You hear a lot about pitch counts and whether (or how) they injure arms. Mike Mussina only threw 93 pitches against the Devil Rays tonight. That was in 4 2/3 innings, because Mussina was way off his game.
But most interesting is how many pitches he threw in top of the third. It was a bad inning for him...four runs scored. The damage could have been worse. He went to a full count on 5 hitters in that inning alone, and threw 46 pitches. 46 pitches in one inning?
Joe Magrane said he thought that was probably a record for Mussina. That's probably verifiable if you dig through RetroSheet data, or if you have a subscription to the Play Index at Baseball Reference.com.
Since I don't have time to pour through 15 years of Mussina games on Retrosheet, and have not yet subscribed to the PI at Baseball Reference, I'll speculate.
One common, and fairly accurate, way of estimating pitch counts is the following formula: BFP*3.3 + 1.5*SO + 2.2*(HBP+BB). Mussina faced 10 hitters in the 3rd inning, with one K and three walks. That's about 41 pitches. That means Mussina threw 4 more pitches than we would expect. Not a striking figure.
Has he ever had another inning where he faced 10 hitters and walked at least three? When viewed that way, it seems more likely. I don't know the answer, but Mussina gave up 10 runs in 3 2/3 innings in 1999, facing 24 batters in that short span. He threw 35 pitches in the bottom of the 4th of that game. Against who? The Devil Rays! That included a 9 pitch at bat by Wade Boggs.
That leads me to believe that his 46 pitch inning might not conclusively be the worst he's had in terms of pitch counts. I bet it is a close call.
By the way, Justin Upton hit a monster home run in that inning, off a horrible middle-in pitch from Mussina. In the post-game interview, Upton said it was the longest ball he had ever hit, and he turned it around so fast, he didn't even feel it hit the bat.
