|
121 pitches, as people have pointed out, isn't that many. Wasn't too long ago that pitchers frequently threw that many pitches.
That it was an average of 11 per inning also helps, I'd think. Long stressful innings are more likely to tire the pitcher leading to worse mechanics and more injury (maybe).
So, this is basically the ideal situation, as far as my quite limited understating of the biomechanics of pitching, for a pitcher to throw a lot of pitches and complete a lot of innings.
Though, I'd imagine there's a point where there could be too few pitches per inning. If a pitcher, for an extreme example, was only throwing 3 pitches per inning, they might not be able to complete (120/3) 40 innings as the arm would be cooling down and warming up to often. Plus, more warmup pitches that aren't counted in the pitch count
|