Ouchie my arm! (?)

Over the weekend, Ken Rosenthal theorized that the Brewers’ decision to start CC on short rest would hurt him right as he hit the open market. In that outing, Sabathia pitched 5 and two-thirds innings and was charged with the loss. Despite getting tagged for only 1 earned run, Sabathia nonetheless began the bottom of the sixth by giving up a single and a walk, followed by an error, followed by two outs, followed by consecutive pinch-hit singles that scored a total of three runs. Final score: 4-3, Reds.

Today, we received news that temporary-Ned Yost-replacement Dale Sveum planned to pitch CC on short rest again, tomorrow, and could start him again on Sunday. “We’ll just wing the rest of it,” the interim manager said. Well, that’s comforting. Especially, I’m sure, to CC Sabathia’s tired wings.

Last year, Sabathia pitched a career-high 241regular-season innings. His previous career high had been 210 innings, back in 2002, and he hadn’t cracked the 200 mark since. We all saw what happened in the playoffs.

This year, Sabathia is already up to 237 innings. He’s a free agent at the end of the season, and despite the fervent hopes (nay, expectations) of Yankee fans, and despite the fat offer Steinbrenner is sure to offer him, he’s been less than stoked about playing in New York. So speculation about where the hefty lefty might end up has been rife. But it might be a good thing that money isn’t CC’s only object, because another late-season meltdown now could affect his future paycheck. Nonetheless, his agent isn’t worried, and CC, of course, says he wants the ball.

So who’s right? The Brewers, who want their mid-season prize to throw until his arm falls off, or the worriers, who fret that the 290-pound ace is too delicate for that?

In the old days, there were just pitchers: not starters, not relievers, not closers, and certainly not lefty specialists. And pitchers were expected to pitch a complete game (and pick up some innings on their off days if one of the other pitchers fell short). In the days of “Spahn and Sain and Pray for Rain,” there were no fixed rotations, as such. You might save your best pitcher for when you were facing the best team—after all, why waste Josh Beckett against the Royals? But in the 50s, teams began to realize that pitchers could be used in relief, as a regular feature. This new strategy allowed managers to put their starting pitchers on a regular schedule, which also allowed those pitchers to start more games and pitch more innings. In the 60s, the four-man rotation became de rigeur and by the early 70s some teams even started fooling around with three-man rotations. But in the mid-to-late 70s this trend reversed, and by the 1980s all teams were firmly entrenched in five-starter mode, with only occasional forays back into four-starter territory in situations of dire need.

Given this trend, it’s not surprising that we witnessed, in the 2007 season, even stricter limitations on pitchers, especially young pitchers. Case in point: the Joba Rules, which carefully proscribed Joe Torre’s use of hardthrowing prospect Joba Chamberlain as a reliever, dictating that the young fireballer, who is slated to be a starter in 2008, could not be used on consecutive days and could not come in to the middle of an inning. We saw something similar with the highly-touted Clay Buchholz in the Red Sox organization. Clay was subject to a strict pitch count in each game and a strict innings limit over the course of the season; in fact, Theo Epstein had given instructions that Buchholz was to be removed from his no-hitter against Baltimore if his pitch count reached 120 (thankfully, he retired the final batter on his 115th pitch, a beautiful curveball). Sox fans hoping to see Buchholz take the hill in the postseason were disappointed when management shut him down, citing a rigid 155 innings limit for a skinny kid who started the season in Double A. While pulling any pitcher out of a no-hitter in the 9th is inexcusable, an innings limit is hard to argue with—just think of Anibal Sanchez, another rookie who threw a no-no for the Marlins in 2006 but threw just 30 innings this year before having season-ending surgery for a torn labrum in June.

Given these two trends—mandating kid gloves for young hurlers and limiting pitchers of all ages to a certain number of pitches—it is only a matter of time before we see the advent of the six-man rotation. We probably would have seen it before now if not for the expansion era and the resultant shortage of quality pitching. But these days, with plenty of young talent in the pipeline and plenty of old talent hanging on by their surgically reconstructed fingernails, the era of the six-pitcher rotation may have finally arrived.

It’s been a subject of growing discussion in Boston this month, as the Sox have six starting pitchers slated to go in 2008: Josh Beckett, Daisuke Matsuzaka, Curt Schilling, Tim Wakefield, Buchholz, and Jon Lester. Among fans, the six-man rotation has been discussed mostly because the Fenway Faithful are loath to see any of these players go: Beckett is the staff ace; everyone expects Dice-K to break out next year; the city practically demanded Theo find a way to re-sign Schilling; Wakefield is a perennial fan favorite, still pitches extremely effectively, and costs practically nothing; Buchholz has the no-no under his belt and nasty stuff at his fingertips; and Lester, in addition to being the clinching pitcher of the 2007 World Series, has had the city’s heart in his hands ever since his diagnosis with cancer last year.

But sentiment is no reason to make poor baseball decisions, and Theo and Co. are about as unsentimental a management team as exists in baseball: if, say, the Marlins call them this afternoon and offer them, say, Miguel Cabrera for Jon Lester, that’s a deal they’d make. But this morning, on WEEI’s morning talk show, Schilling himself explained some practical reasons why you just might see the six-starter scenario play out in Fenway Park next year. “Simple math tells you if they start out with Lester and Buchholz in the rotation and they make every start of the year, don’t miss a turn, that they won’t be able to pitch in September and October,” Schilling said, referring to the front office’s innings limits on their two crown jewels. In addition to the younsters, there’s the oldsters—Schilling referenced himself and Tim Wakefield, tacitly admitting that neither of them is exactly the innings-eating horse they once were. Plus, as Schilling also noted, Daisuke Matsuzaka was accustomed to pitching on a six-man rotation in Japan. Given the other factors at play here, and given their huge investment in Matsuzaka, the six-man rotation is something the Red Sox have to be considering. Plus, if someone gets hurt, you could just go to a regular, five-man rotation without too much disruption. As Schilling concluded, “There’s a lot of things that lend itself to this being just about the perfect storm if it’s going to happen.”

