Stephen Strasburg and the Verducci Effect

I sometimes think some ideas are firmly illustrated to be wrong and then become surprised when I see that there are back wellings where the idea still holds.  One of these ideas is the Verducci Effect.  The Verducci Effect specifically is about how with pitchers 25 years old and younger who throw more than 30 IP in comparison to their previous year pitcher will be at a greater risk for injury.  The term is often broadened to mean really anything to do with giving a young pitcher too much work before he gets older.  The idea had a lot of traction at first as it made some logical sense.  Young arms are growing arms and young arms are less experienced arms.  Like anyone at the gym or running, you slowly build up your strength or stamina over time with increasingly great feats.  This makes sense to us.

However, time and time again, the Verducci Effect has been shown to not be real at all even though he delivers a column or two on it every year (though now it looks like he is transitioning over to injured closer stories).  The earliest study I can find is from David Gassko in 2006 that found "overworked" pitchers appeared to pitch more, not less, innings the next year.  Jeremy Greenhouse wrote a column on injuries and the Effect...once again finding nothing to the notion.  I am sure there are many, many other articles by amazing writers who went on to be employed by Major League Baseball franchises.

That said...the Nationals claim they have evidence that shows in their favor the need to end Stephen Strasburg's season even though he is one of their best arms and they will be entering the playoffs.  From my qualitative perspective, it has seemed that this application of the Effect pleases Tom Verducci.  I figured to give the idea another look and measure the general idea in a slightly different (but incredibly simple) way.  Are the Nats using data over several years, not just one?  They have control of Strasburg's rights in 2013, 2014, and 2015.  In a marathon sense, keeping him healthy over that period is more important than the result of four games in September and, arguably, a couple games in October.  In a Keep-Your-Eyes-on-the-Prize sense, well, he should be pitching.

To test this, I took every pitcher from 1998 to 2007 (a ten year period) who threw more than 140 IP t age 23 and within his first three years of pitching at the MLB level.  I then proceeded to sub-divide these players into 20 IP allotments.  For instance, 140-159, 160-179, 180-199, 200-219, and 220+.  I then individually compared their current season to the accumulation of their next three seasons.  I compared how many innings they pitched as well as creating a metric for this study, vFIP.  To measure vFIP, you divide a pitcher's age 23 FIP by the next three year accumulative FIP.  A vFIP over 100 shows improvement and vice versa.

The first thing to look at would be injuries.  Half of the ten pitchers in the 140-159 class suffered injuries over the next five years (Ricky Nolasco, Josh Beckett, Roy Oswalt, Daniel Cabrera, and Ken Cloude).  This sounds like a great deal of loss, but every innings group roughly had the same injury effect rate, which would agree with previous studies. 

Perhaps better would be to compare actual work loads over the age 24 to 26 seasons.  In terms of innings pitched, there was no significant difference between the 140-159 group and the 160-179 (p=0.78) and 180-199 (p=0.66) groups.  However, significant differences were found between that group and pitchers who threw more than 200 innings (0.03 and 0.04, respectively).

140	160	180	200	220
135	128.1	147.1	191.1	194

There is likely to be a selection bias in play here as if a pitcher was given the opportunity to throw 200 innings in a season then he is likely to be a very good pitcher (or considered to be one) and earn or be given the opportunity to pitch a great deal over the next three seasons.  At the very least, it appears that pitching fewer than 200 innings changes what will happen much at all.

The final aspect to look at is performance.  This is where I will break out the vFIP metric and here is the data set:

140	160	180	200	220
123	118	104	100	108
111	83	103	83	92
87	102	93	113	87
76	104	100	96	122
131	82	98	106	65
120	106	124	83	98
99	90	98	92
130	101	86	114
96	85	94	105
96	129	80
116	106	111
	105
	82

The groups are not significantly different from each other.  However, there appears to be a slight improvement in performance from the 140-159 group.  Again, this is not significant and likely requires a larger data set to see if this trend can be more firmly established, but the 140-159 pitchers improved their performance by 16% as a group.  The other four groups were consistent with improvement ranged from 1 to 3 % better than their age 23 seasons. 

