“Utterly, completely, and colossally reckless…”
In the comments to our open thread below, a couple people have mentioned that the Reds should shut down Edinson Volquez and Johnny Cueto for the year, or at least put them on a strict pitch count (I vote for the latter).
At least we aren’t Giants fans. Tim Lincecum, the ace righty for San Francisco, threw 138 pitches against the Padres this weekend. 138! For the Giants, who are just as bad as the Reds, and stood nothing to gain by that.
I agree with this take:
That is utterly, completely, and colossally reckless, stupid, arrogant, and just plain lazy. Send in all the nasty emails calling me a geek who’s never played you like. Feel free to point out that Lincecum’s “just different”,”rubber armed”, or a “freak of nature”. It’s still mind-blowingly stupid, risky behavior….
To those of you who will feel compelled to write in and say “Tim didn’t want to come out,” my response is pretty simple…My four year old wants to eat a bunch of ice cream too. It’s kind of my job to make sure he doesn’t. And it’s kind of Bochy’s, Sabean’s, Baer’s, and the entire occupancy of the Giants front office’s job to keep completely moronic things from happening.
Clearly, they’re not up to the task.
Wow. Just, wow.
September 15th, 2008 at 9:36 pm
Dusty’s legacy lives on in San Fran?
September 15th, 2008 at 9:50 pm
That ice cream metaphor is perfect! Cueto threw 115 in his last start, Voltron threw 121! It absolutely doesn’t make sense to be doing this. If we hadn’t been statistically eliminated on August 11, it would make sense. Hopefully we’ll never be able to prove that the organization was mistaken by doing this by pointing to arm injuries, but it is simply a risk not worth taking.
September 15th, 2008 at 10:29 pm
It is interesting San Francisco that pitch counts of pitchers under Baker’s watch were significantly different after Sabean replaced Quinn as GM.
September 15th, 2008 at 10:44 pm
I would agree that pitch counts make more sense in a perfect world, and confess I haven’t looked at the schedule to see if shutting Cueto and Voltron down fully would work.
But do you honestly trust Dusty to stick to a pitch count?
September 15th, 2008 at 11:25 pm
Until recently, seems like Dusty has actually done a pretty good job with Volquez and Cueto, with respect to overwork.
September 16th, 2008 at 12:28 am
Fair point, and to be fair to Dusty,over the course of the season he played the youngsters more than his reputation would suggest.
My concern is that the last couple months, and this is solely a subjective view on my part, he seems to have become more concerned about his record/spreading the blame than developing the team. Bako and CP, the whole I didn’t make the roster interview awhile back, the guys he is ruling out of the lineup, I just worry there is damage to be done over the rest of the season.
This is probably just negativity over a long season, but to quote an old classic “I have a bad feeling about this” with respect to the rest of the season.
September 16th, 2008 at 8:13 am
I doubt the Reds could make it the rest of the way if Cueto and Volquez were shut down, just going on number of guys in the pen who can eat that many innings. However, a pitch count would allow the late call-up guys a chance to see some innings and show Dusty if they are ready.
Who would have thought through the first half that Arroyo would have a lower ERA than Cueto at this point in the season?
September 16th, 2008 at 8:57 am
I don’t have any problem with pitch counts, but I do wonder why they are such a recent obsession. I know it’s done to protect pitchers, ut that just begs the question: Wy do modern pitchers need more protection?
Were starting pitchers of earlier decades stronger that today’s pitchers? Did they throw less demanding pitches? Are today’s pitchers more fragile?
Is it an attempt to take a more intelligent approach to the game, i.e., by assuming that if Pitcher A gets to a certain pitch count, his performance will decline and he will increase his injury chances. The trade off there, it seems to me, is that the starter is sometimes more capable than any available reliever of getting the next guy out, pitch count or no.
September 16th, 2008 at 9:09 am
Wy do modern pitchers need more protection?
Easy answer, $$$.
September 16th, 2008 at 9:22 am
Bill: $$, you’re right.
