PAP is a blunt tool. That doesn’t mean it’s useless—it’s much better than having no tool at all. Still, a scalpel is going to be better than a sharp stone when you’re performing surgery, even if the sharp stone is better than your bare hands.

There is much more stress on the pitcher that throws 115 pitches over 6 innings than the guy that throws that many over a complete game.

see novaoakland below. It suggests that the 100 pitch mark is more lore than fact and that PAP is indeed a blunt tool no better than pitches per inning in predicting injuries.

Ask Doug Drabek about Jim Leyland and how he rides young pitcher until they lose it entirely. Jim Leyland, Tony LaRussa, Dusty Baker all seem to have no iota of sense about dealing with young pitchers. Bobby Cox got it, but they never have seemed to be able to.

I’d say he’s showing the natural progression of a pitcher that threw over 1000 innings in a 5 year span. There are miles on the arm, no doubt but still durable and extremely effective.

Only in a stathead world would a guy with atleast 14 wins in the last 5 years be considered severely declining. I would suggest you look back in modern history for the number of guys that have accomplished that. He will have 100 career wins before he turns 28.

Would YOU want to play a game if you and your family are trying to figure out where to live for the next few weeks?? Did YOU watch that game?

Since it’s obvious you do not believe me, nor do you see as many Cubs games as I do. Research has been done, and the slot has been changed.

http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/article/carlos-zambranos-lower-arm-slot-cause-for-concern/

http://fantasybaseballstrategy.blogspot.com/2008/09/carlos-zambrano-injury-explanation.html

By Will Carroll from BP:

Carlos Zambrano (10 DXL)
The Big Z isn’t feeling good, and even Lou Piniella, just days after insisting that Zambrano was fine, is admitting that something is wrong. After five innings of bad baseball, the Cubs are sending Zambrano to see the team orthopedist and will likely be shutting him down. This can be hard to manage at this time of year; if Zambrano is shut down for two weeks, he’ll have to come back ready to go in order to get in a couple of starts before the playoffs. Would the Cubs be willing to put Zambrano out there in the Division Series without at least one good regular season start? Zambrano is clearly the ace of this staff, so this isn’t exactly an Aaron Cook situation. The most worrisome aspects of Zambrano’s start were the arm angle and the quick drop in velocity. By the third inning, he was down from 93 to 90, and by the fourth and fifth he was exerting more effort just to stay in the 90 range. The extra time off might have made him stronger in the early going, but it didn’t last time out. The Cubs are going to have to make some some tough decisions soon, but they’ll be waiting for word from the doctors first. I don’t anticipate good news, and there is late word that Zambrano refused to have an MRI Wednesday, perhaps anticipating a visit elsewhere.

http://www.baseballprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=8030

The most worrisome aspects of Zambrano’s start were the arm angle and the quick drop in velocity. By the third inning, he was down from 93 to 90, and by the fourth and fifth he was exerting more effort just to stay in the 90 range. The extra time off might have made him stronger in the early going, but it didn’t last time out. The Cubs are going to have to make some some tough decisions soon, but they’ll be waiting for word from the doctors first. Zambrano refused to have an MRI on Wednesday and was a no-show for his appointment, but on Thursday he did receive another cortisone shot and had scheduled tests done that apparently showed he’s having another bout of rotator cuff tendonitis. Given his results since last time, I’m not sure that this is going to be comforting news to Cubs fans, especially if he comes back next week with his lower arm slot.

http://www.baseballprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=8033

Mike (Chicago): With last year’s shoulder trouble, and all the innings piled upon it since 2002, is Carlos Zambrano as bright a red as any other pitcher?

Will Carroll: Somewhere past red. Before the Rule 5, they were showing a highlight reel of the 08 season and when Zambrano dropped to his knees after the no-hitter, I noticed that he couldn’t lift his right arm as high as his left. Telling.

http://www.baseballprospectus.com/chat/chat.php?chatId=556

He’s been hiding injury issues in both 2007 and 2008. Go back to 2005 or 2006.

add the number of deviled eggs he had at Thanksgiving and divide by the Giants number of losses to his shit stain in the drawers rating……….

I didn’t say that Matt Cain wasn’t under a decent workload. In fact, I didn’t mention it at all.

What I did say was that his fastball was down 0.8 mph from 2007 to 2008. I’m not saying the only explanation is troubles with his arm, but I am pointing to it as a concern.

It is possible Matt didn’t throw as hard, in an effort to improve his control. He DID improve his strike percentage, but his walk rate went up, not down.

I’m not saying Matt has arm trouble. I am merely pointing out that his drop in velocity MIGHT be indicating that to be the case. If the drop doesn’t continue next season, I won’t be as concerned — and I’m short of being worried right now.

The Giants just weren’t paying attention when they signed Barry Zito after the 2006 season. Or perhaps they were paying attention but got overridden from above.

