A feisty must-read from Mr. Franchise!
“These kids today, they want to be men, they want to be foxhole guys, but they’re not being allowed to do that,” Seaver said. “Imagine if these computer geeks who are running baseball now were allowed to run a war? They’d be telling our soldiers: ‘That’s enough. You’ve fired too many bullets from your rifle this week!’ ”
I haven’t worn my Seaver in a while. I think it will get some run this weekend!
I enjoy this website very much, but I’m going to have to call you out on this. Supporting this article is extremely hypocritical of you. When Harvey pitched his CG shutout you took to Twitter complaining that he was allowed to go back out for then ninth, despite pitching a gem, you called Terry a lame duck manager because in three consecutive starts our ace did what an ace is supposed to do and pitch at least 7 innings. You constantly reference Johans No hitter as the sole reason he is injured. Stephen Strasbourg is babied beyond belief, and that didn’t stop him from getting hurt. Babying Joba Chamberlain with all those stupid “joba rules” ruined him as both a starter reliever. So yes, I do agree with the franchise. You claim to agree, but what you have said in the past tells a different tale. It’s one or the other, not both. Choose a damn side and stick with it.
The fact that none of these precautions that have been instituted in recent years seem to be decreasing injuries one iota has to be acknowledged, and I’m glad influential people around baseball are having the stones to say it. You can’t fix a problem by clinging to an ineffective “solution.”
As I mentioned here in a comment a few days ago, and as was also alluded to in that thorough Q & A about Harvey’s injury that Metsblog had linked (sorry, don’t remember the author and am not going to look it up at right this moment), the more the orthopaedic community tries to figure this stuff out, the more the finger seems to point more towards players’ amateur workloads than anything they do or don’t do once they’ve already matured into pros. The research is backing up the idea that the more someone has pitched at a younger age, the more prone they are to problems down the road.
Nobody has all the answers, obviously, but Marichal, Jenkins, Spahn, and Seaver didn’t grow up playing baseball 10 months out of the year between high school, summer ball, travel leagues, etc., like the current generation of players has. Might it stand to reason that not prematurely overloading their arms is what made them more durable as adults? I’d be willing to bet Steve Carlton never threw 7 innings in October when he was 14.
Again, nobody can say it with absolute certainty, but pitch counts and innings limits on professional pitchers may be akin to shutting the gate after all the horses have already left the corral. IMOHO, much like the NFL has done with neck & concussion safety, MLB needs to get more involved with the youth leagues & the college game and put a little stroke behind the recommendations that are out there regarding this stuff. Frankly, the coaches of the teams to which I’m referring don’t want to hear anything about pitch counts or innings limits and what might happen to a 12-year-old when he’s 24. They just know their stud pitcher can win them a championship and are going to ride him for all he’s worth. Heck, my group actually tried to host a symposium on this very topic for local youth league coaches once, and out of the countless teams in various leagues in the area, literally NO ONE showed up. Not. A. Single. Coach. All we could do was just shake our heads, pack our stuff, and go back home.