NC State Wolfpack News

As NC State was preparing for its ACC Tournament elimination game against North Carolina, head coach Elliott Avent was tempted to start ace Carlos Rodon on three days rest. Avent told the media that his reasoning was, “He didn’t pitch a lot of pitches on Friday.” 

Rodon threw 109 pitches in just over 5 innings three days earlier, a fairly substantial number by MLB standards. David Price, a former Cy Young Award winner who is among MLB’s leaders in pitch count this year, has topped 109 pitches five times this season. Rodon did it six times in his last 10 starts. Clayton Kershaw, the undisputed best pitcher in baseball in recent years, hasn’t had a pitch count that high in his last 15 outings. 

But college is different from the Majors. Rodon usually gets a week between starts, instead of the four days that is common in the bigs. So let’s look at how Rodon measures up with the other elite pitchers in the ACC. 

Ten pitchers, including Rodon, were named to the three All ACC teams last week.  Here’s a look at their pitch counts for the year: 

Since pitching with a tired arm is more stressful for a pitcher, throwing the 130th pitch of a game is going to be more harmful than throwing pitch 100. The writers of Baseball Prospectus came up with a statistic called Pitcher Abuse Points, to measure the impact of high-pitch-count starts for a pitcher. 

The current MLB leader in Pitcher Abuse Points has a total of 65 so far this season, and only three MLB pitchers have more than 40. 

Here’s a look at the All Acc pitchers, ranked by Pitcher Abuse Points. 

Rodon averaged 22.6 Pitcher Abuse Points per start, which is higher than the total points accumulated by Waddell and Diaz all season. Only 9 MLB pitchers have more points this season than Rodon averaged each time out. 

Rodon had starts of 68 and 76 abuse points this year, which are each more than Trent Thornton’s season total. 

Most remarkably, Coach Avent lightened up Rodon’s workload this year, compared to previous seasons. Here’s a look at Rodon year-by-year: 

Rodon is expected to go near the top of the MLB Draft. However, teams selecting him may have concerns over the fact that he is one of the most abused college pitchers in recent memory.