It's a chilly April afternoon and Grove City High pitcher Randy Risch winds up, pushes off the rubber and moves his right arm powerfully toward the plate.

His fastball whistles through the crisp air and hits his catcher's mitt.

Thwack! Strike three.

Risch notches his eighth strikeout of the game through six shutout innings.

But his afternoon is done.

It used to be the magic number in baseball was how many more wins coupled with opponent losses a team needed to clinch a division.

Not anymore. The magic number in baseball at all levels these days is pitch count.

And Risch just hit his.

"He wanted to go out for that last inning," said Grove City coach Pat Forese. "But he was up around that 75-, 80-pitch mark. And that was it. No way."

A pitcher in the 21st century is on a short leash — and for good reason, particularly at the high school level, where pitching arms are sometimes fragile.

Overuse injuries in all youth sports are on the rise. But those in baseball pitchers have seen the most alarming increase.

Dr. James Andrews, well known for his skill at repairing broken-down pitching arms, performed an average of nine elbow surgeries a year on high school pitchers between 1995 and 1998.

Andrews repaired an average of 148 high school pitching elbows a year between 2003 and 2006.

That precipitous rise has led to more and more coaches at all levels of baseball to put more and more restrictions on their pitchers.

"Honestly, with me, I never remember any pitch counts in high school," said Knoch baseball coach Curt Schnur, who was a bulldog at Butler High, where he compiled a 20-2 career record as a three-year staff ace.

"I just felt like I was out there to do a job, no matter if it took 70 pitches or 150 pitches."

But Schnur now keeps close tabs on the number of pitches his Knoch hurlers throw in a game.

Early in the season, he limits his pitchers to between 50 and 60 pitches. As the season goes on and the weather warms, he lets them throw between 75 and 100 pitches before he takes them out of the game.

"It's always something we keep track of," Schnur said.

Butler coach Dave Florie and pitching coach George Bradley also keep pitch counts. But Florie prefers to make his pitching changes on "gut feeling."

"I like to look them in the eyes," Florie said. "If a kid has that look about him, that he's done, then I'll yank him."

Florie said keeping rigid counts for all pitchers, regardless of skill level and arm strength, is counterproductive.

"A lot of it has to do with the individual," said Florie, who has coached baseball for 20 years at both Seneca Valley, where he won a state title in 1995, and at Butler. "Some kids are very strong and have rubber arms. Some don't. You hope when you go out there that's they'll tell you the truth and tell you they are done.

"We encourage the kids to be honest."

Pitch counts are here to stay, however.

During the 1998 major league season, 15 pitchers threw 140 or more pitches in a game.

Ten years later, no pitcher threw more than 130 pitches.

In 1998, there were 295 complete games. Last season, there were 136.

"It's the age of specialization," Florie said.

Grove City has been ahead of the curve.

In his 22 years as coach of the Eagles, Forese has taken a proactive stance on pitching.

He developed and taught a different way to throw a breaking pitch that puts less stress on an elbow.

Even with top hurlers Jeremy Hedegore, Jesse Alfreno and, most recently, Bob Revesz, his pitchers rarely threw complete games.

"We've used three and sometimes four pitchers in a game this season," Forese said. "We will always take care of a kid's arm."

Because of that approach, Forese said his program has seen very few serious injuries, or even something as simple as a sore arm.

Pitch counts are the key, Forese said.

"I've seen kids throw 140, 160 pitches," Forese said. "You just can't do that. The benefit is this, and knock on wood, we haven't had a pitcher with a sore arm for probably 10 or 15 years. That's the big benefit."

Pitch counts have become the norm as a way of controlling wear and tear on arms at the Little League level.

In 2007, Little League jettisoned using innings pitched as a way to protect pitchers from overuse in favor of number of pitches thrown.

The Little League Web site explained the change:

"Recently, researchers and medical professionals in the field of sports medicine have determined that the actual number of pitches thrown (i.e., pitch count) is a safer way to regulate pitching in youth baseball."

Will those rules make it to the high school level? Not likely, coaches say.

"What's in place right now is fair overall," Schnur said. "You're not seeing any abuse."