If one goes to Fan Grahps and looks at Barry’s charts, he can see that after the 2006 season they were almost all consistently headed in the wrong direction. In addition, in the six previous seasons, Barry had thrown more pitches than anyone aside from Livan Hernandez, who also hasn’t been worth a darn since. Finally, after being a GREAT September pitcher though 2004, Barry had had difficult Septembers in 2005 and 2006, perhaps indicating a tired arm.

The only good thing about Barry’s tenure in SF is that he hasn’t usually lasted long enough to throw many pitches, and he is no longer among the league leaders. In anything, for that matter — except for walks.

it kinda makes the PAP stat look pretty dumb…It looks like some dude was just fuckin with numbers…

Have lobbied ESPN to fire guy but he provides a different point of view on occasion that is needed.

those rockets are clearly just visual effects and smoke and mirrors, the moon landing was staged

Number of pitches?

One thing that might eventually be measured and estimated is the stress put on an arm in so-called stress innings, or innings in which a pitcher throws a lot of pitches. Pure number of pitches is important, of course, but HOW that pitch count is achieved might be at least as important.

And sometimes the weather also has a significant effect. The game in which Tim Lincecum threw only 83 pitches in seven innings sounds like a start from which he might have actually gotten a little risk. But as I mentioned in an earlier post, he was really batting the heat and humidity, and I’ll bet he was more tired at the end of that start than he was at the end of his 138-pitch start.

And even there, HE was more tired overall, but how about his arm? I was just happy they pulled him early in that 83-pitch start, since I would think when a pitcher is physically tired, he might be more apt to change his motion, perhaps adding greatly to arm stress and perhaps distress.

Also, the Giants pulled Tim after 103 pitches in his final start of the year. Given that he threw 127, 138, 118, 102 and 103 pitches in his final five games (for an average of 117.3 pitches per outing), that was probably a good idea, as well.

That might be another factor. Are high pitch counts harder on arms both early and late in a season. Early, the arm may not be as stretched out, and the weather is often colder. Late, the arm may already be fatigued to a degree entering the game.

By the way, in Tim’s last two innings of his season, he struck out two, allowing only one hit (a bunt single) and no walks — and did so on 25 pitches. He did have the advantage of a strike-em-out, throw-em-out double play to end his outing, but to some extent, the double play merely offset the extra pitches he threw because of the bunt hit.

Anyway, does a guy with 13 strikeouts in seven innings in his season finale — capped of by two strikeouts and just 25 pitches in his last two innings — sound like a guy whose arm had been overused?

That said, how do any of us really know the effects on the arm? Tim is probably in by far the best position to judge, and even he could be deceived.

But as long as he doesn’t need to ice and can still throw long toss foul pole to foul pole the day after his start, he probably doesn’t have too much to worry about.

From what I have read, the effect of throwing too many pitches is worse when pitchers are younger than when they’re older — although obviously the effects may not show up until years later.

I have stated that we have little way of knowing what is going on inside a pitchers’ arm. Thus although Tim showed no signs in his final game of the season of arm abuse, that doesn’t mean he hasn’t suffered any. I realize the effects are cumulative.

I haven’t studied him closely, but I would tend to agree with you that Carlos Zambrano is probably a decent example of a guy who may be paying the price for abuse. Then again, I believe he DID pitch a no-hitter in September. But that was only one game — and a no-hitter is almost always the result of luck as well as production.

I have mentioned that there were several games in which I would have removed Tim before he went out for another inning. I think it would likely have made a difference of only about 7 innings or so, reducing his 227 innings to 220 or thereabouts. My guess is that those seven innings would have cut his PAP by more than half, though.

One thing I did read IIRC that was encouraging was that a pitcher is done when his average speed drops off by 5. Tim’s velocity as the game went on dropped more in 2007 than it did last season. To be honest, the 5 seems high, and perhaps I am misremembering it.

Overall I agreed with how Tim was handled in about three-quarters of his starts. What I guess PAP does point out, though, it that the other quarter — the ones where I DID disagree — were probably the ones that created the most PAP. And while Tim pitched well in several of those extra innings he went beyond what I would have used him for, in about half the cases he yielded one or more runs in that extra inning or partial inning.

I do believe that Tim’s arm has less stress imposed on it than the average pitcher’s arm. I think his core is where the most stress occurs, that to some degree his arm is just along for the ride.

I would guess that a quarter century from now we would know far more about the effect of pitch count and how to determine and measure it than we do today. For now, I agree that it is probably best to err on the safe side.

But like pretty much everyone else, I don’t really know for sure.

Yeah, I’m pretty darn good when it comes to not knowing anything. :)

I can’t speak for JBluestone, but I have nearly been called Nostradamus myself. Nostradummy means pretty much the same thing, right?