Has the era of the six-man rotation finally dawned? And if it has, are we happy about it?

If you’ve been reading my posts here at umpbump, you know that I am less than enamored of what I like to call “The Cult of the 100-Pitch Count.”

But with the way things are going, I may have to rename the cult.

In recent years, managers have become increasingly reluctant to allow starting pitchers to throw much more than 100 pitches in a game, taking them out no matter how well they are doing as soon as they get a bit past 100 throws. But last season and now this season, we’ve started to see pitchers getting taken out well under 100 pitches, for no real discernable reason other than it gets to be the 7th inning!

Take tonight’s game between the Dodgers and the Rockies. After six innings, the Dodgers were leading 1-0. Rockies starter Rodrigo Lopez had only allowed a single run in the first inning and had only thrown 68 pitches. Only 68! Dodgers starter Brett Tomko had thrown 92 pitches, but was working on a one-hit shutout! And yet, when the 7th inning rolled aroun, both pitchers were removed from the game!

For what reason? Merely because it was the seventh inning of a close game, and in those situations you have your 1-2-3 relievers which you are supposed to throw in the 7t, 8th, and 9th. It seems like pitch counts aren’t even what matters anymore, only what inning it is.

If managers are going to be this risk averse and always follow the conventional wisdom for using their pitchers (ie, always throw your two setup men and closer starting in the 7th inning of a 1-run game), why even have managers at all? Let’s just have the players consult one of those Choose-Your-Own-Adventure books from the 1980s.

“Is it the 7th inning? Turn to page 43.”

“Is it a one-run game? Bring in your second best setup man and turn to page 71.”

But seriously, even R.A. Montgomery wouldn’t pull a pitcher after only 68 pitches.

For most of my lifetime, every single team in the major leagues carried 11 pitchers at all times – 5 starters and 6 relievers.  A little before my time, teams used to carry 10 pitchers, and way back in the day, they carried only 9 hurlers – those were the days when every team kept three catchers on the big club.

In recent years, as the Cult of the Pitch Count has spread and increasingly specialized relievers rarely if ever throw two innings, only throwing more than two in a complete emergency, teams have started routinely carrying 12 pitchers.

But in the last few years things have really started to get out of hand.

Last year two National League teams – the Brewers and the Giants – became the first teams not playing in Coors field to carry 13 pitchers for extended amounts of time.  This is somewhat loony.  Carrying 13 pitchers means that after your starting 8 position players, you only have four players on the bench at the start of the game.  Assuming one is a backup catcher you are loath to waste, that leaves only three position players for pinch hitting, double switching, and replacing injured players. God forbid the game goes to extra innings.

And at the same time, the increased number of pitchers throwing fewer innings means more pitching changes which require ever more pinch hitting and double switchery. Which you now have fewer players for, with the predictable result that we are seeing more and more at bats by relief pitchers who have no business batting, or that abomination – starting pitchers pinch-hitting for relievers on their off days.

But this season is when things got really crazy.

This year, several American League teams have been carrying 13 pitchers.  With the DH taking away a guy from the bench, this means an AL team starts the game with only 3 bench players.  Now granted, American League teams don’t really need pinch hitters or double switches much, but wow – only 3 players in the dugout…  What do we even need a manager for?

And what’s next? Are NL teams going to stand for this uppity behavior from the Junior Circuit? Or are they going to start carrying 14 pitchers to show who’s boss?

Those two way players like Brooks Kieschnick and Dave McCarty are starting to sound less like a novelty act and more like a good idea.

Last night Jason Schmidt struck out 16 Marlins in a complete game 2-1 victory and was mobbed at the mound before being doused with champaign in the clubhouse.

Now, this may seem a bit odd considering that 16 strikeouts is not exactly a major league record, but Schmidt was the first Giant to do it since Christy Matthewson in 1904.  More importantly, perhaps, is the fact that in recent years almost no pitcher is left in a game long enough to even approach 16 Ks.

The fact is, strikeouts require a lot of pitches – usually at least 4 or 5 per batter. And in this day and age where the cult of the 100-pitch-limit reigns supreme, pitchers who rack up a lot of punchouts tend to get pulled by the 6th inning because they also rack up huge pitch counts.

It used to be, even just a few years ago, that veteran pitchers would be allowed to stay in games past 100 pitches, and even younger pitchers would be allowed to stay in until 120 or so if they were pitching a shutout or something.  But this year we have being seeing even long-time veterans get pulled in the 6th inning when their pitch count gets over the century mark, even when they are pitching a shutout or have a huge lead.

Last night, Jason Schmidt threw 124 pitches.  This is a paltry amount when you consider that as recently as a few years back Randy Johnson threw 161 pitches in a game, and Nolan Ryan used to somewhat regularly cross the 200-pitch mark a decade ago.

And yet, I would bet that there is no other manager in the game today other than Felipe Alou who would have left Schmidt in the game in the 9th inning after he had already thrown well over 100 pitches and then gave up consecutive leadoff singles and wild pitched the runners to 2nd and 3rd with no outs in a 2-1 ballgame.

But Felipe left Schmidt in the game, and he proceed to strike out the heart of the Marlins lineup in order.

16 strikouts in the game. Enjoy that number guys, because it may be a long, long time before anyone ever approaches it again.