Pitch Counts and Normalized Innings

More on pitching. A couple years ago, Joe Sheehan wrote an article about decreasing workloads for pitchers. He concluded that
“Whereas the task of pitching the entire game may have been a reasonable expectation for the first 30, 40, maybe 80 years of organized baseball, now it requires too many pitches thrown with too much effort.”
A problem that analysts have faced in comparing pitchers of yesteryear to today’s pitchers has been the problem of decreasing workloads. Cy Young pitched well over 7,000 innings; even today’s greatest horse, Roger Clemens, has thrown 3,000 innings less. But if we were to look at their pitch counts, we would probably see that the gap was much smaller than their innings pitched would suggest. The problem is that pitch count data is not available for the time we need it most: 100 years ago, when it took many fewer pitches to finish a game than it does now.
Thankfully, Tangotiger, one of the leaders in sabermetric analysis, has proposed a simple formula for estimating pitch counts:
3.3*PA + 1.5*SO + 2.2*BB
I’ve found that it correlates almost perfectly with actual pitch counts (r = .97), so this tool is very useful when trying to figure innings pitched based on pitch counts. What I did was, using the Lahman Database, estimate the number of pitches thrown by every pitcher in baseball history. Then, to translate that into modern innings, I divided by 170 and multiplied by 9 as I’ve found that the average game takes about 170 pitches nowadays.
Here is the modified career leader board:

nameLast	nameFirst	IP	Pitches	Tr.Inn
Young	Cy	7354.7	106073	5616
Ryan	Nolan	5386	89217.5	4723
Galvin	Pud	6003.3	87620.2	4639
Johnson	Walter	5914.7	86633.8	4586
Niekro	Phil	5404.3	83826.9	4438
Carlton	Steve	5217.3	81790.5	4330
Perry	Gaylord	5350.3	80779.7	4277
Sutton	Don	5282.3	79697.9	4219
Spahn	Warren	5243.7	78134.4	4137
Blyleven	Bert	4970	76080.2	4028
Keefe	Tim	5047.7	75744.5	4010
Nichols	Kid	5056.3	75693.5	4007
Alexander	Pete	5190	74451.6	3942
Seaver	Tom	4782.7	72435.7	3835
Wynn	Early	4564	71452.4	3783
John	Tommy	4710.3	71120.9	3765
Clemens	Roger	4493	70835.4	3750
Kaat	Jim	4530.3	68843.4	3645
Roberts	Robin	4688.7	68794.1	3642
Mathewson	Christy	4780.7	68758.6	3640
Jenkins	Fergie	4500.7	67701.4	3584
Ruffing	Red	4344	67681.4	3583
Radbourn	Charley	4535.3	67073	3551
Rixey	Eppa	4494.7	66293.6	3510
Plank	Eddie	4495.7	65869.9	3487
Welch	Mickey	4802	65642.2	3475
Tanana	Frank	4188.3	65135.8	3448
Grimes	Burleigh	4179.7	64381.7	3408
Lyons	Ted	4161	62967.5	3334
Maddux	Greg	4181.3	62353.9	3301
Faber	Red	4086.7	62163.1	3291
Newsom	Bobo	3759.3	61274.5	3244
Feller	Bob	3827	61146.3	3237
Martinez	Dennis	3999.7	61074.7	3233
Grove	Lefty	3940.7	60899.3	3224
Gibson	Bob	3884.3	60639.1	3210
Hough	Charlie	3801.3	60567	3206
Jones	Sam	3883	60012.4	3177
Morris	Jack	3824	59971	3175
McCormick	Jim	4275.7	59921	3172
Palmer	Jim	3948	59371.8	3143
Koosman	Jerry	3839.3	59256.4	3137
Quinn	Jack	3920.3	58312.4	3087
Glavine	Tom	3740.3	58067.2	3074
Bunning	Jim	3760.3	58021.9	3072
Whitehill	Earl	3564.7	57296.7	3033
Hoyt	Waite	3762.3	57221.5	3029
Reuss	Jerry	3669.7	56760.5	3005
Lolich	Mickey	3638.3	56627.8	2998
Niekro	Joe	3584	55444.7	2935

While the overall order remains fairly similar, the innings become much more compressed (the standard deviation among the top-50 drops from 754 to 559). The difference between Cy Young and Roger Clemens becomes 1,000 innings smaller. It’s still huge, however, and that’s because while I have adjusted for pitch counts, I have not adjusted for the second part of the equation: that Young was able to throw pitches with lesser effort due to the substandard batters he generally faced. I have an idea of how to adjust for this, and when I look into it, I’ll present my findings, but for now, I just want to show just how pitch counts can impact innings pitched.

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