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Interesting Pitching Stat


By Mike Silva ~ March 15th, 2011. Filed under: Mike Silva.

Former Mets, Oakland, and Brewers pitching coach Rick Peterson has been on WFAN twice this month. Both times he informed the host that over one billion dollars has been spent on pitching the last decade. Of that total, about $400 million wound up on the disabled list. That’s almost a 40 percent.

With that failure rate would you ever sign a pitcher to a long term contract? Imagine if a Fortune 500 company sold a product with that type of failure rate? Would they even stay in business?

If CC Sabathia opts out is it worth giving him another contract that takes him into his late thirties? Is it wise to go more than four years, maybe five if it’s vesting, with pitchers? Ideally you would go 2-3 years, if possible.

That stat just blows me away, and proves how risky long terms contracts are to pitchers.

Mike Silva is a freelance writer and radio host since March of 2007. This website is his own personal "digest" of New York Baseball He's also hosts NYBD Radio on Blog Talk Radio and 1240 AM WGBB. Check out his sports media commentary at www.sportsmediawatchdog.com. Check out his official website, www.mikesilvamedia.com
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2 Responses to Interesting Pitching Stat

  1. birtelcom
    March 16th, 2011 at 5:18 pm

    I assume the oil industry spends an enormous percentage of their investment in drilling for new oil on dry holes. Drug companies spend a huge amount of their R&D budgets on research that does not lead to successful drugs. For Fortune 500 companies (or any other business), it all depends on return on investment. If a company that invests a billion dollars in various risky ventures finds that $400 million worth of those ventures produce absolutely nothing, the company can be perfectly happy with that if the successes regularly produce returns of 2 to 1. If that happens then the company overall has $1.2 billion in revenue from its overall $1 billion investment — a 20% profit. Big successes sometimes require a lot of failures.

    Yankee tickets, like new drugs, are expensive, because people are willing to pay a lot for them if the product is successful. That means that the companies that supply these products can afford a bunch of “dry holes” as long as they find a few successes.

  2. Mike Silva
    March 16th, 2011 at 7:39 pm

    Fair points Birtelcom but I think more than the Yankees fall into that “money pit” of injured pitchers. The Cliff Lee deal could have killed Texas if he signed there and got hurt. I guess the point is the default rate on pitchers is high and perhaps it’s time to address the injuries from the onset.

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