Marmol needs to be sharper...

[Jon]

Just out of curiosity, does anybody have any idea how many pitches Marmol has thrown this season as compared to other relievers with similar workloads?

 

He's 3rd overall in pitches thrown in relief work.

 

http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/stats/pitching?split=128&league=mlb&season=2008&seasonType=2&sort=pitches&type=pitch3&ageMin=17&ageMax=51&state=0&college=0&country=0&hand=a&pos=all

 

But he doesn't average a huge number of pitches per IP at least. Not even in the top 200 @ 16.5/IP. He has a lot of quick low-stress innings.

 

yet have this thread is dedicated to how Marmol's style of pitching causes high pitch counts

A pitches per innings pitched rate is always going to be lower regardless of style when the pitcher is as good as Marmol.

[Jon]

We probably can't find many comparable players to Marmol in terms of career path and usage pattern, but I wouldn't say there has to be a clearer risk of injury due to how he's currently being used in order to call it reckless. If Piniella continues to use him as much and as often in relatively unimportant situations, Marmol's risk for injury will be unnecessarily increased. How much it will be increased doesn't as much matter from a managerial point of view. The benefit doesn't outweigh the risk, whatever that may be.

 

To clarify, that's a slightly different argument. I'm certainly not saying to send Marmol out in any and every situation, I didn't want him out there yesterday and definitely wasn't happy when he started the 8th.

The original statement regarding Piniella's reckless usage of Marmol was pretty general, though. I'm just saying that it's still reckless independent of Marmol's actual injury risk, precisely because we, nor the Cubs, really have a great idea of how much they can push Marmol before his arms starts to wear down or he loses effectiveness.

[badger1679666666]

Just out of curiosity, does anybody have any idea how many pitches Marmol has thrown this season as compared to other relievers with similar workloads?

 

He's 3rd overall in pitches thrown in relief work.

 

http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/stats/pitching?split=128&league=mlb&season=2008&seasonType=2&sort=pitches&type=pitch3&ageMin=17&ageMax=51&state=0&college=0&country=0&hand=a&pos=all

 

But he doesn't average a huge number of pitches per IP at least. Not even in the top 200 @ 16.5/IP. He has a lot of quick low-stress innings.

 

To be fair, he jumps up to 81st when you make the minimum 20 IP.

 

 

Well you are accurate, but that would still indicate to me that his use has been in no way "reckless" like many are trying to claim it to be. Lou has his share of stupidity and bad managing just as EVERY manager does, but if there is one thing it seems that he doesn't do, it's recklessly abuse pitchers.

[TruffleShuffle]

pitches per IP is almost useless. of course marmol ranks low in that stat; he's better than most guys in baseball so he gets more batters out than most pitchers do.

[Jehrico]

pitches per IP is almost useless. of course marmol ranks low in that stat; he's better than most guys in baseball so he gets more batters out than most pitchers do.

The more appearances he makes, the more he's getting up and warming up and throwing hard pitches once he's about warm. Those take a toll too, so there's the total # of pitches thrown in the game, plus a few more per appearance for that. Guys with more pitches per outing but fewer outings could have more overall gametime pitches but be putting less overall mileage on their arms.