Again, there may be some selection bias in these groupings because if you are tossing over 200 innings then you have probably pitched very well and it will be difficult to improve upon that.  Here are the raw FIPs for the groups.

	140	160	180	200	220
Age 23	4.64	4.73	4.4	4.24	4.18
24-26	4.01	4.65	4.28	4.17	4.16

The data suggests that the 140-159 group pitchers saw great improvement in their performances.  However, I would temper those differences with the idea that perhaps a pitcher who throws 140-159 innings at age 23 and proceeds to do poorly is more likely to be replaced in the rotation than a pitcher who tosses more innings.  There may be a prejudice that benefits pitchers who threw more innings during their age 23 season.

That all said, I am not sure how this informs us about Stephen Strasburg.  There is no evidence from the above methodology that injury rates decrease.  It appears that pitchers who log in more innings during their age 23 season wind up throwing more innings in the future at about the same level of performance.  Pitchers who are worked for 140-159 MLB innings tend to show improvement as a group in terms of performance, but not in innings pitched.  This may be the result of less desirable pitchers being able to be discarded more easily when they have less of a track record.

Interview with an Arm Injury Researcher, Part II

 by Will Beaudoin

Will is a freelance writer who has written for Camden Depot previously.

Long Toss Mechanics (Picture from Dick Mills' site.)

During my discussion with Dr. Fleisig, I asked him for a few examples of compelling research in the field of biomechanics from the past year. Interestingly enough, he directed me towards two articles he had a hand in creaing—“Biomechanical Comparison of Baseball Pitching and Long-Toss: Implications for Training and Rehabilitation” (Fleisig, Bolt, et al, 2011; Ed. note: Camden Depot discussed this article briefly in a previous post) and “Risk of Serious Injury For Young Baseball Pitchers: A 10-Year Prospective Study” (Fleisig, Andrews, et al, 2011).

The first piece, concerning itself with the somewhat controversial training and rehabilitation practice known long-toss, Fleisig et al. (2011) set for the hypothesis that there are “kinetic…differences in the throwing shoulder and elbow” in long-toss when compared to pitching off a mound (p. 297). More than a dozen college-level pitchers were asked to long-toss from 37 meters, 55 meters, and from a “maximum distance”. For the 37 meter and 55 meter throws, the pitchers were required to throw with little to no arc, while no such restriction was placed on the “maximum distance” toss. Data from this session was collected using a motion capture device. On a separate occasion, the same pitchers were asked to throw their “standard” fastball from a mound, again whilst recorded by a motion capture device.

As Orioles fans, this is a study that should interest us considering the controversy surrounding Dylan Bundy’s own long-toss program around draft time and it’s potential long-term physical effects. While this particular study doesn’t provide any conclusive evidence in regard to long-term injury outlook, the study does show that both “shoulder and elbow torque increase with throwing distance” (p. 302). This leads the researchers to believe that long-toss, especially “maximum” distance long-toss may in fact be harmful to a pitcher—perhaps something to keep in mind when thinking about Bundy’s long-term health.

The article titled, “Risk of Serious Injury For Young Baseball Pitchers: a 10-Year Prospective Study”, focused on pitching injuries in young pitchers and seemingly dispels the widespread belief that youth pitchers shouldn’t throw breaking balls for fear of injury. A long-term study, the researchers monitored nearly 500 pitchers under the age of fourteen over a ten-year period. After hundreds and hundreds of interviews over the course of a decade, it was discovered that it wasn’t so much the pitch-type that led to injury, but rather the amount of pitches and innings thrown. Over the course of the study, Fleisig et al. discovered that pitchers who threw more than 100 innings in a single year “had about 3.5 times as much chance of serious injury as those who pitched less” while they couldn’t “determine whether pitchers who started throwing curveballs before age 13 years [had] a higher chance of injury” (p. 256). While not necessarily directly applicable to the major league level, research such as this only goes to show that so much of injury prevention lies within the rather simple philosophy of volume management.

