Posted by David Wade on Tuesday, June 30, 2009 at 12:12 pm

I got the idea for this article by watching Aaron Harang get lit up by the Cleveland Indians on June 26 and found myself wondering if Dusty Baker could somehow be blamed. 

Back on May 25, Baker had Harang throw on and off for 2 hours while waiting to come back after a rain delay to face one batter to try and qualify for a win. 

One batter.  Just to try and pad Harang’s win-loss record. 

Criticism surfaced rather quickly, with many observers second-guessing Baker’s decision.  Now Harang wanted to finish the game, and since he stands 6’7” and is a dead ringer for an Adam’s Family butler, I’d probably be scared of him in person.  However, Baker is surely tougher than I am and should have told the big fella to hit the showers after the rain delay went into the 20th minute with no sign of letting up before the next 13 Skyline commercials.  Since Harang simulated breaks between simulated innings and got up several times to throw simulated pitches, his pitch count for that game was probably at least 30—40 more than the 93 shown here.  

That last link also shows game logs prior to and following the rain delay game.  There we see that Harang has been a little erratic this year, mixing in very solid outings with occasional blowups.  However, his last game puts another stinker on the ledger since he threw off and on for a couple of hours to make his needless post-rain delay appearance.  He had the benefit on June 16 of a two inning outing that was stopped by enough rain to keep Noah from sending him back out, but preceded that appearance by throwing pitch counts of 104, 115, and 123 following the controversial outing at the end of May.

Now, disclaimers are necessary as Harang pitched well in a couple of those games and pitching well means you stay in the game longer.  Nevertheless, given Baker’s abuse of Harang last year, (documented very well here) we might be able to predict another collapse is likely this year ahead of time. 

But, before we see if we can build a case for impending doom, let’s go just a little further down memory lane to Baker’s last team, the Chicago Cubs and show why I feel this matter might be worth looking into.  Baker has caught a lot of grief for the post-2003 downfall of two Cub pitchers named Wood and Prior (you may have heard of them).  This is a nice example of the type of questions people have asked since then.  And this is a fair argument from the other side of the argument.  Some would say Baker is the reason for Wood’s move into the closer role and Prior’s move into the closing of his career.  Others point out that hey, if it amounts to about one extra start a year, where’s the real harm?

The last question is one of great importance for those concerned with the health of pitchers.  Famed fireballer Nolan Ryan is planning to ignore pitch counts as he helps develop Texas Rangers’ pitching.  This article discusses his strategy and the overall contention that pitch counts (certainly those based on an arbitrary limit like 100) are worthless for promoting future health for pitchers. 

This long standing debate spurred a writer at Baseball Prospectus to come up with PAP (Pitcher Abuse Points) a few years ago.  PAP is a system to track pitchers’ workloads that attempts to go beyond the simple 100-pitch outing as a potential harbinger of doom.  Instead, certain thresholds beyond 100 pitches carry higher and higher ‘penalties’.  I.E., a 130 pitch outing counts far more against a pitcher than a 105 pitch outing. 

So, based on a tool like PAP, can we predict that Dusty Baker is on a path that will lead to the destruction of his best pitchers? 

Maybe.

I’ve tried to hold your attention long enough in this installment and will wait until my next article to discuss what some at BP have found regarding PAP and correlation to injuries in pitchers.  My hope is that we can at least find PAP consistent enough to use as a forecaster, even if causation is a different matter entirely.  While realizing no such tool will be 100% accurate, nor suitable for every situation, taking a look at other managers’ handling of pitching staffs with the same tool we use to look at the Reds may or may not get Baker off the hook (to use a colloquialsim Dusty himself would like).