Loading ...From yesterday’s Enquirer:
The Reds have scrapped the 75-pitch limit for pitchers at Single-A and below – instituted by former general manager Dan O’Brien to help prevent injuries.
“We’re going to formulate individual plans for every player,” said Johnny Almaraz, the director of player development/international operations. “We’ll pull back when a player’s fatigued.”
In other word’s, they won’t overwork young pitchers? Sounds like it’ll be at the discretion of the staff of the individual team.
Almaraz said the club will use inning limits, depending on age – 100 innings for an 18-year-old, 110 for a 19-year-old, and so on.
“We’ll add and subtract, depending on the individual,” Almaraz said.
I hope this is an improvement. I don’t believe we had enough data to show whether OB’s system was working or not, but this seems like it goes back to the same old routine, which was death on the arms of Reds young pitchers.
I was always a supporter of O’Brien’s workload plan, if only because it was a plan. This sounds a whole lot more like the “trust us” mentality that got us into so much trouble during the Bowden era. I’m willing to give those guys some benefit of the doubt, and hope that there’s at least some sort of system for tracking workloads and evaluating/standardizing the 120 or so “individual plans” throughout the system.
Chris, this is my concern also (though I think you expressed it better than I did). You see managers/coaches like Dusty Baker allowing pitchers to throw 120+ pitches consistently and wonder if this happens in the major leagues, how bad does it get in the minors?
I like the old interview with Billy Beane (or maybe one of his minions), where he was asked what he’d do if he heard that one of his minor league pitchers had thrown 100 (or some such)pitches in a game: “Wouldn’t happen. Not only would it violate every policy we have – one of our front office guys would be monitoring the game online, and I’d be on the phone with the manager by the time he hit 75 pitches.”
(I’m sure I butchered that quote, but I think that’s the gist.)
Exactly!
Looking back, O’Brien did something that the minor league system sorely needed – he made a plan that got people’s attention. It was a good first step. The problem I have with this new “plan” is that it can so easily become no plan at all. And what is this about inning limits? Innings aren’t the problem, pitches are. If some guy goes out and pitches a ten-inning game, and then doesn’t pitch for two weeks, that is more stressful and damaging than two five-inning stints within the same time period. The eagerness to get rid of O’Brien is leading to a desire to wholly dismiss all his work and start clean, and that’s very unfortunate because he was on the right track with minor-league development.
DA, I’m not convinced that two seasons is enough to say the pitch limits installed by OB were effective. It’s just as possible that the 75 pitch limits could have hurt a pitcher’s development as the possibility that it kept them healthy.
But then again, as you say, at least it was a plan and there is no question that the last two drafts have been miles above the previous Bowden drafts.
I agree: two seasons is not enough to definitively say that the tandem-starter idea was helping keep prospects healthier…nor is it enough time to say that it was hurting development, which is the essence of most complaints about the system from the minor-league managers and the prospects themselves. But as far as I can tell, that plan is being scrapped not because there has been a serious evaluation of the results or potential of the system, but largely because O’Brien is now persona non grata in Cincinnati.
Glad Chris found that Billy Beane quote, because it looks like Oakland has had success in pitcher development with some strict pitchcount limits.