Quote:
Originally Posted by nfotiu
His pitch count ended up being fairly reasonable, so no decision was necessary, but I bet a lot of managers would have pulled him at 120 or so on the first game of the year. Team success should trump individual success.
And the Astros are not really fielding a competitive team in any way, shape or form, so it would be a pretty tainted perfect game at that. Their payroll is about half of the New York Islanders.
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I can see them wanting to pull the pitcher, being that it's the second game of the season, but I still believe they'd let him go as long as he wants to be out there. Matt Cain's perfect game was 125 pitches (most in history for a perfect games), and coincidentally against the Astros. It was his 13th start of the season, so he was likely in the best shape of the season.
From looking at Darvish's 2012 game logs, he threw 121 pitches in his third start and in his first six starts had 97 pitches as his lowest total. From starts 11-24 his lowest total was 105, highest 123 and median of 113. He's a guy who sounds like he can handle a high pitch count.
Edwin Jackson's no hitter took him 149 pitches in June 2010. I was surprised he didn't need surgery after that, but then again, Christy Mathewson pitched three complete game shutouts, on a Monday, Thursday and Saturday in the 1905 World Series. Apples to oranges yes, but it's a cool factoid I like to bring up.