I also had the chance to talk briefly with Will Carroll in regard to pitching injuries. Will, who got his start at Baseball Prospectus, now writes for Sports Illustrated, and has authored several books dealing with sports injuries, was kind enough to answer a couple of my questions.

A common theme when discussing pitching injuries on the Internet is the phrase “inverted w.”  Do you have any thoughts on the validity of inverted w's being dangerous to a pitcher's health?

I'm not a proponent of the Inverted W. Back when I was first learning about biomechanics, I talked to a lot of the top minds in the game and I felt like I knew enough to just look and see things. Well, as with umpires and the strike zone, sometimes our eyes lie. I want more than just observations - I want data. With biomechanics analysis, we can figure out how much stress a pitcher is actually putting on joints, how much force they're exerting, and then we need to move to fatigue and recovery. Few teams are doing the first part of this and fewer are doing the second. Should we wonder then why baseball has lost over a BILLION dollars to pitcher injuries in the last ten years? Moneyball talked about ASMI and their biomechanics lab, but you know how many teams use it now? Maybe two. 

Tommy John surgery has seemingly reached a point where we expect the pitcher to make a full recovery after 16-18 months. However, shoulder tears are still viewed as the boogey man of injuries. Will this always be the case? Can we expect to reach a point in the (relatively) near future in which pitchers who suffer labrum tears are expected to fully recover?

No. Dr. Neal ElAttrache was on a panel with me this summer and he's the guy for shoulders. (Once, Jim Andrews was asked what the first thing he does when he sees a torn labrum case and he said "call Neal for a consult.") Neal gave a great explanation which might still be up at the SABR site [Ed. Note: Audio of the panel can be found here] - the panel was at their annual convention - about how the shoulder is so complex, that its like putting together a puzzle without the box top. The elbow is a hinge. It moves one way. Look at how many things the shoulder can do and how many structures it takes to do it. Just move your shoulder around and pay attention to what it takes to move through various motions and you'll understand why it’s so tough to get it back to original condition.

Joe Girardi, Manager At Large

This is a few weeks late, but, eh, he is still on the market and he'll probably be facing the O's next year as Joe Torre's replacement (for some reason Don Mattingly has been knocked around a bit in the front office). Girardi was one of those not hit, some glove catchers who miraculously was allowed to be a full time player for the Cubs and Yanks, predominantly. He won some rings and is held highly within Steinbrenner's inner circle. He also performed well for Andy MacPhail's Cubs and somehow got an All-Star spot, though he never got in. It wasn't like he was the Cubs only rep either as Sosa was voted in. The team had 4 catchers on the squad. Not sure what was going on there. Anyway, he became the Marlins coach. He took a young squad to a fourth place finish, 19 games behind the Mets in the Nl East. This was so impressive that he won the Manager of the Year Award and is the only manager to win that award with a losing record. It was also noteworthy that he had an open feud with Jeffrey Loria, which pretty much led to his dismissal.

So are the Marlins wasting away again without their beloved captain? Not really. They are a little worse, but not too much. Their hitters are hitting, but their pitchers have underperformed. Hmmm and some are battling injuries. Oh my . . . I wonder if this is a case of pitcher overuse from last season. I wonder if deep sixing Girardi may have been easier to do because he killed a bunch of their pitchers.

Subject 1: Dontrelle Willis
Overrated might be a good word to use. A lot of people consider him to be an ace when he really only had elite numbers for one year and the others come in about average or below for a typical number one pitcher (115 ERA+ is typical for a team's no. 1). His 2005 season (1.13 whip; 2.53 ERA) was so extraordinary in comparison to his other seasons, I would expect there to be some craziness to the data. Over his career, Willis has usually given up 19% (18.9% - 19.5%) line drives which suggest a BA/BIP of .310 . . . which is exactly what we get . . . except for 2005.
In 2005, his line drive percentage bounced up to 23.8%, but his BA/BIP went down to .290 . . . weird. He also cut his walks down to 2.2/9 innings and kept in the 6s for k/9. Somehow he dropped his HR/Fly ratio nearly in half from his career values . . . which is weird. Now, what this tells me is that he learned to pitch . . . somewhat. He went longer into games by not walking guys, but keeping his K/9 up. Plus, he threw a lot of balls that died in the outfield . . . he plays in the NL East. Anyway, that season looks like nothing he is currently doing. So what about Joe?

