Thoughts

The first game of the double header was actually encouraging. The game is essentially over if your starter gives up 7 and they battled back.

New thing I'm looking for:

As old Quigley would say, show your work!

I'm going to assume that 4 plate appearances is about average, it's likely closer to 5, but that gives us approximately 36-45 plate appearances per team per game.

Now, in order to neutralize a starting pitcher in todays game you need to get them to 100 pitches in the sixth inning, 5th would be nice, but that is stretching it (Bombko had 100 in the 4th *sigh*)

So that means that if you are looking at 4 plate appearances for each batter to end a game then the pitchers would have averaged 4 batters per inning, likewise with 5.

So using a conservative estimate of 4, each inning the starting pitcher needs to throw 17 pitches. This would equal 17*6 or 102 pitches. The odds of seeing the pitcher come back in for the 7th would be pretty squarely in the offenses favor.

So 17 pitches divided amongst 4 batters equals just over 4 pitches per batter.

So extrapolating it works quite well. If the pitcher is rolling and there are only 3 batters per each inning, each batter would need to take about 6 pitches, or 18*6 or 108.

5 batters per inning and you are nearing 3 pitches per hitter.

I'm sticking with 4 which appears to be a conservative or good real estimate.

If TPJ, Guillen, Buck, or any other strugglers aren't seeing at least 4 pitches, they are, in effect helping the pitcher to go longer without providing the benefit of fatiguing the pitcher.

Watch out for it, I would bet there is some merit to this

Beetle