Yankees and Joba

I agree 100%. They baby their pitchers way too much.

I'm thankful that the Mets really haven't babied their starters too much.

 

Fuckers should pitch him 9 innings a night even though the Yankees are basically out of the race. We all know that's how you toughen a guy's arm up. And not, uh, blow it out or anything.

 

The way they are babying this kid is unreal. I have never heard of this crap. What the hell is the point of starting him in the pen again and then going through the whole transitioning him into a starter mid-way through the year. Its freaking ridiculous

 

EDIT: I didn't hear the thing about next year.

 

Oh my bad, I read it wrong. Thought they were limiting his use for the end of this year, not the start of next.

Meh. He's still only thrown 90 something innings this year. Dude is their most valuable asset going forward, they're scared to death of exploding him.

 

He was hurt in college and he was hurt in the minors last year. He already had a history and what they did this year was another major mistake.

 

I agree and disagree.

It is ridiculous how starting pitchers are babied these days. The Mets finally got smart with Santana (though that might bite them in the ass a couple years down the road) and let him pitch deeper into games.

It's silly really. Way back when, guys would pitch multiple times per week, and throw for the entire game (even extra innings). Somehow, they played on.

OTOH, those guys didn't make $10M a year. These days, starting pitching is a commodity you have to protect. That's a byproduct of ridiculous expansion in the league.

The Yankees are simply concerned about their investment, and are trying to get his innings up without blowing out his arm. Personally, I think the kid should just pitch from the rotation, and if he tires out, then rest him. This pen-to-rotation-to-pen-and-back-again bullshit is stupid.

 

You won't be when none of them can hit 80 MPH anymore. I'm not a doctor, but I am a pitcher who blew out his shoulder, and the amount of stress you put your ENTIRE body through to throw 100+ times in a 3 hour period is phenomenal. The next day is pure hell. And the stress on the arm is worse. Throwing overhand is an unnatural motion in itself, and when you add in the twisting of the arm to throw breaking balls it's even less safe. And this isn't the 50's anymore. Guys throw harder, and throw sliders and splitters and such that weren't around when pitchers threw 300+ innings a year. That puts more strain on the arm. I ruined my rotator cuff just at the high school level, and lost about 15-20% of my velocity. And no amount of training is going to get rid of wear on a pitcher's arm. There isn't a person alive who has pitched 100 innings at reasonably competitive level who would get clean MRIs from their throwing shoulder or elbow. So it stands to reason that the fewer innings you throw, the less damage you do to your arm.

That said, I do disagree with teams that pull their pitchers after 100 pitches almost automatically. If a guy throws that many but hasn't been in trouble, leave him in, since he likely hasn't had to work as hard. Plus I think 125 is probably a safe amount anyway with 4 days rest. But to throw guys out there for the sake of "not babying them" is grossly irresponsible.

As far as Chamberlain, I'm not sure why they didn't just shut him down for the year. They're out of contention at this point, no sense risking the career of their best pitcher for no reason. I obviously don't know the extent of his injury, but "rotator cuff tendinitis" was what they told me I had before they discovered it was actually a frayed rotator cuff. Personally, I would have played it safer.

 

You actually make a good point devil, regarding pitchers throwing more "junk" these days, so that actually should be accounted for.

As far as Chamberlain, he was examined by James Andrews, and still told it was tendinitis. Doctor Surgery didn't feel there was any significant damage, so chances are good there wasn't. Honestly, I think Joba is back because the Yankees refuse to quit on the season. If he's healthy enough to pitch, they'd rather have him to make a last ditch attempt at the playoffs. (It probably has a lot to do with Girardi and/or Cashman being a little nervous of the fallout for missing the playoffs, so they can at least say "Look, we gave it the best run we could".)

 

You never know, next years rotation might be Sabathia, Wang, Mussina or Pettitte, Sheets or Burnette and Pavano (at about 6 million).

And it might not be all that bad.

 

If you read the Neyer/James Guide to Pitchers, you'll get the stories about the guys in the early 1900s who threw preposterous amounts of innings. And they threw breaking balls, too. And you know what the common thread is in each anecdote? They all got hurt in their early-to mid-30s and were never quite the same again.

There's more modern examples, too.
The last guy to throw 20 complete games in a season was Fernando Valenzuela in 1986. He was 25 years old. In '87, he was a league-average pitcher. After that, he was either injured or awful for the rest of his career.

Rick Langford was 28 years old in 1980. He started 33 games, finished 28, and had a 115 ERA+. The next season, he made 24 starts, went the distance in 18 of them, and put up a 116 ERA+. 1982 was the last full season he pitched, and his ERA dropped well below the league average and his K-rate plummeted. He spent the rest of his career bouncing on and off of the DL, and never reached 60 innings in a season again.

Mark Prior. Yeah.

 

Sure, but there's a difference between abusing pitchers and sending a guy back to the bullpen because he only pitched 100 innings the year before. I mean if a guy has solid mechanics I don't think it's out of the question to have him come up and throw 200 innings. Look at guys like Maddux and Glavine, they threw 200+ innings a year for 20 years without injury.

The way I look at it is if a guys mechanics are bad he's going to have problems down the road no matter how much they baby him now unless it's addressed. If that's the case with Joba then I would question why they would even be pitching him at all for the rest of the year. Otherwise the kid gloves they're handling him with seem pretty silly.