2006 Willis looks in line with 2004 Willis. In '04 Willis was about a 100 pitch/game pitcher. In '05 he became a 110 pitch/game pitcher. Girardi used Willis at age 24 as a 118 pitch/game pitcher. These outings add up. This year he is a 100 pitch/game pitcher. I think he is injured. He has been their workhorse and they are just killing him with this routine. They are not even holding him back this year. They are trying to get what they can, but he falls apart at the end. He doesn't have the stamina he had a year or two ago. I think he has been misused since he came out in '05. Girardi didn't help things, but he certainly didn't start it. I just don't think he was smart enough to stop it. Willis workload increased as the season progressed in '06, which suggests that Girardi was really trying to win no matter the long term cost.

Conclusion . . . kind of bad management.

Subject #2: Scott Olsen

Not too many pitching prospects look as good as Scott Olsen. At 19, He killed the Salley League. At 20, he obliterated the FSL. At 21, he held his own at AA. So, hey let's call him up. He held his own, but didn't fair too well. The next year, Girardi liked him enough to put him in the rotation. There isn't a lot of data to go on here, but he certainly is getting hit . . . strangely a lot are line drives . . . but few homers. As opposed to Willis' '05 . . . these are actually falling in for hits. He has also lost 2 strikeouts per 9 innings. His peripherals do not suggest the 1 run difference in ERA is real . . . they suggest a 0.50 decline. So what about Joe?

The kid was kept to about 100 pitches/game. Never having pitched above AA . . . Joe upped his workload by 80 innings over the previous year. Not too smart. Typically, you want to stretch your guys about 30 innings up per year. And . . . that is all I got.

Conclusion . . . Joe did alright with him except pitching him way way too much. Scott's current problems probably do not stem from that overuse . . . though they might. We'll know more in a couple years because he is so young (23). He may have been exceptionally lucky last year or not so lucky this year. He still has some big K games . . . who knows. Scott had not suffered the excessive use Willis has been subjected to.

Subject #3: Josh Johnson
A marginal, but promising prospect (think a shinier version of Garrett Olson), who broke out big last year. His increase in workload was appropriate. He threw about 105 pitches per game. He started out well and was actually a bit lucky . . . then tailed off, but finished with a 3.10 ERA. Looking at peripherals . . . it was more accurate to call him a 4.00 ERA pitcher. This year he began on the DL and has proceeded to get knocked around. He has pitched in 4 games this year and only yesterday made it to 5 full innings. Control has never been his strong suit, but he is just walking so many people right now. Taking about 20 pitches to get out of an inning.

Conclusion: Nothing really hits you to pin this on Joe. 105 pitches per game just feels wrong to subject a 22 year old to in the majors. This isn't Dusty Baker killing the Cubs with 120 pitch outings . . . but . . . it's marginal. Definately not a smart thing to do if you are worried about your future.


So Blame Joe:
I just do not see enough evidence to say he buried his pitchers. Willis was being misused before. Olsen should not have been given so many innings. Johnson should not have been made to throw so many pitches. Oh, and Annibel Sanchez isnt that good to begin with. I guess we would have to see a few more years and just throw some more conjecture up there. Also, none of these guys falling to where they did is all that surprising. The difficulties Olsen and Johnson faced toward the end of their seasons could have been fatigue or it could have been the other teams figuring out their scouting report. Willis is close enough to his career norms and I wouldn't be shocked to learn he is hurt. Sanchez is a 4 or 5 guy, nothing more. Remember Bud Smith threw a no hitter.

Would I want Girardi?
I think he is overpriced in comparison to what he has done. I don't know why people think he is such a good manager. His team is playing just as well with the same components. The hitters are all doing well if not better. The pitching is a notch down, but lots of them look to have been lucky last year. It is similar to the ChiSox pitching during their World Series run and then the following year.