It should definitely be pitches and more importantly situational pitches. 40 pitches in an inning mostly with runners on are much harder than 40 pitches over 5 innings with nobody on.
There is a long discussion on this over at fangraphs, what I got out of it was that the 160-170 innings is a threshold managers or GMs give to avoid getting into details with the press and it's obviously a combination of innings, pitches, effectiveness and response of the rehabbing pitcher.
Skin Blues wrote:What research is there that says 160-170 innings is the cutoff? When has a pitcher gone past that cutoff and experienced problems? This seems like pretty important information to have and I don't see any work that's gone into validating the theory/myth. Maybe all ther GMs are keeping it secret but they all came to the exact same vague conclusion. Or maybe 160 and 170 are Dr. Andrews' and Dr. Yocum's favourite numbers.
It was something that Davey Johnson mentioned to the MLB Tonight crew. Just saying "our research has shown...". So I don't know if it's something publicly available.
But he was adamant that, like Zimmerman, Strasburg is only going 160-170 innings.
As an aside, I don't understand why "innings" is what's really important. Shouldn't it be "pitches" instead of "innings"?
Yeah I was directing that to Davey Johnson, haha. Rhetorical question. I doubt if it's even his decision, anyway. 160 innings is exceedingly vague and it should definitely be focused more on rest between outings, limiting high pitch counts, and limiting stress in general. I don't know if they're dumbing it down for the fans because it's simpler to just spit out an innings number, or if they actually believe that the route to 160 innings doesn't matter. Chris Carpenter went 193 innings after not pitching at all in 2007 and 2008. And he, of all people, was perfectly fine. It was the best season he ever had, actually. Went on to throw 235+ innings in each of the following 2 seasons. Has anybody ever re-injured their elbow by pitching too much after coming back from TJS? This reminds me of a show when I was a kid about this guy that claimed to have dragon repellent. And it worked so well, because there were never any dragons around.
Capuano came back from his 2nd TJ last year and his mechanics aren't even bad, it can certainly happen. You can probably blame the Brewers for that though, pitching him on short rest late in the year when they had no playoff hopes and just wanted to get him to 20 wins. The Brewers killed Ben Sheets too by abusing him. They seem to have learned their lesson at least.
Curtis Pride wrote:I don't know about "how", but there have been a few that have needed multiple tommy john surgeries. Joakim Soria is the latest example.
His previous one was 9 years ago, wasn't it? I'm talking about people re-injuring their elbow by throwing too many innings their first year back. Has that ever happened? I've not heard of a single time. I'm sure it must have, even by sheer coincidence, in the 35+ years they've been performing the surgery.
Sakuraba wrote:What happens if the Nationals have the best record in baseball when he reaches his 160 innings Will they still shut him and give up a chance at winning a championship?
It's getting close to that time. H2H playoffs are coming up in 2 weeks and the trade deadline has passed in many leagues. Who here has held onto him with hopes he pitches throughout the season? What do you guys think the Nats are going to do with him?
Team Izzy C Mauer 1 E5 2 Cano 3 ARam S Rollins CI LaRoche MI Altuve O Melky, Pagan, Morse, Hunter, Ruggiano SP Lee, Fister, Estrada, McCarthy, Lohse RP Chapman, Jansen, Frieri, Fujikawa Bench 1 Hart S Cabrera O Eaton U Ortiz P Marcum P Miller P Fernandez
Sakuraba wrote:What happens if the Nationals have the best record in baseball when he reaches his 160 innings Will they still shut him and give up a chance at winning a championship?
It's getting close to that time. H2H playoffs are coming up in 2 weeks and the trade deadline has passed in many leagues. Who here has held onto him with hopes he pitches throughout the season? What do you guys think the Nats are going to do with him?
I don't think much has changed. They have said all along that he is going to be shut down, and I don't see that changing.
Since they've wrapped up a playoff spot barring the largest collapse in MLB history, I have an idea. How about they pitch him once a week, since there are four weeks of the season left, and limit his innings to 5 per outing, or 80 pitches, whichever comes first. Then they could pitch him in one game per postseason series, making his IP for the year under 180. It would represent the best of both worlds, and gives them a real good shot at winning the title while not working Strasburg at a full throttle year even including the postseason. Is this even possible? Do pitchers usually do poorly with starts spaced out like that?
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by Ender » Mon Apr 02, 2012 5:48 pm 
