I am like many people in that I have been watching this baseball postseason in bars. As with many bars the jukebox is blaring or even if the TV sound is on you can barely hear it over your fellow fans. I happen to be a Giants fan which means that I’m following the National League with all of my attention. That also means that while I care dearly about offense I’m mostly watching the pitching duels that have dominated this year’s series.
Knowing this you’d think that the companies televising these series would be intent on helping me understand the pitch count since that’s a major factor in evaluating a pitcher’s performance and the game’s progress. Sadly the TV display remains stuck with the standard score boxes in the top left of the screen. If you’re lucky in the late innings they’ll give you a quick graphic on the pitchers’ stats but these almost omit the pitch count. Finally, right when a pitcher is about to hit the 100 pitch milestone they’ll throw a graphic up on screen with the inning-by-inning pitch count.
Sunday this was particularly important since Jonathan Sanchez labored through a 35 pitch first inning. FOX finally got around to displaying a pitch count right when hit 98 or 99 pitches. No doubt Joe Buck and the other announcers chatted about the pitch count throughout the game but it was essential for them to display that count up there with all the other pseudo statistics and really important information throughout the game. Here’s my vote into the void for a change for this postseason, ideally for all the future.