Season Pitch Counts Provide Insights

Madison Bumgarner is an iron man pitcher.Let’ look at the 200 pitchers with the highest number of pitches in the last decade (2012 through May 2022 per Baseball Reference).

Each ten pitchers (in a ranked list) were combined to calculate averages of pitches per homer, pitches per walk, pitches per strikeout, and a rough estimate of pitches per season within the last ten seasons.

The following graphs show that the pitchers with the highest thrown pitches were in general better in pitches per home run, pitches per walk, and pitches per strikeout.

With the long term trend of increasing homers, it’s not surprising that pitchers who go the longest (most pitches) between homers are valued. What is…