Darvish’s Workload & Elbow Knee

» 11 June 2010 » In npb »

Update Saturday morning, Pacific Daylight Time: Darvish did make a return to the mound, and a triumphant one, with a line of 7 IP 7 K 1 BB 3 H 0 ER and the win. And he only threw 84 pitches, his lowest total this season. His fastball velocity was a little more variable than normal but the results were there. Nippon Ham finally scored a few runs for Darvish, and won 9-0.

Edit Friday night, Pacific Daylight Time: commenter “Tannin” pointed out that I confused the Japanese word for knee (“hiza”) with the word for elbow (“hiji”). It was in fact Darvish’s knee that kept him off the mound, which is obviously way less of a concern than his elbow would have been. The commentary about Darvish’s workload still applies, so this post wasn’t a total waste. I just wish I had caught the mistake before a few thousand readers saw it.

I didn’t post anything beyond a tweet about this at the time, but Yu Darvish missed his scheduled start last week with discomfort in his throwing elbow right knee. Darvish is apparently ok, and he’s due to make his next start on June 12th against Chunichi. According to Daily Sports, Nippon Ham is going to settle on a six-day rotation, so we can expect to see Darvish every Saturday.

Darvish has a track record of heavy workloads, but this year he’s taken it up a notch. According to the data I collected (which is not totally complete for last year, but is for this year), Darvish’s busiest outing last year was his 135-pitch start against Rakuten on August 7. This season, Darvish has thrown 135 or more pitches in six of his 11 starts, topping out at 156 on May 8, also against Rakuten. And that start was preceded by a 150-pitch outing against Seibu.

Nippon Ham seems to be concerned about this pattern, and early in the season announced that they would limit Darvish to 120 pitches per start. At the time, I thought this was a very forward-thinking move for an NPB team, particularly since it could have the positive side-effect of forcing Darvish to become more economical with his pitches. They haven’t had the discipline to stick with the limit though, as he’s surpassed 120 pitches in six of his eight starts made since the announcement.

Darvish has been relatively healthy throughout his pro career, with the exception of the time he missed late last season with a miscellany of injuries. He’s shown to be capable of going deep in to starts, as evinced by the fact that he tends to maintain consistent velocity in his outings. But given his workload in the past and in particular this season, it’s hard not to raise an eyebrow when the phrase ‘elbow discomfort’ is uttered (though in this case it wasn’t). It’ll be interesting to see how he’s used this season, particularly if Nippon Ham fails to get into contention for a playoff spot.

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  1. Patrick
    Tom Dubberke
    11/06/2010 at 10:47 am Permalink

    The NPB teams way overwork their starters. A pitcher as young as Darvish isn’t going to last long routinely throwing 135 pitches a game.

    In fact, extremely few starters are going to last more than about five seasons throwing that many pitches as often as Darvish has.

    One more reason for Darvish to re-think his position about coming to the U.S. If he get over here before the first big break-down, he won’t face nearly the work load pitching for an MLB team.

  2. Patrick
    Johnnie
    11/06/2010 at 3:55 pm Permalink

    The above statement isn’t all truth. I played in the minor leagues for a decade in the 1960’s and my pitch counts exceeded 140 per start around %90 of the time. Even before I signed professionally I was considering a work-horse for the teams I played on. All in all, I played about 15 years in baseball, and finally just gave it up because it was time to move on, nothing to do with an injury of any sort. As a matter of fact, not once in my career did I ever have arm problems.

  3. Patrick
    他人
    11/06/2010 at 6:41 pm Permalink

    I’m pretty sure it’s his right knee, not elbow that has been causing him some trouble recently. “Hiza” (ひざ)is “knee”. “Hiji” (ひじ)is “elbow”.

  4. Patrick
    Patrick
    11/06/2010 at 9:55 pm Permalink

    Yes. Right you are. It looks like I’ve been taken to school here. For what it’s worth I get those two words confused in real life all the time. Shame on me for not being more careful.

