Comments on: Labor Day http://www.baseball-reference.com/blog/archives/250 This and that about baseball stats. Tue, 16 Jul 2013 17:01:55 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=4.6 By: Johnny Twisto http://www.baseball-reference.com/blog/archives/250/comment-page-1#comment-514 Wed, 05 Sep 2007 05:31:33 +0000 http://www.baseball-reference.com/sotd/archives/250#comment-514 "I worry a little bit about Tampa Bay with both Kazmir and Shields being so young and in the top 20. (Matt Cain is the youngest on this list, though.) Sometimes we forget that innings are not all created equally. Strikeout pitchers tend to throw more pitches to achieve the same number of outs as non-strikeout pitchers, and while Kazmir has thrown fewer innings than the 4 other guys to have at least 3000 pitches, he’s actually thrown basically the same number of pitches. Tampa Bay, especially given that they once again will not be making the playoffs, need to protect the arms of their young players."

I'm somewhat of an agnostic on pitch counts, though I do think there's evidence that very young guys shouldn't be worked too hard in the majors. But Kazmir has been so babied in his career. The Mets wouldn't let him throw more than 50 pitches as a minor leaguer. He was barely pitched the last 2 months of last season when he had some soreness. OK, maybe Tampa's games are "meaningless" (again), but at some point, the guy has to pitch to learn how to pitch. You can't keep him in bubblewrap forever. If the team is ever going become even average, I think they need to see their most talented pitcher out there, and if he's ever going to step to the next level, he needs experience. I'll submit that he's never going to become an elite pitcher if they keep slamming the brakes on him every time they fall out of the race. Maybe he'll blow his arm out, and we'll lose a guy who wins 10 games a season. He'll probably blow his arm out anyway if Tampa ever gets into a pennant race, since he's not conditioned to pitch more than few innings.

Beyond the scope of this blog, perhaps, but I wanted to say it.

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