of permitted pitches within the new pitch-count rule is expanded to 115 for section and state games. This will give teams a little more breathing room during crunch time, which should hopefully quash most temptations of fudging the pitch count on the official book.

Another thing I fear is the amount of violations that arise from honest mistakes. As I said, sometimes keeping pitch count can come with a margin for error and in the event that a bookkeeper messes up with no intention of cheating, consequences could possibly still be administered.

I hope there is a little leeway for honest mistakes and the required meetings between half-innings may reduce them entirely.

The new pitch-count rule is a step in the right direction and I like its intent in protecting the players. However, concerns arise as with any type of big change that takes place. We will have to wait and see if these concerns turn into problems and, if they do, how the powers that be will work toward solving them.

Newsletter

Today's breaking news and more in your inbox

I'm interested in (please check all that apply)
Are you a paying subscriber to the newspaper?
   

Starting at $4.38/week.

Subscribe Today