Poster 370: Pitcher Utilization Patterns in NCAA Softball as Compared to Baseball

OBJECTIVES: Pitch counts have become a hot topic in baseball over the past two decades since being linked with injury risk. While the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) has yet to enforce a pitch count rule for participating baseball teams, multiple organizations including the MLB’s Pitch Smart provide age-based guidelines for limiting risk of injury in baseball pitchers through utilization of pitch count limits and rest time. These are generally enforced for youth and high school baseball players. No such recommendations exist for softball despite evidence showing that the underhand windmill pitching motion is not nearly as physiologically benign as once thought. The aims of this study were to compare the patterns of pitcher utilization between elite collegiate baseball and softball teams. METHODS: Data was collected from the publicly available websites of baseball and softball teams which participated in the NCAA Division I softball and baseball College World Series from the years 2016 through 2021. The year 2020 was excluded due to a shortened season related to the COVID-19 pandemic. Team data collected included total number of athletes and pitchers per team, including only those pitchers listed as having >0 innings pitched for the season. Data collected for each individual pitcher included the season total number of innings pitched and total number of game appearances. Total pitch counts were not available on a majority of publicly available team websites for both softball and baseball. Unpaired student’s t test was used to compare normally distributed data, and a Wilcoxon- Mann-Whitney Test was used for non-normally distributed data. A P value <0.05 was considered statistically significant for all calculations. RESULTS: Forty softball teams and forty baseball teams, with 158 softball pitchers and 612 baseball pitchers were included. Baseball team rosters averaged significantly more total players, more pitchers, and a greater percentage of their roster was made up of pitchers as compared to softball teams, as summarized in table 1. The range of pitchers per team is notable, with baseball teams listing 12 to 24 pitchers as compared to softball with 3 to 7 pitchers per team. The average percentage of baseball rosters comprised of pitchers is more than twice that seen in softball. On an individual level, it is apparent that softball pitchers see considerably more playing time than their baseball counterparts, with significantly more innings pitched and appearances per season, and greater innings pitched per game as summarized in table 2. Again the range within these data points is striking, with a maximum of 134.2 innings pitched in a season by baseball pitchers as compared to a maximum of 287.0 innings in softball. Only 7.35% of baseball pitchers threw more than 100 innings in a season as compared to 43.70% of softball pitchers. CONCLUSIONS: This analysis of elite collegiate baseball and softball teams highlights a significant discrepancy in the physical expectations of their respective pitchers. Due to the significantly lesser representation of pitchers on softball rosters as compared to baseball, each individual pitcher sees a higher pitch count overall and per game, and by playing in more total games, sees less recovery time as well. The tie between pitch count and injury risk is well established and respected within baseball, and further injury-based research should be conducted to consider support of similar limitations for softball pitchers.