I know I know, Daisuke Matsuzaka’s first start at Fenway Park last night has absolutely nothing to do with tennis.  I’ll be honest, I have no idea how neurons fire around in my brain, but they did eventually lead me to tennis.  Somewhere in the middle innings, Dice K looked like he winced as he rotated his shoulder, needless to say, it made me a little nervous.  Here’s a pitcher that the Red Sox invested over 100 million in, and he might not make it through his second start.  Low and behold, he was fine, and will live to start another game…five days from now.  It’s that last thought that got me curious, why does he need more than half a week’s rest in between starts?

Serving and pitching seem so similar to me, and I’ll admit that I don’t know too much about the full on mechanics of pitching (there are many that would say I don’t know much about the mechanics of serving either, but for the sake of argument, let’s assume that I do).  Both motions involve of torque in your legs, shoulders, elbows and wrists; in fact, when teaching beginners how to serve, many tennis pros often have them perfect a throwing motion into the serving box without the use of a racquet.  I realize that the motions are not identical, and that a racquet must create further differences, but I still do not understand why a tennis player can serve well over a hundred serves on back to back days, but a pitcher can not throw more than 110 pitches every five days without a signed document from the team physician (slight exaggeration).

I did a bit of basic statistical research.  At this year’s Australian Open, Marat Safin played three matches over the course of five days.  In those matches, he served 149, 164 and 139 times, for a total of 452 times (just over 150/match).  So far this year, Dice K has started twice, over the course of seven days and has thrown 211 pitches total (a little over 105/game).  Yet already, people in Red Sox Nation are fretting that Terry Francona is overusing the Japanese superstar.  I’m sure that pitching is harder on your body than serving, but is it really that much harder?

Maybe this post is more of an indictment on the way pitchers are handled in today’s major leagues, and at the end of the day really has nothing to do with tennis.  Consider the following facts – in tennis the Men’s Grand Slams has always been three out of five sets, so the serving stats have not altered that much throughout the years.  In 1962, Don Drysdale led the Major’s with 41 games started, including 19 complete games and 314 innings pitched.  Last year, Aaron Harang was the leader, with stats of 35 games started, 6 complete games, and 234 innings pitched.  These are substantial declines.  Maybe it is true that baseball pitchers are too “babied” these days.  I don’t know, but I would like to.

I guess the main things I want from this post are answers as to why tennis players can serve at such a higher volume than pitchers can pitch; and also to get back at all those kids who used to make fun of tennis players for not being a real athlete.  Not me, but other tennis players.

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 12th, 2007 at 3:39 pm and is filed under Tennis News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.