What Makes Joe Pick Up The Phone?
Posted by Steve Lombardi on August 29, 2007
In yesterday's Yankees game, Joe Torre allowed Andy Pettitte to throw 119 pitches in 7 innings of work. This made me wonder how many times in the "Joe Torre Era" has a Yankees pitcher thrown 119+ pitches in a start where he threw 7 innings or less? Thanks to Baseball-Reference.com Play Index Pitching Game Finder, the answer is simple:
Year Games Link to Individual Games
----+-----+-------------------------
2000 28 Ind. Games
1999 20 Ind. Games
2001 13 Ind. Games
2002 11 Ind. Games
1996 11 Ind. Games
2003 10 Ind. Games
1997 10 Ind. Games
2005 8 Ind. Games
1998 8 Ind. Games
2004 4 Ind. Games
2007 1 Ind. Games
As you can see from the above chart, from 1999 to 2001, Torre used to allow his starters to labor more like Pettitte did last night. However, from 2004 to the present day, this is no longer the case. In fact, before last night, the last time that Torre allowed a starting pitcher to throw 119+ pitches in 7 innings or less was almost two years ago to the day: August 31, 2005.
It's interesting to see this change in pattern start in 2004. That's just about the time that folks, en masse, started to realize that Joe Torre was killing arms in the Yankees bullpen. However, seeing these stats, maybe the frying of arms was not Torre driven? Perhaps, come 2004, once the Cones, El Duques, Clemens, and Pettittes of Yankeeland were gone - and replaced with starters more likely to leave a game at 100 pitches, no matter what the inning - Torre was forced to go to his pen earlier, and, more often? Maybe, if Torre had more pitchers that wanted to go 6 or 7 innings - even if it meant throwing 119 or more pitches - then Joe would have not had the cause to call the bullpen so often?
Who knows, really, for sure?
In any event, given that young and/or future Yankees starters like Hughes, Chamberlain and Kennedy will probably be limited to pitch counts, Torre's pen usage - no matter what the actual root cause, albeit driven by need or just Joe's desire - is not likely to change too soon (assuming that he remains Yankees skipper beyond 2007).