Andrew Brackman’s pitch counts

As you’ve surely already heard, the Yanks’ top pick is going to go ahead and have Tommy John surgery. That’s fine, it is what it is, nothing anyone can do about it. I wanted see how well Brackman was pitching before the elbow started acting up, so I went through NC State’s schedule from earlier in the year and came up with the following pitching lines (the box score links work only intermittently after April 1st, so I’m missing 4 games worth of data):

Feb 9 vs William & Mary: 5 IP, 3 H, 2 ER, 1 BB, 3 K, 82 pitches (9-4 W)

Feb 17 vs Gardner-Webb: 5 IP, 3 H, 0 R, 0 ER, 2 BB, 8 K, 81 pitches (8-0 W)

Feb 24 vs Coastal Carolina: 7.1 IP, 6 H, 0 R, 0 ER, 1 BB, 7 K, 113 pitches (4-0 W)

March 3 vs East Carolina: 5 IP, 6 H, 4 R, 4 ER, 5 BB, 6 K, 111 pitches (5-4 W in 10)

March 9 vs Maryland: 9 IP, 6 H, 6 R, 5 ER, 1 BB, 9 K, 122 pitches (6-3 L)

March 24 vs Wake Forest: 4 IP, 9 H, 6 R, 5 ER, 3 BB, 2 K, 96 pitches (16-3 L)

March 31 vs Boston College: 7 IP, 4 H, 1 R, 1 ER, 3 BB, 7 K, 111 pitches (10-1 W)

April 28 vs CWS runner-up UNC: 7 IP, 3 H, 2 R, 1 ER, 4 BB, 7 K, 97 pitches (9-3 W)

May 12 vs Virgina: 4 IP, 5 H, 3 R, 3 ER, 5 BB, 5 K, 101 pitches (10-7 W)

Hmmm . . .doesn’t that seem like an awful lot of pitches for a guy who had thrown only 71.1 IP combined in his freshman & sophomore years? How likely is it that this heavy workload contributed to the elbow troubles?

Now before everyone goes apeshit in the comments, remember that NC State coach Elliot Avent does not work for the Yankees. His job is to win baseball games for NC State, not worry about developing Brackman for some ML team. Just ask Billy Beane how he feels about Cal State Fullerton coach George Horton after he ran Jason Windsor into the ground during Fullerton’s run to the CWS Title in ’04.

Update: Game scores added by request.