But also, we only hear about the guys like Bob Gibson, who threw 300 innings a year. We never hear about the guys who blew their arm outs at age 23 throwing 150 pitches.
It’s survivorship bias at it’s finest.
September 16th, 2008 at 10:47 am
Believe it or not, I am a new Reds fan. I have been following the Reds for about two years. I am a hardcore Mets fan, but WLW 700 is on XM 173 24/7 and I have listened to that station for years on xm now and I have grown to love the Reds more and more.
While this year has been a collossial mess, in the past month I have actually been encouraged more and more as the days go by. I think Baker has actually done a fantastic job in the second half, except for that 10 game loosing effort that was a mess. Other than that, I think he has done the best he could. The first half was a different story and the C. Patterson crap has just been a failure on D.B’s part.
On the topic of rubber arms, Tim Lincecum’s nickname that the Giants have given him is “The Freak.” Almost enough said there. I personally don’t like the new format of holding a pitcher down around 100 or 110 pitches. In the days of old a guy pitched for 15 or 20 years and would throw 135 or 140 pitches in a game and would regularly complete the game. The idea of having a starter 1-7/reliever 8/closer 9 is very new in relation to the age of the sport.
I don’t know what the difference between B. Gibson and, for example, Brandon Webb is - other than they are two different human beings. I think you should take it on a individual basis. Nobody but that pitcher knows the truth about his stamina and he has to be truthful with himself and his coaches about that truth.
September 16th, 2008 at 11:09 am
OT: Today is Browning’s perfect game’s 20th Anniversary. Can we get an open thread of where were you and what were you doing? I’d be there are plenty of us who had headphones under the pillow that night.
September 16th, 2008 at 6:18 pm
But also, we only hear about the guys like Bob Gibson, who threw 300 innings a year. We never hear about the guys who blew their arm outs at age 23 throwing 150 pitches.
this is absolutely true. MANY, MANY pitchers even in the early 1900s blew out their arms. And of course, one great Reds pitchers career was over at age 27. Don Gullett. And he was not the only Red in the 60s and 70s to blow out their arms.
I study read study about arm injuries among starting pitchers a while back and it showed that there has only been one major increase in arm injuries and that was the late 70s and 80s and they attributed it to more pitchers throwing a screw ball.
September 16th, 2008 at 6:53 pm
i was watching that game with my dad whose a giants fan, and both of us were puzzled why they left him in. the score was 7-0!!!! my only thoughts on why they would do it was to help his cy young bid (which he deserves hands down compared to webb)
and the times are different now than when gibson pitched because those guys back in the day weren’t throwing 95 mph fastballs.
September 16th, 2008 at 8:46 pm
I thought Gullett ended his career with an injury he received in ABC’s Superstars competition.
September 17th, 2008 at 10:10 am
Number 8
The pitchers of old were just as fragile you just didn’t hear about it. You also have to look at the development of the hitter as a reason for monitoring pitch count. Back in 1970 (for example) the second baseman, catcher, and shortstop were all relatively weak hitters and the pitcher didn’t have to pitch as effectively as they do now. So what you had to deal with, for the average pitcher, was pitching to 2 or 3 “strong” hitters, 2 or 3 “average” hitters, and 2 or 3 “weak” hitters.
With todays lineups you just don’t have the weak spots. Even the pitchers in some instances are tough outs and its critical to put more effort into more ABs (faced) than it was back then.
This isn’t the only reason, of course, as dollars and protecting your “investment” in a guy like Santana is also important, but I think looking at the way the game is played now versus then is indicative of why a higher pitch count hurts more players now versus then.
September 21st, 2008 at 10:57 am
It doesn’t seem that the Reds have been reckless with Cueto or Volquez. I don’t think their average pitches per start is super high. Neither one is probably going to hit 200 innings and they did seem to slide both back a day or two on a few starts.
The use by Dusty Baker that really seemed to backfire was using Aaron Harang in that marathon game at SD on like 2 or 3 days rest. Harang wasn’t the same after that and when he and Jared Burton went on the DL, the team went from playing OK straight into the tank for a couple of weeks and then the season was over.