Before I even try to do anything else, let me state this so there’s no mistaking that I believe the pure numbers alone could ever do a perfect job of judging when to let a pitcher keep going or yank him. The numbers are great to have, but they only serve as guidelines because things like pitches starting to get “UP” in the zone, control beginning to wane, body language, more time taken between pitches, etc. tell a whole lot of the story as well and need to be considered.
Having said that, every coach/manager who is responsible for yanking a pitcher or leaving him in uses numbers in some way to help him make that decision, even if they don’t realize they’re doing it. All I’m trying to do here is to get how the numbers are used in a form so they’ll be consistent.
AGDAD19, very nice 1st try! I was cogitatin’ on it myself some yesterday, and had some difficulty in figuring out a way to represent what had taken place. The way I understand what you’re proposing is to use the REAL pitch count, then make additions and subtractions after each inning to get a number. That’s fine by me, but is that the way it’s really done as the game goes on? I’ve always gotten the feeling it was something that was a constant decision making process a pitch at a time rather than an inning by inning thing.
I do like the way you’d taken into account rest between innings, but what about when the pitcher bats, as very often happen is HS? It’s one thing if the pitcher just sits on the bench, but it’s another if he also has to bat, quite another if he becomes a base runner, and another still if he has to do a lot of running. It would seem to me that if the latter happens, rather than getting rest and acquiring “good” points, he’d actually be fatiguing himself even more, acquiring “bad” points.
What do you think about a “running” number as opposed to a number computed by inning?