Now that Jeremy Bonderman has a year under his belt most Tiger fans are curious as to what this year will bring. While Bonderman did give up runs last year, his defense didn’t help him at all. Also, his strike out rate of 6 per 9 innings was impressive, and not just because he was only 20. But now that he’s pitched a full season, how much should he pitch this year? Keep in mind, this is the first season that he’ll be able to drink (legally) and he’s still very young.
The common sense answer is that it depends on how well he pitches. The better he’s pitching, the longer he should stay in games. No suprises there. But in defining pitching better, it is also important to talk about pitching more efficiently. Bonderman averaged 15.90 pitches per inning pitched, which ranked 51st in the American League. Not terrible, but not that good either. He had a respectable walk rate, but he gave up 10.9 hits per 9 innings pitched which ranked 102 among AL starting pitchers.
If you want to keep Bonderman’s pitch count totals per outing in the 100-110 range, that means that he can give you between 6 and 7 innings. However if he can shave his pitches per inning down to 14.5, then he could get into the eighth inning with the same pitch count. Over the course of 30 starts it wouldn’t be unreasonable for Bonderman to pitch 210 innings if he can pitch efficiently. Now this would assume that he is averaging 7 innings per start, and we all know he’ll have some bad outings so he probably won’t quite get 210 innings.
While they still need to be cautious with Bonderman, and closely watch his pitch counts in each game, he shouldn’t necessarily be shut down after a certain number of innings. Bonderman’s efficiency should dictate how many innings he should pitch, and not some pre-determined number.
As an interesting side note, when pulling the numbers I noticed that Jason Johnson ranked last among qualified pitchers in pitches per inning pitched with 17.1. One of the things called into question by many about Johnson is his durability. Specifically, in 32 starts last year he only had 7 games where he made it out of the 7th inning and he’s never had a 200 inning season. By having to use so many pitches to get 3 outs, he is probably wearing down relatively early. Just something else to keep an eye on this year.
Johnson walks a lot of guys, 88 in 189 IP last year, plus 216 hits. He is an ace in name only, an average pitcher at best.
Bonderman is nowhere near being over the injury hump. He has a tight delivery and excellent mechanics, but his pitch count and IP should be closely monitored. Again, if they had any pitching he would belong in the minors. I’d like to see less than 200 IP and a pitch count no higher than 105.