What’s The 401?!?!

Joba Chamberlain Revives Pitch Count Debate

It appears that all the discussion surrounding the Yankees plans for Joba Chamberlain has revived the debate between those who could be considered baseball purists and the “Moneyball” generation. 

The topic of dispute?  Pitch counts. 

Older pitchers and baseball people feel that young pitchers are babied, while GM’s like Brian Cashman (and others) cite statistics that show that over stressed young pitchers tend to wind up on the disabled list.  With such a premium on pitching in today’s game, GM’s don’t want to risk ruining a live young arm.  There just aren’t that many out there.

My take?  I tend to side with Ron Darling.

starters are “the only athletes in the world who are undertrained. I believe today’s athletes are better trained than when I played, bigger, stronger. So you have these tanks who want to be tanks and you treat them like Mini-Coopers.

“Pitch counts are absurd. That stuff has been conjured up by the powers that be and there’s no place for it in baseball.”

“Mentally, you’re training them to look over their shoulder for the next guy to bail them out and then you have the 12th- or 13th-best pitcher on your team coming in for important outs in the sixth inning.  That doesn’t make any sense.”

The issue of pitch counts and innings limits has become sort of a chicken and the egg debate.  Which came first?  The pitch counts and innings limits, or pitchers who were not properly conditioned to throw a lot of innings?  I think that it’s the latter.  Pitchers are babied so much at such a young age nowadays that, once they reach the majors, they don’t have the arm strength built up to go deep into games.  Teams have no choice but to put innings limits on these young, prized arms because these kids aren’t prepared to take on that added work load.  Somewhere along the lines, the developmental system in baseball is failing these young pitchers, at least in terms of arm strength and durability. 

Combine these factors with stronger offenses and a smaller strike zone and you have a recipe for disaster for young pitchers.  The remedy?  It could very well be keeping these kids in the minors and letting them build their arm strength against weaker line-ups.  Then, once they hit the bigs, their arms will be ready to go.

As for Joba, there’s no way the Yankees can move him to the rotation this season without sending him to the minors and essentially saying…we give up on 2008.  That isn’t going to happen.  Besides, as I’ve said before, Joba should stay in the pen and eventually become the replacement for Mo.  With starting pitching as hard to find as it has ever been, a great bullpen is a must have, and a great bullpen starts with a great closer.