What if a team got 3 great long relievers and pitched them each 3 innings every day?What would be the likely result if the same pitchers pitched every day?Well, good question. What is it about today's pitchers that they think after a certain amount of pitches, they can't go any longer? Well, if you're told from HS on up that after a certain amount, you're done, you start to buy in to that. Self-fulfilling prophecy occurs, which is, you think something is going to happen (I'm going to fail this test... you take the test, you do bad), and it has a higher chance of happening. Not always, but the % increases, and baseball is all about those extra percentage points.
Now, to address the question further, it is, quite simply, that the majority of pitching coaches, instructors, etc... are, well, stupid. They're ignorant, stupid people. It's their job they should know this stuff it's no excuse - the stuff is out there, so let me say this: they are stupid.
Many BELIEVE (and that's what it is, it's an unfounded belief) that pitching is some horribly damaging process and you need to throw as little as possible and you need 4 days of rest because it's so taxing!
48.1 of the Science and Art of Baseball Pitching: %26quot;The current game and practice pitching loads are unlikely to produce appropriate overloads to generate specific pitching fitness. The low number of practice session pitches, many made with less than 100% effort, will NOT produce a training stimulus for fitness change. It is a distinct possibility that today's pitchers actually are in an unconditioned state rather than a trained state for the specific tasks of pitching. While major league rotations for starters are mostly four days, but sometimes three, the reason for that extended interval is not physiological. Potteiger, Blessing, and Wilson (1992) showed that physiological indicies of fatigue or exercise trauma in pitchers were completely removed within two days.%26quot;
Let's further investigate why. They (the pitchers) waste their time doing irrelevant activities such as throwing on flat ground, throwing less than 100%, long-tossing rather than throwing off the mound, etc... None of it is beneficial to increasing velocity, getting pin-point control, and maintaining those skill sets.
Adding on to pitchers not being fit to pitch. What does that mean exactly? Basically, if you throw 50 pitches in your bullpen, you're conditioning yourself to throw 50 pitches. Once you get beyond that you'll start to see your control waver and you may see your velocity slip. It's the so called %26quot;wall%26quot;.
Now, what would happen if you were to throw 120 pitches (and not in 15 minutes either, but spaced out to give yourself a chance to work on things, and not to fatigue)? You'd condition yourself to throw 120 pitches.
So, you pitch a game on Monday, bullpen on Wednesday, next game on Friday. What's wrong with that? Not a thing. However, this is why pitchers today can't go as far as they used to.What would be the likely result if the same pitchers pitched every day?They would destroy the ligaments in their arm.What would be the likely result if the same pitchers pitched every day?If we are talking about major league baseball, this scenario with 3 relievers pitching 3 innings every day could not work with today's common understanding of fatigue.
With today's game, if a reliever pitches more than an inning, he almost never comes out to pitch the next day. And even if pitchers are pitching just one inning a game, they usually don't pitch three days in a row either.
In short, this just could not work. The pitchers would fatigue.
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Edit: The 100 pitch threshold thing is a topic that has interested me as well; and whether it is a myth or not. I find this quote interesting:
%26quot;Since 1968, I believe the intensity of every pitch has gotten harder and harder in the big leagues,%26quot; said Orel Hershiser, the National League Cy Young Award winner in 1988. %26quot;In 1968, guys threw over the top, the ball went downhill and became a moving fastball. When they lowered the mound in 1969, they took away the pitcher's leverage. They took away the plane of the baseball, and a straight pitch became more on the plane of the bat. At that point, pitchers had to move the ball so it was not on the plane of the bat, and to do that, they had to increase the intensity on every pitch. Movement became a key, not just velocity. So with all the elements we have today, if the intensity of one pitch is increased by, say, 10 percent, then 125 pitches becomes 115, which becomes 110, then becomes 100.%26quot;
It comes from a very informative ESPN article: http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/columns/stWhat would be the likely result if the same pitchers pitched every day?they would play like one season or less then reitre cuz of injuryWhat would be the likely result if the same pitchers pitched every day?the most likely thing would be that they would get tired and give off a lot of hits and wild pitches. Even really good pitchers can't do that.What would be the likely result if the same pitchers pitched every day?His stamina would get loser and he would start getting wil and lose every game