    My greatest fear when I started this blog was the fact that I was publishing content without any sort of editing or fact-checking beyond what I do myself. Over time I got over it, but I do occasionally slip up, like this time.

    Thanks for pointing out the mistake.

  5. Patrick
    westbaystars
    12/06/2010 at 6:38 am Permalink

    Gen (Yakyu Baka) recently made the same mistake (except saying knee instead of elbow) with Rakuten’s Fujiwara – which was then reported incorrectly by Andrew (Where Eagles Dare). I know I’ve done it many times over the years, so you’re not alone.

  6. Patrick
    Patrick
    12/06/2010 at 10:20 pm Permalink

    Well, as they say, mistranslation loves company 🙂

  7. Patrick
    Tom Dubberke
    14/06/2010 at 6:18 pm Permalink

    Responding to Johnny: But a lot of pitchers obviously do suffer arm injuries, and workload is often appears to be a factor in those injuries.

    One of the problems is that no one has yet figured out exactly why some pitchers can handle heavy work loads and some can’t. That’s probably because a lot of it has to do with each player’s individual physiology and throwing motions. Some motions are almost certainly less stressful then others, and big, hard throwers who don’t have to put everything behind every pitch they throw tend to last longer.

    I still feel strongly that with any pitcher as valuable as Yu Darvish, his team should err on the side of caution and find as many opportunities to limit his pitch counts as much as possible.

  8. Patrick
    westbaystars
    16/06/2010 at 8:08 am Permalink

    – I still feel strongly that with any pitcher as valuable as Yu Darvish, his team should err on the side of caution and find as many opportunities to limit his pitch counts as much as possible.

    But isn’t part of what makes Darvish such a valuable pitcher his ability to throw complete games? Isn’t it his ability to constantly go out and throw 150 pitches that makes his such a special pitchers? To change that aspect of him would be to create a less valuable pitcher.

    How well has Matsuzaka done on his “more cautious” routine in the Majors? He’s no longer the 250 pitch kid who defeated PL Gakuen in the quarter finals. He’s grown weak, lost his stamina. Is it age that has done this to him? Is it the wear and tear catching up to him? Or is it the over-stressing of caution?

    You should have heard the declarations that Matsuzaka would never last two seasons after that Koshien performance. Yet, he kept on going, year after year. He even lasted long enough to be posted a year before becoming a free agent.

    Yes, kids throwing their arms out is a serious problem, in Japan, Korea, and the U.S. The U.S. is leading the way in trying to prevent this, but at the same time, they aren’t producing any more Nolan Ryans, Matsuzakas, or Darvishes.

    What’s the point? Darvish’s value has a great deal to do with his work load. Reduce the work load, and you’ll reduce the value.

    IMHO.

  9. Patrick
    Patrick
    16/06/2010 at 12:19 pm Permalink

    But isn’t part of what makes Darvish such a valuable pitcher his ability to throw complete games? Isn’t it his ability to constantly go out and throw 150 pitches that makes his such a special pitchers? To change that aspect of him would be to create a less valuable pitcher.

    For me it depends. Darvish threw 156 pitches over nine shutout innings in a game Nippon Ham eventually won 1-0 in 10 (http://baseball.yahoo.co.jp/npb/game/2010050804/top). I could buy an argument that leaving him in was the right call in that situation.

    But the previous game he threw 150 pitches in a game that his team won 5-0 over Seibu (http://baseball.yahoo.co.jp/npb/game/2010050104/top). Since his team already had a five run lead after seven innings, you could have removed him saved 25 or so pitches of wear and tear.

  10. Patrick
    simon
    16/06/2010 at 8:15 pm Permalink

    Yeah, I don’t see much point in leaving in your ace after a game has been more or less decided.

    That said, there is no scientific evidence behind the magical in-game 100 pitch count limit (maybe some organizations have top secret internal research though).

    How is 100 pitches every 5 days (MLB) different from 120 pitches every 7 days (NPB)?

