Mets take protecting SP to a new extreme with Joey Lucchesi removal

Back in the 1980s Bill James observed that throughout MLB history, catchers have been asked to do more and more while pitchers have been asked to do less and less. With catchers, improved protective equipment has made the position easier to play than it was in, say, 1902. And at the same time, those pitchers in 1902 weren’t exerting max effort on every pitch nor facing lineups on a regular basis with guys who could take you out of the park in spots 1-8.

Most of us accept the fact that no pitcher in MLB in the 21st Century will come anywhere close to Wilbur Wood’s 1972, when he threw 376.2 IP, the highest total by a pitcher since integration. Additionally, most of us want to do whatever we can to increase the chances that pitchers stay healthy. But teams in MLB have adopted what can best be described as pseudo-science, the belief that X amount of pitches is “safe,” while X + 10 is the equivalent of driving a car 250 mph on a curvy road.

Yesterday afternoon, we saw perhaps the craziest example of a move designed to protect a pitcher that we’ve ever witnessed from the Mets. Joey Lucchesi was removed from the game after just four innings and 43 pitches. That pitch total in that time frame is very good all by itself. Then you throw in the fact that he had eight strikeouts and it becomes remarkable. Yet he wasn’t allowed to pitch the fifth inning.

When asked about it after the game, Luis Rojas said that because the team had moved Lucchesi to the bullpen, he hadn’t had throwing sessions on the side like a starter usually has. Jacob deGrom throws twice on the side between starts. The concern was that one week without a side session was more important than the fact that Lucchesi was cruising.

To be fair, if before the game started, we were given the choice for Lucchesi to pitch four innings and the Mets pitchers as a group to only allow one run through eight innings – all of us would have signed on the dotted line for that outcome.

Still, the idea that how a pitcher throws during a game isn’t an important factor in when to remove him from the contest is something that most of us have trouble accepting. On top of that, without meaning to be cruel or indifferent to the health of a fellow human being, why are we acting with such extreme kid gloves for a pitcher like Lucchesi? It’s one thing if you say you want to be careful with deGrom, who makes – and earns – over $30 million a year. If deGrom gets hurt – what he brings to the team cannot be replaced.

But Lucchesi?

There was no legitimate reason to think that throwing pitch #44 was going to result in an injury to Lucchesi. But let’s say the worst happened and he did get hurt and wound up on the IL. What would the Mets do? They’d slide Jordan Yamamoto or Sam McWilliams or Thomas Szapucki into his slot and essentially carry on just like they had previously.

Furthermore, why is the health of Lucchesi more important than the health of any guy in the bullpen? Drew Smith has a history of injury problems but there was apparently zero concern with asking him to pitch on back-to-back days. Is there really that much evidence that asking a starter to throw pitches 44 and up – but without the benefit of a side session that week – is more dangerous than asking a guy to throw on back-to-back days? Seth Lugo has an injury history and the Mets frequently avoid pitching him in consecutive days.

Conventional wisdom in MLB is that it’s no big deal for a reliever to work on back-to-back days and that one day off instantly refreshes him, no matter how much he’s pitched previously. That doesn’t make sense to me. My opinion is that teams have thrown out logic when it comes to handling their starters that by necessity, they’ve thrown out logic in how they handle their relievers. Except that the first group gets treated with TLC and the second group gets treated with a shrug of the shoulders.

Currently, the Mets are carrying 14 pitchers. Depending upon how you think guys like Lucchesi and Yamamoto rate, they have 10-12 relievers. Yet because of the way they treat relievers, six of them have pitched at least three times in the last six days and two of those have pitched four times. The only reason those numbers aren’t even higher is because there was an off day in there, and two of the relievers were just promoted from the minors.

What happens when there are no off days? Well, we’ll get to find out now.

Bottom line, when a pitcher is cruising with an exceptionally low pitch count, removing him because he didn’t throw a side session that week isn’t in the team’s best interest. When a pitcher is cruising but is coming up against the round number boogeyman of 100 pitches, maybe removing him isn’t in the team’s best interest, either.

It’s tough to run a good bullpen. If you ask fans of all 30 teams, the vast majority of them will complain about their team’s bullpen management. Given that, it doesn’t make any sense to make it harder than it has to be. But that’s what the Mets did – Saturday in particular but in general through most of the Mets360 era.

One way we can run a better bullpen is to ask starters to do a little more than they have recently. And the way to do that is by not being a slave to pitch counts. For comparison’s sake, here are the estimates – because we don’t have exact pitch counts from 45 years ago – from a 20-game sample in 1976:

Seaver – 112, 109, 116, 141, 90
Matlack – 142, 119, 73, 128
Koosman – 91, 88, 86, 108
Swan – 139, 118, 111, 96
Lolich – 94, 75, 127

Not every outing was 140 pitches. And eight outings, when no one was concerned one bit about pitch counts, were under 100 pitches. When Lolich and Swan were going good, they were left in to fly past what would be acceptable today. And four of five starts for Seaver could easily fit in to what they did today. But they didn’t hesitate to let him go to 141 pitches in the other.

But the extreme conservatism MLB teams show their SP makes this type of thing impossible. And the bullpen guys have to pick up the slack. Good luck to our bullpen guys – they’re going to need it.