Stopping at 250 is apparently an act of concern

Earlier this week in a Japanese High School game, a young pitcher was getting walloped to the tune of 66 runs in less than two full innings (Source.) The Coach yanked his pitcher after 250 pitches because he may have gotten to 500, and you know, you gotta show concern for the kid.

This is another part of the Japanese mentality. This poor kid gave up 26 runs in the 1st inning, and was still let to pitch the 2nd inning. A lot of times when young players are growing up, they need to be taught fighting spirit. Kids will be walloped on until they can take no more, because they need to face the pressure. When Baseball was introduced to Japan, this sort of exercise took the form of the legendary 1000 fungo drill and similar drills.

The 1000 Fungo Drill was where a player would take the field, and the coach would hit groundballs or flyballs at them just out of their reach until they collapsed in pain from diving so much. In another similar exercise, pitchers would be made to hang from trees by their arms until they basically fell off (after they finished pitching practice.) The idea here was that they could learn lessons about how to play the game. They would be taught to play through the pain and trust their coach.

This is the biggest difference between Japanese and American baseball. I hate using the "Zen" cliche when talking about Japanese baseball, but this sort of incident proves that some of the old boys still have that mentality. American baseball coaches would be labeled as sadistic and cruel for doing this--anything over 100 pitches at that age could quite feasibly break a kid's arm.

It's sad, but sometimes this is how things go. If you ever wonder why Daisuke Matsuzaka can undertake such high pitch counts, and endure high pressure situations with such poise, its because of the environments. Although he was never made to throw 250 pitches in two innings like this poor sap, he was subjected to the same environment.