Pitch counts are killing baseball.

Well, in fairness, statistical hyper-analysis is killing baseball, but the two are intimately interwoven. It all leads to my indisputable hypothesis that Tony LaRussa and Billy Beane are the Antichrist and Dr. Frankenstein of the national pastime, respectively.

It’s all their fault that we can’t watch a major league game any longer without a corporately sponsored display in the corner of the screen. Or that on the rare and special occasion of a no-hitter, there’s close to a 50-50 chance that we will see the abominable adjective “combined” attached to it.

These concerns — rightfully, on the surface — have been addressed at the youth level for decades. I’m not entirely sure if what we see in the pros is the trickle-down effect or trickle-up effect. Either way, like almost every other regulation we put in place to protect our kids, it is caution run amok to its natural end as fear-mongering.

Pitching, along with everything else in youth baseball these days, is an adventure. Part of that phenomenon is because kids’ number of throws and innings are monitored to the extreme. Many Little League and Babe Ruth hurlers arrive in high school never knowing what working up a sweat on the mound or getting their shoulder and elbow “loose” entail.

Most of these pitchers get an inning or two at a time, maybe twice a week, in this by-committee bid to protect them from harm. By the time they hit puberty and reach the upper levels of the youth game, a majority of them aren’t all that experienced.

They’ve had half the grooming (maybe) that their dads enjoyed while rising through the ranks. And now they’re throwing with twice as much velocity in the middle of a growth spurt, without the benefits of knowing a consistent workload or having well-rehearsed or well-taught mechanics.

So what happens? Bingo. They get hurt.

I would politely concede points to the contrary, except that generations worth of anecdotal evidence debunk them. Every part with the dynamic human body, from your heart to your lungs to your bones to your tendons and ligaments, gets stronger with use. It is zero coincidence that the absolute epidemic of Tommy John surgery coincides with an era in which even adult pitchers are kid-gloved.

Of course, at that level, statisticians deserve some of the blame. They have sucked the very life out of the game by reducing it to Strat-O-Matic.

Somewhere along the way, an aspiring professor got in LaRussa’s ear in 1988 and successfully convinced him that a failed left-handed starter (I’m talking to you, Rick Honeycutt) entering the game in the seventh inning had a .000001 better chance of retiring the lefty slugger at the plate than his reliable right-handed starter.

Then along came Beane and his lackeys, who decided that a base on balls was the noblest thing in sports this side of the group handshake at the end of a Stanley Cup playoff series. Run every count to 2-and-2 or 3-and-2, boys. Drive up that number.

Google “unintended consquences” and you’ll find the smiling images of those two clowns. The average nine-inning MLB game now occupies 3 hours and change. Every roster carries four utility substitutes and eight relief pitchers. We might as well start doing the Nippon League thing and call it a tie after 12 innings, because in the 13th and beyond, you’re almost guaranteed to have one team sending a position player to the hill as a sacrificial lamb.

There’s also the maddening trend of big-leaguers not being allowed to finish historic gems.

One week ago Saturday, Jon Lester struck out 15 and allowed one hit through eight innings for the Boston Red Sox. There was no earthly reason for Lester not to apply the exclamation point in the ninth, except, ooh, that pesky pitch count.

So John Farrell summoned his always unpredictable bullpen, and lo and behold, what was a 6-0 laugher ended with the tying run at the plate before Koji Uehara escaped. This lifelong Sox fanatic was in the rare and uncomfortable position of half-rooting for a tying jack into the Monster seats, just to prove a point.

Then there was Yu Darvish’s near-no-hitter against the Sox on Friday. You know that in the depths of his soul, Rangers manager Ron Washington was praying for a quick line drive to start the ninth inning. He ran faster than Usain Bolt to chase his ace after David Ortiz’s two-out single through the shift.

Or perhaps Washington was kicking himself for not turning it over the bullpen in the eighth. Dear Lord, help us. There is no sound in the sports lexicon grating to the ears as “combined no-hitter.” There should be no such animal. It shouldn’t count any more than a five-inning, rain-shortened one. Remember South Portland’s Charlie Furbush being one of six Mariners to share a no-no? I didn’t celebrate that as a real accomplishment, and neither should you.

It’s all a full-blown disease at the high school level, where the rules require any pitcher throwing more than one inning to take a full day off and forcing one who works beyond three frames to rest three days.

Many coaches now tiptoe around these limits by not using any pitcher for more than three innings in a game. At least one Maine school has won back-to-back regional titles employing this tactic.

I don’t really blame these coaches. It’s just an extension of what they’re inheriting from Little League. Does it reinforce the team concept? I suppose. Does it work in terms of wins and losses? Sometimes, I guess.

Does it truly develop pitchers? Nope. And pitchers are something baseball kinda, sorta needs in order to survive.

Kalle Oakes is a staff columnist. His email is koakes@sunjournal.com. Follow him on Twitter @Oaksie72.

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