First Start Pitch Count Analysis
Figuring out week one pitch counts
The first step in getting to an accurate daily pitcher projection is getting an accurate pitch count projection. We’re all pretty geared up for the season and ready to invest some money in daily predictions, but let’s slow down for a second and get our legs beneath us on these pitch count projections.
This is a general post about the first week of the season. I’m writing this a week before Opening Day, so I’m not giving you pitch count projections for Opening Day in this one. Those are available to MLB DW Pro subscribers via the daily projections.
For this one, I’m just doing some general numbers on how many pitches guys throw in their first start of the year.
The Data
I looked at 2024 and 2025 for pitchers who made at least 15 starts. I looped through each one of them. We want to compare their first couple of starts with their season average. So I’ve not counted the outings where they either did not start or threw fewer than 60 pitches (to get rid of the injury-shortened outings or rain delays and stuff like that). I also looked only at pitchers who made their MLB debut prior to April 15th, to get rid of the guys who debuted late in the year after already being built up in the minors.
The data is here if you want to do some stuff with it.
The Answers
I compared each pitcher’s average pitch count with their first, second, and third. And how about this - the numbers are the exact same for both 2024 and 2025.
In a pitcher’s first start, he averages six fewer pitches below his eventual season average
In a pitcher’s second start, he averages two fewer pitches below his eventual season average
In a pitcher’s third start, he averages zero fewer pitches below his eventual season average
The first start, you’re throwing fewer pitches. Six pitches doesn’t seem like a ton, but that’s about one fewer batter, which is significant. It can very easily cost you coming out for another inning. If the target for Paul Skenes is 90 pitches, and he’s sitting at 84 after finishing up the fifth inning, you’re probably not seeing him cool down and ramp up again for the sixth. That kind of stuff isn’t possible to predict, so it’s not really useful to think about.
Last year, only two pitchers exceeded 100 pitches in their first start:
Chris Bassitt 106
Michael McGreevy 101
Luis Severino 99
Brayan Bello 97
Kevin Gausman 97
Kyle Hendricks 97
Michael Lorenzen 97
Spencer Strider 97
Zack Wheeler 97
Hunter Brown 96
Shane Baz 96
Aaron Nola 95
Jesus Luzardo 95
Kris Bubic 95
It’s a list filled mostly with veterans or pitchers who just aren’t good enough to make their team care much about protecting their arm. Maybe that’s harsh and not exactly right. Or maybe it’s right. It’s probably right.
Three pitchers have thrown their max pitch count for the season in their first start:
2024 Cade Povich (100)
2024 James Paxton (97)
2025 Michael McGreevy (101)
The second key takeaway is that the pitch count reduction lasts just two starts on average. By the third start, you expect a pitcher to throw whatever his eventual season average is. So we shouldn’t be reducing expectations on pitch counts after the second start. And that second start is only -2, so it’s much less significant.
It’s a little bit funny if you think about. Does this really add any sort of injury protection? We’ll take six pitches off of what we want from our pitchers in the first start, but pretty much after that, they’re 100% ready to go. It’s probably just some psychological bias at work here. Having a pitcher get hurt in their first start seems way worse than having them get hurt in their second start, even though it really isn’t. And I guess you can only think about things like this for so long.
But there you go, we have some numbers on it. When the first slate preview article of the year hits on Thursday, we’ll be mindful of the pitch count projections. And we’ll keep those in mind through the first week of games.
The Opening Day pitch count projections will be mostly based on how guys were built up in the spring. I’ll have a yearly expected average for each guy, and we’ll see what they did in their last few spring outings, and we’ll do a smart projection from there.