FanPost

Pitcher Endurance after Consecutive 70/70 Seasons

Duane Burleson

Last week, Jason wrote an analysis piece pointing out that in 2014 Cody Allen and Bryan Shaw are on pace to appear in more than 70 games and pitch more than 70 innings for the second consecutive season. He found that since 2000, 56 different pitchers have had two or more consecutive 70/70 seasons. The question he posed was whether two or more consecutive seasons with that many appearances might take a toll on the pitchers’ performance in the following year (post 70/70 season). In the comments, I raised the question whether pitchers are more likely to have arm injuries following those seasons. Unfortunately, there is no easy way to figure out either of those things.

As Jason wrote:

"It would be interesting to dig through all of those pitchers to see how effective they were in the year after their second consecutive 70/70 season, relative to their performance in those two seasons, but there's no easy way to do that, so it would require manually looking at three (or more season) from each of those 56 pitchers, and that would require far more time than I have."

As he observed, the most interesting thing would be to study how each pitcher performed in their 70/70 seasons and compare that to how they did the year after, but that's a ton of data, and I didn’t have the time to go through all of it either. I did gather some data for all pitchers in their post 70/70 seasons to see if I could identify major decreases in games and innings pitched or poor performances in those seasons. I compiled games, innings pitched, WAR, ERA+, and FIP for those seasons. I also looked at disabled list stints for the pitchers involved.

I excluded two pitchers (Tyler Clippard and Matt Belisle) who are currently in a post 70/70 season. I excluded them because we don’t have their final WAR, ERA+, or FIP numbers, but it should be noted that leaving them out hurts the averages for games and innings pitched among post-70/70 pitchers, because they're both on pace to reach those benchmarks again. Two other pitchers (Billy Wagner and Keith Foulke) each had two separate runs of consecutive 70/70 seasons, and I counted each of their follow up seasons separately, so there are a total of 56 data points included in this study, coming from 54 pitchers.

Findings:

Games/Innings Pitched: The average number of games in which these pitchers appeared in their post 70/70 seasons was 52.95 and the average number of innings pitched was 55.27. The fewest innings pitched in a post 70/70 season is 0, which occurred twice, each time due to the pitcher (Nick Masset, Steve Karsay) missing the season because of a shoulder injury.

The most innings pitched in a post 70/70 season is 122.1, by Byung-Hyun Kim, who spent some time on the DL that year, but also logged time as a starter. In addition to Kim, four others threw more than 70 innings (in fewer than 70 games) in their post 70/70 season (Tony Pena, David Weathers, Foulke, and Mariano Rivera). Another 17 pitchers threw 60+ innings in their post 70/70 season. All told, 39% of pitchers with consecutive 70/70 seasons came back and threw at least 60 innings the following year.

WAR, ERA+, and FIP: The median WAR in the post 70/70 seasons was 0.35, the median ERA+ was 119, and the median FIP was 3.99. Ideally we'd compare these to the medians of the pitchers during their consecutive 70/70 seasons to measure any drop off in performance, but I didn't have time to search through all that.

Just as the median ERA+ is better than league average (100), the median post-70/70 FIP (3.99) is better than than the median league FIP for that period (2002-2013), which was 4.32. The worst FIP in a post 70/70 season belongs to Chris Reitsma (6.65), as do the worst ERA+ (52) and WAR (-1.4). The best FIP was by Joe Nathan (2.21), while Rivera had best ERA+ (252) and WAR (3.9).

Injuries: I used a combination of the DL lists compiled by Jeff Zimmerman at FanGraphs for 2010 to 2013 and scanning the MLB transactions site for the other relevant years, in order to track down as much info as I could.

Of the 56 post 70/70 seasons, 24 included no time on the DL, while 32 (57%) were on the DL for some or all of the season. At least 6 of those were not arm-related injuries though (there may be others, but the MLB list is incomplete). Thus, not quite half the pitchers with consecutive 70/70 seasons spent time on the DL with arm trouble in the following year.

Also, Zimmerman’s study of relief pitchers and the DL suggests that about 1/3 of all relief pitchers will go on the DL each year, so the rate for pitchers following consecutive 70/70 seasons is higher. By the way, if anyone has ever tried to compile accurate DL data over time, they will appreciate how valuable Zimmerman’s annual spreadsheets are!

Summary:

  • Pitchers coming off consecutive 70/70 seasons have shown moderate declines (~20%) in games and innings pitched in the following season.
  • The median ERA+ and FIP for pitchers in this study are both somewhat better than league average. Unfortunately, I cannot say at this time how those figures from the post-70/70 seasons compare to the same figures from the 70/70 seasons themselves.
  • Roughly 33% of all MLB relief pitchers spend some time on the DL during the season. Among pitchers coming off consecutive 70/70 seasons, that figure is ~46%.

-

If anyone wants to take any of this to the next level and evaluate each pitcher’s performance in their 70/70 years and compare it to their post 70/70 seasons, I’d be happy to email you my spreadsheet with the data I have.

FanPosts are reader-generated, and do not necessarily reflect the views of Covering the Corner or the Covering the Corner staff.