Why one team at a time breaks down
A 13U pitcher throws 65 pitches Saturday morning for one team and gets called up to pitch Sunday for another. Each coach followed the rules for his own game. The organization did not. Rest rules apply to the pitcher, not the team, so the record has to follow the pitcher.
What a working setup looks like
- Every pitch is recorded at the moment it's thrown, in bullpens and in games, by whoever is holding the device. Counting after the game from memory is where errors start.
- The record is per pitcher, across teams. When a player appears for a second team, his rest status comes with him.
- Rest days are computed, not remembered. Enter the age group and the count, and the required rest under Pitch Smart or the league's rules is shown before the next game, not discovered after.
- Someone above the coaches can see all of it. A pitching coordinator or director should be able to open one page and see every pitcher's last outing, pitch count and days of rest remaining, for every team, without calling seven coaches.
- The data can leave. A program should be able to download its own pitch-level records for its trainers, its medical staff, or its own analysis.
Rest-day rules programs use
- USA Baseball's Pitch Smart guidelines, by age: for example, at ages 13 to 14, 66 or more pitches require 4 days of rest, and 36 to 50 require 2. Full table at pitchwiseapp.com/pitch-count-rules.
- State high school associations set their own limits for school ball. New Jersey's are at pitchwiseapp.com/nj-high-school-pitch-count-rules.
- Baseball Canada's Arm Smart rules apply to Canadian organizations. See pitchwiseapp.com/resources/baseball-canada-pitch-count-rules.
Off-season
The same record matters in winter, when pitchers throw bullpens in facilities with different coaches each session. A program that logs off-season bullpens has a full year of workload for each arm by spring, not just game counts.