College Stat Reporting

# of pitches isn't a real stat. It's not relevant like the W-L record or ERA. Otherwise, colleges would be posting them.

Or maybe if they post the # of pitches and dad sees junior throw 130 in a big game, he might be placing a call to the HC.

It is reported in MLB box scores, so why not college? It seems like useful information to me. If a pitcher has to throw 110 pitches to get through seven innings vs. 80 pitches, that seems to tell me something about his performance. I can see a parent calling about that hypothetical 130 pitch game, though. But that still leaves me wondering where the guys who track the number of college pitches get their info.

If you are interested in a particular game, and the number of pitches isn't listed in the box score, try going to the opponent's website and reading their box score. It is my belief that number of pitches is recorded in college automated scoring systems, but not all teams like to publish them.

When neither school publishes the counts, then it is possible to estimate the number of pitches by empirical formula. Several have been published, and, on average, they of course provide an accurate estimate of the number of pitches. However, there is some variance between calculated and actual pitch counts. In my opinion, using calculated pitch counts to identify unusually high counts is fraught with inaccuracy, because, for example, those games which have suspiciously number of high batters faced are likely the ones that had an unusually low number of pitchers per batter faced. At least that's what I found last year when looking at compete games for which the number of pitches was published. The formula tended to overestimate (substantially) for complete games.

One commonly used formula is NP=3.3PA + 1.5SO + 2.2BB (http://www.tangotiger.net/pitchCounts.html)

Boyd Nation has a much more complicated one. EPC formula

I didn't realize formulas were used or existed for number of pitches...interesting.

casey,

Having used the Automated Scorebook software, used by almost everyone but horrendously outdated and DOS-based, keeping pitch counts is possible, but it's hard enough just to keep up so most scorekeepers don't add to their load by keeping pitch counts.

The company supposedly has promised a windows-based version for a few years but still no product produced.

If you want to retire, design Windows-based program where most plays are entered with a point and click, with drop down options. You'd be a very popular person among the scorekeepers of the world. Automated Scorebook is very unforgiving and if you mess up a play, and I have, it's truly painful to fix on the fly.

Thanks, Hokieone. Maybe I'll farm out your new product suggestion to my R&D department (my much more technology adept son)...maybe it could pay for his upcoming four years of college!

I know my sons school keeps pitch counts, pitch/strike #'s. They don't publish them in the box score, but this weekend we played Navy, and they were published in the box score...

http://www.navysports.com/spor...008-2009/navy32.html

Thanks CPLZ...and that looks like the Automated Scorebook software that hokieone was referring to that most teams use, but find too cumbersome for reporting pitch counts.