On June 15, Kyle Harrison was in a bit of a pickle. He walked two batters, putting runners on first and second, and even though the Sacramento River Cats were leading 7-2, the Sugar Land Space Cowboys were threatening to get back into the game. The count was running full, and he knew he was about to face his last batter of the game. So he came back and threw his best fastball, a challenge up the middle of the zone. He got the boil, and finally got his first win of the season.
It was the only time this season that Harrison faced the 19th batter in a game. It’s also the only win of his Triple-A career thus far, mostly because it’s the only time he’s gone a full five innings this season. That final pitch was his 81st of the game, tying him for his highest pitch count of the season.
On May 6, 2007, Tim Lincecum made the first start of his major-league career and 14th of his professional career. Less than a year before his debut, he held the University of Pacific Tigers to one run in seven innings, and now he was facing future World Series champions like Pat Burrell and Aaron Rowand. . He threw 100 pitches in that debut, and didn’t make it out of the fifth inning. But he quickly adjusted to the majors, and he threw at least seven innings in each of his next four starts.
In his beginning on the first of September, however, Lincecum had his shortest outing of the season, facing exactly 19 batters. His last pitch was his 81st of the game, which was his second-lowest pitch count of the season.
You don’t need an example like this to understand that the development of baseball and pitching will be different in 2023 compared to 2007, but the symmetry is pretty perfect. When Harrison faced 19 batters and threw 81 pitches, it was his longest outing of the season. When Lincecum faced 19 batters and threw 81 pitches, it was his shortest outing of the season.
The times, they became very different. And if you miss the days of Lincecum taking the ol’ bean and staying there until the seventh or eighth inning, prepare to continue to be disappointed. It will never change. Not soon, and possibly not. Although a new front office and coaching staff will take over, nothing should change. With Kyle Harrison, you’re looking at the future of baseball.
If you sort the minor league pitching leaders by innings pitched, you’ll find prospects who are in some of the last holdout organizations. Of the seven pitchers who have thrown more than 126 innings in the minors this year, three of them are the New York Yankees and the other three are the Seattle Mariners. The San Francisco Giants just have two minor-league pitchers in their entire organization who threw more than 100 innings this season. And if you think the Giants are outliers, note that the Los Angeles Dodgers have only one, and he is a third of an inning above the cutoff. It’s right there a starting pitcher in the minor leagues who averaged more innings per outing than Patrick Corbin of the Washington Nationals this year.
The Giants, if they could build a rotation with their computer, “Weird Science”-style, would create an army of Nolans Ryan and Randys Johnson – guys who could throw 240 to 300 innings per year. Heck, toggle the “walk” setting, and you can get 330 innings out of Ryan. Yes, the Giants will take that. So is every team.
There’s no “Weird Science” computer, though, so you can bust out the dreams of a robo-Randy. There are exceptions to the new pitcher development paradigm, of course. The Giants may have the best example in baseball. Logan Webb leads baseball in innings pitched, and he is just one of 21 pitchers with a complete game this year. He lasts into the sixth, seventh and even eighth innings with regularity because the movement of his pitches (and the variety of these pitches) is so incredible, he doesn’t face many third-innings. punishment order. He was blessed with a darting sinker and a darting change-up that looked the same until they approached the plate and ran in different directions. They’re both freaky, weird pitches; add it up, and you get the league leader in innings.
These men will continue to appear like four-leaf clovers. Jacob deGrom threw 200 innings or more in three straight seasons because he threw a billion miles an hour wherever he wanted. If Randy Johnson were to come in today, my guess would be a team would have his command and delivery faster, and he would lead the league in innings pitched every year for a decade. There are some pitchers that are so effective, so new that they stand out. As long as he stays healthy, you can bet that the new No.
Those are cryptid pitchers, though, and you can’t plan for them. You might get lucky and get three different types of Logan Webb, but it’s like hitting a trifecta on the track. It’s great when it happens! Probably not going to happen. So teams build their entire organization with that in mind. You can’t teach strength outside of the base level of conditioning – like foot speed, you either get it or you don’t – but you can improve speed. You can improve the order. You can develop pitch shapes and pitch tunneling. You can do this for multiple pitchers throughout the organization, to a point where they can all effectively strike out big league hitters once or twice per game.
See what Tristan Beck did against the best offense in baseball on Sunday. See what Keaton Winn did with just two pitches before he got hurt. Look at Jakob Junis, who called time before every pitch and yelled, “Here’s a slider” to every hitter he faced, but still got outs. That’s a fourth-rounder, a fifth-rounder and a minor-league free agent, respectively. The Giants felt they could build an army of pitchers who could pitch nine innings every day, and they were just getting started. Mason Black might be their best top-minors pitching prospect, and he’s only averaging four innings per start. Carson Whisenhunt is averaging less than four innings per start in Double A.
It’s still possible Harrison could be a traditional starter like Webb, of course. If he can improve his command, it is not difficult to imagine that he will not be hit for the second, third, fourth or 17th time by order *.
* Because the Giants were tied, 0-0, in the 57th inning, but that’s another story
For now, though, Harrison is a part of baseball’s future. Quality innings in short bursts, followed by a pitcher who can offer quality innings in short bursts, followed by a pitcher who can offer quality innings in short bursts, followed by … you got it the idea. Teams have gotten really good at getting relievers from Eastern Illinois University and turned them into professional bat-missers, and no comparable revolution allowed batters to catch up. Probably not. Hitting coaches will continue to run at the limits of neural processing and 60 feet, six inches. (“Until there’s a rule change, you’re dopes,” Rob Manfred muttered under his breath.)
And if you like the old days, don’t forget that Lincecum finished as a Cy Young contender after 150 career starts or so. He had five years at an elite level before his body stopped cooperating. If he hadn’t thrown 138 pitches for a terrible team in a meaningless game in September, if only he had been there to throw four or five innings before a procession of fellow strikeouts kings come out of the bullpen, maybe he will last five more years. Heck, he’s the same age as Max Scherzer, so he might even be pitching now.
Beyond the health and fitness concerns, though, the Giants (and a whole bunch of other organizations) are doing it because it works. Every bullpen has six or seven guys with the stuff to make Wade Boggs lose his mustache in 1983. Hitters can only catch up. At some point, they stop catching.
If they do, the Giants hope to have an army of Kyle Harrison-adjacent pitchers ready to back up the real Kyle Harrison, who isn’t likely to start seven innings for a few years, at least. . He was a vision of where baseball was going, if it wasn’t already.
(Photo from Harrison’s MLB debut: Bill Streicher / USA Today)