Stupid rule...

[NewNCref]

Dakota,

I agree with you that it stinks that this kid got pulled when he was pitching a no-hitter. But I think part of the problem with putting in an exception is that, at the local level, it would be abused and difficult to enforce. For example, I'm sure we've all had those games where there are a thousand errors (or at least that's what it seems like). Does the game where the defense is stinking it up but the pitcher hasn't technically given up a hit still count? Well, it would be hard to word it so that it didn't, but no one is really interested in preserving that "no-hitter." Not to mention, what happens when one score keeper scores something an error and the other scores it a hit. It's just a big mess.

LL says that this rule is to prevent overuse, and regardless or whether that is true or not, if that's what they're going by, then it only makes sense to strictly limit pitchers to a certain number of pitches.

It varies by players, but unfortunately, there are coaches that are more interested in another win than the health and safety of their pitchers. Furthermore, there are coaches, more so at the local level than the LLWS level, that simply don't know that much about it, and could unknowingly be hurting their pitcher.