The National Federation of State High School Associations has said they want all state high school athletic associations to develop and mandate a pitch count/limit for all high school baseball pitchers as the teams enter into the 2017 season…This will be a game pitch count, so if you start and go just two Innings and your pitch count is 75 then you are gone…
By the wording, this will be a universal ‘game pitch count/limit’ and the same count will be imposed on all pitchers, whether you are a freshman or a senior, or if one young man is 18 and say the other kid on the mound the next day, may be 14….Same Count Fits All….
This pitch count must be mandated by the North Carolina High School Athletic Association…..
Here is what the NCHSAA is saying about the new rule being sent their way from/by The National Federation of State High School Associations:
“The NCHSAA was notified today of the NFHS Baseball Rules Committee’s decision to require state associations to set pitching restrictions based on a pitch count. In the coming weeks, NCHSAA staff will be working closely in partnership with the Baseball Coaches Association and the Sports Medicine Advisory Committee to craft and implement the policy that will govern this regulation going forward in the NCHSAA.”
Most of the pro teams have a limit of innings or a specific pitch count for their pitchers set up on an individual basis early in the season, but many times the pitch count may be lifted or adjusted as the season progresses and many times the pro teams will make the limitations even tighter as the season wears on and gets longer and this is based on the fact the many of their young pitchers have racked up a load of innings over April, May, June and July and the major league overseers feel the kids may have worn out their arms as the season moved on and they may shut a kid down for the year in early or mid-August…
With the new pitch count for the state of North Carolina, this will limit how many innings a kid can throw per game and many teams may have to adjust and increase the number of pitchers that they are carrying/using….
Safety first and avoid the worst and it will be interesting to see what the ‘pitch count’ number will be….I don’t think we will see any numbers being set up their like the run Andrew Beckwith went on for Coastal Carolina, when he threw for 133 pitches in one game, in the College World Series….
I would guess a safe number would be a max of 75-80 pitches and the crazy thing will be, your arm should probably be allowed to throw less pitches early in the season and more as the season builds on….
Joe Sirera has the full scoop on this one at the News and Record and you can jump on board with Joe when you CLICK HERE…..
Who’s going to do the counting? The umpires? If not it’ll be the honor system.
Good point and you better have some coaches you can trust…
And on that same note, it should fall on the official scorer…When I do my games, at least recently, I have been keeping a pitch count and I can tell you one thing, it will keep you busy, scoring the game and keeping the pitch count too, but it can be done and it should fall on each team’s official scorer and then they should alert the coach when the kid gets close the count..
The scorer is keeping the count on balls and strikes, have them keep the ‘pitch count’ too and then it would be official/unofficial….They just have to make sure that when a new pitcher enters the game, they re-start the pitch count in the far right-hand column in their score book and they get a total between each Inning and update the totals each inning…
What do others say???
What is sad is that is has to be a rule now. Most Coaches know the limitations of their own player. Some push the envelope way to much.
With most schools keeping score on GameChanger now, GameChanger keeps the pitch count for you. It keeps it per inning and for the entire game and for both pitchers. Again, this will probably be done on the honor system and I’m sure we will find out more about this during the coaches clinic next week.