    Shouldn’t we be concerned about the pitch counts in practice sessions, bullpen, and during warmups too?

    This is far from a definite decided issue.

    Then there’s the thing that maybe the win now at all costs pitcher usage in Japanese amateur ball tends to weed out the weaker arms so that only the rubber armed aces remain in the system, this is another issue.

  11. Patrick
    Patrick
    16/06/2010 at 11:49 pm Permalink

    Shouldn’t we be concerned about the pitch counts in practice sessions, bullpen, and during warmups too?

    Yeah, but data on those is a little harder to aggregate. Also those sessions are needed to enable the levels of fitness required to pitch competitively anyway… there’s never going to be any optimum.

    Then there’s the thing that maybe the win now at all costs pitcher usage in Japanese amateur ball tends to weed out the weaker arms so that only the rubber armed aces remain in the system, this is another issue.

    Yeah, maybe. But then again, I’ve done some tabulating for another post (which will appear on FanGraphs) and Darvish and Wakui are real outliers in terms of pitch counts.

  12. Patrick
    Tom Dubberke
    18/06/2010 at 12:26 pm Permalink

    I don’t buy the idea that Matsuzaka has “grown weak and lost his stamina” throwing fewer pitches per game in the U.S. Pitching injuries usually tend to be cumulative. You look at star pitchers as a group and you see that there are an awful lot of guys who can handle three to five years (some more, some less) of heavy season pitch counts or innings pitched totals, but then they start to have problems.

    One example close to where I live is the Oakland A’s Three Aces Tim Hudson, Mark Mulder and Barry Zito. They all threw a lot of innings for a period of years and then either got hurt or lost effectiveness. I think Zito’s lack of success in the NL in 2008 and 2009 had a lot to do with all the innings he threw the previous six seasons. Hudson has already burned out one elbow tendon, and Mulder’s career is now officially over at the tender age of 32.

    Another great example is Frank Tanana. He had a high 90’s fastball and threw a tremendous number of innings his first five seasons as a major leaguer. Then his arm fell off, and he had re-invent himself as a junk-ball pitcher when he was healthy enough to pitch again.

    You’re also not going to convince me that the shoulder problems Roy Halladay had in 2004 didn’t have something to do with the 505.1 IP he threw in the two immediately previous seasons.

  13. Patrick
    Tom Dubberke
    18/06/2010 at 12:31 pm Permalink

    I believe Warren Cromartie in his book Slugging It Out in Japan (co-authored by Robert Whiting) is on record as saying he was of the opinion that Japanese pitchers threw too many pitches in practice, and that he thought that was one of the main reasons why so many veteran Japanese pitchers had “zippers” (surgical scars) on their pitching shoulders.

    Cromartie’s seven year Japanese career was twenty or more years ago now, but I wonder how much Japanese pitchers’ training regimens have changed in the interim.

  14. Patrick
    Tom Dubberke
    18/06/2010 at 12:56 pm Permalink

    Here are some hard numbers on Matsuzaka (from Japan Baseball Daily and espn.com):

    In 2001 Matsuzaka set career NPB highs of 240 IP and 1004 batters faced.
    In 2002 Matsuzaka had elbow problems which limited him to career NPB lows of 73.1 IP and 302 batters faced.
    In 2005 Matsuzaka pitched 215 IP and faced 868 batters, both the second highest totals of his eight year NPB career.
    In 2007, his first year in the U.S., Matsuzaka pitched 204.2 IP and faced 874 batters.

    So, one could make a strong argument that Matsuzaka’s extremely high workload in 2001 probably had something to do with his arm problems in 2002. It is also safe to say that Matsuzaka didn’t lose his stamina pitching less in the U.S., because he didn’t pitch less in the U.S. (at least at first before he started to have injury problems.)

    However, one could also argue that it is perhaps total innings pitched or batters faced a season that has more to do with a pitcher’s future likelihood to suffer arm injury than however many pitches a pitcher throws in any one game or series of games.