Home -> Law Blog Directory -> Media & Entertainment Law Blogs -> The Sports Law Professor

Media & Entertainment Law

: The Sports Law Professor

Pitch Counts and the Preference for Rules

By Jeffrey Standen

It's July, and as every parent of a Little Leaguer knows, it's time for the annual Little League "All Stars" tournament. Yes, it's more than a little presumptuous to think that a ten-year-old boy, like the tiny TSLP Junior, can properly be called an all-star at anything, other than getting into mischief at school. And yet each summer the happy TSLP clan looks forward to another round of our boys against your boys, double elimination for all the marbles.

Since TSLP has been away for most of the last few weeks (family vacation), nothing in the sports world presents itself so immediately to me as does the imminent LL baseball tournament. For most of the baseball season, TSLP sits high in the stands, reading a book and occasionally squinting out to try to find my son's number. But for the tournament? TSLP is on it. These are important children's games!

Now that I'm looking, I've noticed that LL has instituted a strict pitch count rule respecting pitchers, apparently new for this year. The rule limits pitchers to 75 or 85 pitches per game, depending on the player's age. It also requires two days of rest for pitchers who throw more than 45 pitches in a game, one day of rest for 21 to 45 pitches, but no rest requirement for a pitcher throwing fewer than 21 pitches.

Now it's hard to look at a couple of games played in my little corner of Oregon and determine that we have a national crisis, but hard tasks never worry me. We have a national crisis! These pitch rules are a problem.

1. Let's start with the premise that pitchers need to be limited in their pitching. I'll grant the premise, but with some skepticism. In the summer I work a lot in my home office, which custom gives me a good look at my son's play habits. On most days, he is on the run the whole day. When he and his fellow baseball-loving friends get together, some version of baseball erupts, usually in the form of my son playing catch with one of his friends. No coaches, no rules, just these kids throwing the ball, pretty hard most of the time, and usually at the limit of their distance, back and forth. They don't stretch their arms beforehand (and I'm not about to run out there and insist these kids in sandals and bathing suits run through a warm-up stretching routine) and they spend at least one-half of their throws trying to curve the ball. Like kids in my day, these boys crave knowledge about how to throw the exotic pitches they see the pros make on television. (And they find that knowledge: the internet has ended all hopes of keeping such adult images from the young.) They just throw, hundreds of times, without limitation. Is Little League worried about kids throwing baseballs with no one counting? Should I sit near the window and count my son's throws, racing out to stop him before he throws number 76, or insist on two days of rest if he throws more than 45?

2a. By the way, is it really necessary that young boys stretch before baseball games? Not sure if my kid is typical, but he spends the entire summer day on the run. Does anyone out there have his kid stretch before the kid rides off on his bike, or plays with the dog, or plays wiffle ball in the front yard with his pals? Then why when this same kid puts on the uniform and arrives at the ball field that evening does he now have to perform all this stretching that looks designed for forty-year-olds? Kids are limber by definition.

2b. Also by the way, my kid likes to arrive early at the ball field (did I mention he likes baseball?) and as soon as he arrives, he wants to play catch. Again he'll throw it hard and long. He does stop when he's tired, but minutes later he'll be back at it. Watch any LL team warm up and the players will easily throw the ball fifty times each over the course of the pre-game hour. Plus add in the 5-8 warm-up pitches a pitcher makes between innings. If the rule is that a child my son's age should be limited to 75 pitches in a calendar day, well, on most game days, between the play at home and pre-game warm-ups, he'll exceed that number before he delivers his first pitch. Again, I would assume my son is not unique in his love of throwing. Perhaps an in-game pitch is a little more physically stressful than a warm-up throw, but not by much. These kids throw way more than 75 times.

2c. And by the way, years ago I was at a game and the opposing coach was one of these guys who's really into it, just every aspect of the LL baseball game being treated like it was the MLB World Series. Statistics kept and analyzed, coaches dressed up in uniforms to match the players, lots of yelling at the umpires. (Yes, his team won.) At one point he goes to the mound to visit his starting pitcher. "How many?," the coach yells to a parent in the stands, whose job it was to keep track of the pitch count. "121," yells back the parent. Yikes. The coach left the pitcher in.

2d. As an aside, it is really all that bad that a young boy throw a curveball? Watch kids play catch: about all they do is throw curveballs, or any other pitch that might put a little shake into the ball. They throw knucklers, screwballs, knuckle curves, curves, sliders, cut fastballs, you name it. (Of course, in reality all these pitches are "gravity balls" whose slow sinking to the earth results from the distortion of space-time, so that as the ball travels through space it also travels through time. But try convincing a stubborn boy on this point.) So when a game comes and the same kid puts a spin on the ball and the spin (or perhaps the theory of general relativity) results in the ball sinking to the earth, why should all the adults watching get so hot and bothered? Do these gravity balls really result in Tommy John surgery? Maybe yes, at some point. For a ten-year old who spends a large chunk of his summer hours trying to throw a curve ball? I don't care if TSLP Junior throws his curve ball. He won't need his right elbow for his career in law anyway.

