A Pitchers Worst Nightmare

With the startup of AJ Ellis facts, and it's entertaining joke facts, I was reminded of an argument I had with a friend after the 2010 season about the unseen advantages of Casey Blake. At the time I stated that an unseen benefit of Casey Blake was his tenacity at the plate, and with his tenacity he he aided the team in chasing pitchers out of the game early.

Now what's the benefit of this? In the modern age of closely watched pitch counts, and bullpen arms not seeing more than 2 games in a row, the amount of work that pitchers see is very closely watched. Let's give an example of how a three game series may work out if a team successfully extended their plate appearences in order to chase pitchers out of the game. Let's assume that with a bullpen of 7 pitchers 3 were used the night before going into the three game series leaving 4 fresh relievers. Assuming the batters work full counts, and they average one man on base each inning, then with 4 batters faced each inning the starter would pitch 100 pitches by the fifth and most likly be done at that point. If this can be repeated all three days, than with 4 innings of baseball left, 12 innings at least will need to be covered by the bullpen. That doesn't even include situational switches in order to set up lefty on lefty matchups. Basically, by the third game of the series the opposing team, now deep into their bullpen, will be useing their worst and most ineffective relievers to close out the series rather than their best. In fact in 2011, the two teams who saw the most pitches per plate appearence ranked number 1 and 2 runs scored as well.

In closing there is a great deal of unseen value to batters like AJ Ellis, whom so far this year is ranked 2nd in pitches seen per plate appearance and I wish the Dodgers had a few more batters like him.