Posted by David Wade on Tuesday, August 4, 2009 at 9:09 pm

Time has come to do what I set out to do in my first article in this series and make a judgment on whether Dusty Baker is abusing Aaron Harang now that he’s managing the Reds.  The problem is I haven’t come to a concrete conclusion.  I had assumed going into this that Dusty’s culpability was a mere formality, given his reputation as an arm-shredder.  However, the further I went, the more clear it became that even though Baker has arguably run some pitchers into the ground in the past, it looks like a far more difficult endeavor proving him guilty this time.  So difficult, in fact, that I can’t prove that he’s destroying Harang- the whole point of my inquiry.  That’s not to say he’s been easy on his staff, but the glaring proof I was looking for isn’t easily found, in my opinion.  At least not where I’m looking and with the information I have.

My faithful readers will recall that my second and third articles looked at PAP as a tool for tracking a pitcher’s workload, since I knew I’d be using that stat to try and find an answer.  However, no pitch-numbering system can factor in a pitcher’s mechanics, a genetic ability to go longer in games than other pitchers, effort put into each pitch, or any other number of subjective factors.  That said, PAP at least provides us with a way to compare pitchers’ workloads among those of their peers.   That’s why I decide I’d use it to check Dusty’s handling of Harang. 

My fourth article tried to give a look from inside the dugout as an example of how a coach monitors workload and how the use of pitch counts factor in that task.  I also hoped to provide some examples of those more subjective factors that go beyond counting the number of pitches thrown.

While surfing the internet between these articles for all things pitch-count related, I ran across some links posted at northsidebaseball.com (which is a very good Cubs site that I frequent).  A poster on the message board there had put up links to ESPN articles that all came out on July 28 and deal with pitch counts.  David Schoenfield, Jerry Crasnick, and Tim Kurkjan all weighed in on the subject, while Schoenfield even took a look at Baker’s handling of Wood and Prior in his time with the Cubs.  Kurkjan’s article also lists the top 15 pitchers so far this year in regards to pitches thrown per game and none play for Baker- (yes, I’m cherry-picking here!).

It’s funny that these came out, as they are quite relevant with this series and encapsulate the debate as I’ve also tried to do here.  Those more famous, yet certainly less attractive authors summed it up this way - some maintain that pitch counts do nothing but lead to the babying of these pitchers and promote a watered-down talent level all across baseball, while others suggest that doing whatever you can to keep arms worth millions of dollars healthy has to be looked at.  This argument has not gone unnoticed here at baseballdailydigest.com, to say the least.  In addition to my seemingly interminable entries on the subject, Craig Brown has an ongoing series called “Pitch Count Warriors” in which he looks at how guys handle some of the longer outings turned in this year.

So, enough reviewing the subject, it’s time to get down to the nitty-gritty and render my non-decision.  Using PAP, I looked at Baker’s controversial past.  While he was with the Cubs (an obvious place to look, given the downfall of Mark Prior- which has been exhaustively covered), Baker had at least one pitcher on his staff finish in the top 3 of ‘most abused’ pitchers every year in Chicago.  He had two in the top 5 in 2003 and 2005.  Given that many agree he rode guys too hard back then, I decided to look at the Reds before and after he took over as manager following the 2007 season to see if the PAP rinaks were similar.  I wanted to see how he Harang fared specifically, but since Bronson Arroyo also pitched under the old regime and now with Baker, I decided to look for his placement after Dusty came aboard as well.  Here’s what I found (PAP rankings appear under the pitcher’s name)

Year/Pitcher	Harang	Arroyo
2006	3	6
2007	5	6
2008	19	15
2009	9	15

(this is current as of August 2- I hoped to get Harang’s game against the Cubs on 08-03 included, but it wasn’t ready at the time of my finally getting this thing ready) 

The chart above shows that Harang and Arroyo were both in the top 6 ‘most abused’ in the two years before Baker took over for the Reds.  Since then, they don’t fare quite as poorly.  I admit that the decline is not incredibly sharp, but it is down nonetheless.  Harang’s 19th place finish in ‘08 is helped by him missing a few starts due to a tired arm (one that may have been caused by Dusty).  It’s also important to note that 2009 is not over, and Harang has actually gone up a little since I started looking into this and if he pitches well the rest of the way, he could end up even higher.  His bump lately is due in large part to his past two outings, both around 120 pitches, with his second to last game seeing him allow 5 runs in the first before he settled down nicely and hovered around 15 pitches per inning after his shaky start, saving the bullpen from a ton of work that day.  So, by using PAP as a consistent measuring stick for Harang and Arroyo, Baker simply has not caused them to score as poorly in his time in Cincinnati as did his predecessor, Jerry Narron.  Dusty also doesn’t have any guys on his staff so far show up as high as he consistently did with Chicago.  Is he babying them?  No.  But, where I hoped to see (just to prove my guess, not wishing ill on Harang!) was these two guys in the top 5 since Dusty’s been aboard.

Now, Baker’s teams in Cincinnati haven’t had a run like his Cubs of 2003 had, and I can’t begin to guess how something like that would influence these numbers.  A manager can all too easily roll the dice when a pennant is on the line. 

It usually takes good pitching to get to the postseason, and good pitching can inflate PAP numbers.  Just go to baseballprospectus.com and look at the standings.  There are a bunch of aces at the top of the PAP abuse deck.  

On to the outing that spurred this in the first place-  Harang’s return from a two-hour rain delay.  After talking to coach Vorhoff, as summarized in my last article, I’m not as flabbergasted at Harang coming back into that game as I was the night it happened.  My initial dumfoundedness was mainly due to Harang getting up and throwing during the delay, as if he were still pitching, and racking up who knows how many pitches just to go face one batter.  At the time, that seemed illogical to me, but it only stands to reason that Harang was throwing mostly fastballs (maybe even exclusively -and likely not at maximal effort) while he was staying loose.  I would suspect that he only threw breaking balls right before the game started back, just to get a feel for his pitches.  Given these assumptions, his return in that game is not nearly as outlandish as I thought at the time.

So, after all this work, I have gone on PAP standings that aren’t as bad as they were when Dusty was with Chicago nor when Narron was running the Reds and the assumption that Harang was not throwing hard sliders the whole time he was keeping warm during the rain delay.

Not exactly an iron-clad defense, but I just didn’t find the extreme pitch counts and needless innings pitched with huge leads that I was looking for with regards to Harang.  The decision to put him in an early season extra-inning marathon last year certainly looks like a bad one, but I don’t think the rain-delay outing this year was an error on that level.

Wait, Edinson Volquez had the Tommy John surgery you say? 

I smell a sequel…