SF Giants Report News, Notes and Links from the other day highlighted a February 13th article from the San Francisco Chronicle’s Henry Schulman entitled, “SF Giants Worried About Toll of Long 2010 on Arms.” In it, Schulman discusses the dramatic increase of innings pitched by the young Giants starters and queries the notion of overuse and potential burn out from having pitched so intensely through the early part of November. Having spent the better part of the last two decades poring over pitching statistics and examining potential breakouts and busts for fantasy baseball, I had to agree with Schulman’s concerns.
Neither Tim Lincecum, Matt Cain, Jonathan Sanchez nor Madison Bumgarner had thrown competitively beyond the regular season and suddenly each of them was tacking on an additional 20 or so innings. In Lincecum’s case, 37. The sudden addition of extra innings can be very taxing on a young pitcher’s arm moving forward and it has been a hot topic of Giants baseball discussion over the last couple of weeks heading into Spring Training.
But then I pick up the Chronicle on Wednesday the 16th and find John Shea’s, “Tim Lincecum Worked Hard in Offseason.” In this piece, Shea basically raves about the extra throwing Lincecum did during the winter and expects us to marvel at comments such as Buster Posey’s, “Oooh, he looks ready, doesn’t he?” and Bruce Bochy’s, “It’s evident he’s been throwing. He was letting it go.“
Shea goes on to quote Lincecum himself who said, “This offseason, this is the most I’ve thrown ever, ” and cites that he threw up to five times a week which was a significant increase from the “every few days” in his previous regiment. Seriously? He throws almost 250 innings, 23 more than he has ever thrown in a single season in his career, he increases his offseason throwing program and Shea is hyping it up without concern? He makes it sound like it should be mid-March by the way he describes Tim’s first session. Not good, in my opinion. It’s all seems too soon. I know the rest of the article goes on to discuss the leg work and the fact that the use of his midsection and upper legs helps make it easier on his arm, but you can’t tell me that excessive use of the arm during the offseason can really be that good for him, can it?
It sounds to me like Shea’s piece is nothing but fluff meant to pander to the masses in a “rah rah” sort of cheerleader way. “Hey, the Giants are getting ready to start again! Let’s all go out and cheer!” There’s no thought regarding consequences to an over-rigorous offseason. Just rest on your laurels and don’t worry so much about the future.
Or maybe Schulman is being a “Nervous Nellie” here. Maybe he’s over-thinking the whole situation and should just let the athletes do their thing. After all, who knows best as to how his body will react and perform than the athlete himself?
Well, for this reporter, I have to say that I’m on board with Schulman’s thought process. As I said in the Giants Links post, we’ve seen plenty of situations where over-throwing has been detrimental to a pitcher’s health and career. Kerry Wood? Mark Prior? Stephen Strasburg? Do I need to break out a list of all pitchers that have required Tommy John surgery after overuse? Someone needs to point out that Lincecum is still riding high from winning the World Series and is out to prove that last season’s regression was merely a fluke. He knows he’s headed back to the arbitration table at the end of the year as well so he’s going to push himself hard to erase any doubt. Let’s hope he doesn’t push it too much.
Loading ...
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
well at first thought and the way i was always told is don’t overuse your pithchers. But sometime late last season I heard that inbetween their starts, that all the pitchers kept throwing and never truly resting their arms. And Timmy, Matty, Jon, Maddy atributed their hot streak to this work ethic. So it may be bad long term but maybe for the short term it worked. I dunno but the saying goes if you dont use it you lose it.
Have you ever looked at the innings logged by some starting pitchers in recent history. Greg Maddux, Randy Johnson, Curt Schilling, Roger Clemens, etc. I really think the correlation between pitchers being over-used and arm troubles is over-analyzed. I think you either have the ability to throw a ton of innings or you don’t. Most don’t and that’s the way it is. I think some of the pitchers today, CC, Halladay and a few others could probably throw 280 innings a year without any problems. Obviously it might hinder their production slightly at the very end of their careers, but I don’t think it would completely ruin them. Sadly, we’ll probably never get to find out if that is the case for some pitchers because of the way pitchers are handled now days.
I have looked at the innings logged by numerous starting pitchers, and while it’d be nice to say that guys like Lincecum and Bumgarner will end up having careers as long as those you’ve mentioned such as Maddux, Clemens, Johnson, etc., you have to admit that in this day and age, the odds are stacked against them. We’ve seen far too many Tommy John surgeries in the last decade and we’ve seen far too many one year wonders. I’m not saying our guys will end up that way, but in this era of pitch counts and innings limits, you have to take into consideration the way these guys were groomed before coming into the majors. Were they babied or did they just go out and throw like pitchers used to throw? I’d love for Timmy to go out there and pitch like that for the next 15 years, but guy slike that are certainly not the norm these days.