3. So, even though I'm granting the premise that a pitcher's pitches ought to be limited, it's a bit of a sketchy premise, given all the throwing kids do on their own. But if the pitches are to be limited, should that limit be created by a rule or a standard? Lawyers and law-makers struggle with this choice all the time. A rule is a fixed point; a standard is a less specific, less descriptive range of outcomes beyond which one should not go. Seventy-five pitches as a limit is a rule; "pitch until not unduly tired" is a standard. Rules take away discretion; standards rely on it. Now to be sure, a rule and a standard may be seen as two points along a continuum. LL's former rule, which limited pitchers by innings, not pitch counts, operated more in the way of a standard because the stress on a pitcher varied by inning; a pitcher throwing two innings may work a lot harder than one throwing four. Thus, a coach might reasonably allow a pitcher to throw his maximum innings, if they were easy, or limit him short of the maximum if not.

4. One big problem with rules is also their virtue: they allow for no discretion. Some boys, especially when working easy innings with plenty of rest in between, are physically able without apparent difficulty to exceed the maxima; they can also come back for more pitching a day or two later. Other boys, especially those with poor throwing motions, may struggle to reach the limits. Now all of us have heard, if perhaps only through the newspapers, of coaches leaving young pitchers in the game for excessive lengths, or of the increased incidence of arm surgeries among the comparatively young. Rules suggest we don't trust our coaches. Maybe we shouldn't, since many of them are dads who bring little in the way of expertise to their volunteer roles. But still, any adult can tell when a kid is tired out, and when a kid is done, it's time to take him out. But a kid will often tell us too. Pitchers who are tired will have trouble repeating their motion and will lose velocity and get wild.

5. But that's not the real problem. It's this: by eliminating discretion in decision-making (even about the right time to change pitchers), rules generate incentives to take advantage, what some might call unforeseen or adverse collateral consequences. The pitch count rules, for instance, have coaches remove perfectly effective pitchers after just 20 pitches, even in the middle of counts, so that the pitchers will be eligible the next day. Is it more healthy for a boy to throw 20 pitches every day instead of 40 with a day of rest? I do recall Jonathan Papelbon, the star young reliever for the Boston Red Sox, claiming that his frequent appearances as a short reliever were hard on his shoulder and that a move to the starting rotation would be better for his health. Is it wise to use a 10-year old daily? Unmistakably this is happening, as the rules implicitly encourage it. I've also repeatedly seen coaches call out the "remaining" allowable pitches to their pitcher, exhorting full effort on the last few pitches. A pitcher not subject to pitch limits might naturally adjust his efforts to coast through certain weaker hitters and to be sure to save some strength for later innings. With the pitch count, the pitcher will go all out at the end, hoping to finish with a strikeout. What sense is there to encourage a boy at his maximum pitch limit to throw the last few with greatest effort?

6. On the other side of the ball I'm also witnessing offensive coaches instructing batters to take pitches in order to run up pitch counts in order to drive effective pitchers out of the game. The third-base coach for my son's team told me he has repeatedly given the "take" sign on a three balls and one strike count (a hitter's count) to add to the opposing pitcher's total pitch count. Watching the games, I have every reason to conclude other coaches are doing the same. The pitch count has become an offensive weapon. Batters will learn to take strikes instead of hit them.

7. One beneficial effect of the pitch count rules is to encourage teams to use more players at pitcher, albeit as a bunch of short relievers. But if Little League really wanted to extend pitching staffs it would allow tournaments to schedule teams for more than a single game per day. By limiting pitchers to but one game per day, coaches would have little choice but to use pitchers for more than the 20-pitch "short relief" role. The problem is of course that, despite what the parents think, not every kid can pitch. It's not easy to stand on the mound in a pressurized all-star contest with runners on base and a full count, while hundreds of parents hang on one's every move. A coach is lucky to field a team with three or four serviceable pitchers. Not too many would be happy to manage a "walk-a-thon" featuring each team's sixth-best pitcher. Not too many parents would enjoy that either. Little League needs to recognize that the reality is that few players can pitch effectively and keep the games competitive and completed before nightfall.

8. Rules are a problem in law because they lend themselves to easy manipulation, and thus engender lots of socially undesirable conduct. They do have a place, but it's comparatively rare that law makers can be so certain that a certain rule is the "right" one that all conduct on the wrong side of the rule should be prohibited. That's why law makers and courts and the like favor standards and prescribe words that signify standards ("reasonable," "substantial," "good faith"). Standards allow for flexibility and judgment, and flexibility and judgment form bulwarks against manipulation and unwanted collateral consequences. LL's pitch count rules seem to invite manipulation, and do so without, at least in my mind, generating clear offsetting benefits.

Full post as published by The Sports Law Professor on July 08, 2007 (boomark / email).