(photo c/o Getty)
Why did the Texas Rangers even bother pursuing Cliff Lee this past offseason?
It turns out the Rangers have plenty of solid southpaws of their own, as followed ‘s eight-inning, one-earned-run performance with an outing better than his final line (7.2 IP, 8H, 5ER, 2BB, 5K, 11 groundouts, 3 flyouts) would indicate. In fact, Holland was one pitch away from an eight-inning, three-run performance — practically unheard of in this day of pitching specialization unless your name is or the aforementioned backstabber in the first paragraph — but was probably left in a tad too long, giving up a huge two-run insurance home run to in the eighth inning on his 112th pitch.
This was particularly ironic in light of the fact that Michael Kay and were praising for revamping the Rangers’ organizational pitching philosophy (one which I happen to think is pretty smart, too — why not have your young pitchers get used to shouldering heavier loads in the minors so that they can come out and comfortably go into the eighth? I’m sure plenty of people would cite the risk of injury, but who of the Rangers’ young pitchers has spent significant time on the disabled list the last few seasons? Perhaps the Yankees need to be drafting more durable pitchers) and letting their guys go deep into games, and then boom, Cano re-extends the Yankee lead to three. So while I think it’s great if you have the confidence in your starter to go deep, part and parcel of that is also knowing when to pull that pitcher. Holland wasn’t exactly getting killed, and Cano is going to do that to a lefty sometime — even if he was 3-18 on the season against southpaws — and so I suppose you can’t fault Wash too severely there, but of course in hindsight it seems like a fresh arm against Cano would’ve been the right call there.
I haven’t even gotten to Freddy Garcia yet, who, in his first start of the season, pitched better than anyone could have ever expected, holding the top offense in the AL to zero runs across six innings and only allowing three baserunners (two hits and a walk). Garcia only struck one batter out, and while that’s not ideal you can live with it when he also gets 10 of his outs on the ground. tossed a scoreless seventh before made things interesting in the eighth, giving up two runs to cut the Yankee lead to one, but was able to work out of further trouble after inducing a huge double play off the bat of Adrian Beltre (who nearly bashed a go-ahead three-run bomb two pitches prior). came on in the ninth and did his thing, picking up his sixth save of the year and locking down the Yankees’ .
Props also go to , for clubbing a two-run home run in the first inning to stake the Yankees to an early lead they wouldn’t relinquish, and also hitting a sacrifice fly for his third RBI of the game. picked up two hits, and went 0-3 with a BB and two more groundouts.
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I’m sure plenty of people would cite the risk of injury, but who of the Rangers’ young pitchers has spent significant time on the disabled list the last few seasons?
Well, Derek Holland. He was on the DL for nearly three months last season. Matt Harrison too – ~four months in 2009.
Of course, it’s not necessarily that all the innings they pitched led to their injuries.
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Heh, whoops. Well I suppose the moral of the story is, protect ‘em fiercely or work ‘em to the bone, young pitchers are gonna get injured one way or another.
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Steve S. Reply:
April 16th, 2011 at 8:12 pm
Sure they will, but if by limiting their innings you can lower their odds of getting injured by 10%, then it’s worth doing. Nothing is 100%, but improving your methods is what progress is all about. Innings limits are widely accepted at this point as the industry standard, if Nolan Ryan wants to do things the old way then time will tell who was right or wrong. My money’s on the field here.
Again, there isn’t much debate on the science here. Hope you got a chance to go through that Andrews piece I linked the other day. When pitchers tire, their muscles carry less of the load and their ligaments take over, leading to injury. Ligaments have far less blood flow than muscles do, so they take much, much longer to heal.
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Larry Koestler Reply:
April 16th, 2011 at 8:21 pm
I did read the Andrews piece, and it was great, although I didn’t come away with it feeling like one way or the other was the “right” way with regards to handling young pitchers.
I know I’m letting my frustration with the way the Yankees have handled Hughes and Joba color my viewpoint to an extent, but I’d be curious to see if Nolan’s way does end up bearing fruit.
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T.O. Chris Reply:
April 16th, 2011 at 11:37 pm
I really don’t see any connection to the way Joba and Hughes have been treated…. One was a college pitcher rushed to the majors with maybe 1 legit triple A start, the other drafted out of high school spent years in the minors and has more than a full season of Scranton under his belt. Hughes has never had major league games in which his pitch limit was 35 pitches or so like Joba, Joba has never been given the repeated chances to stay in the rotation as Hughes has, and they both were in the pen at different times in their development as men and pitchers. On top of that Hughes is 6’5 of athlete and Joba has been known to be 6’3 of a tub of goo.
Getting upset about injury, dead arm, and Joba’s lack of velocity are all understandable but I have a hard time seeing how Joba being screwed up is the same as Hughes when they as opposite paths as 2 starters could have.
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Larry Koestler Reply:
April 17th, 2011 at 10:08 am
Hey Chris,
You’re absolutely right re: Hughes’ development in the minors. My aggravation with Hughes wasn’t over how the team brought him through the system; my beef is with transitioning him to the ‘pen after sevens starts in 2009.
Now, obviously Hughes-the-set-up-man wound up playing a key role on the 2009 team, and it’s possible they don’t wind up winning the division as decisively as they did without him, but he was largely ineffective in the postseason and so I wouldn’t go as far as saying they don’t win the WS without Hughes in the ‘pen that year.
The more I think about it, the more I blame being limited to 86 innings in 2009 for Hughes’ current dead-arm predicament. Clearly having thrown more inning last season that at any point in his career is partially to blame for Hughes’ struggles, but had Hughes stayed in the rotation and thrown, say 150-160 innings in 2009, then perhaps we’re dealing with this dead-arm business last season instead of now.
Obviously I’m making a ton of suppositions here when we of course have no idea what would’ve happened, and sure, perhaps if Hughes has his dead-arm last year there’s no guarantee that he’d be back to his normal self now, but I still would’ve preferred Hughes continue taking reps as a starter in 2009 than throw out of the ‘pen.
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T.O. Chris Reply:
April 17th, 2011 at 3:48 pm
Even if they had kept him in the rotation and he experience a dead arm last season I think the Yankees would still be getting all the blame after Joba. I just think people continue to hold the mistakes made with Chamberlain against the Yankees brass, and anytime something comes up with a young pitcher fans and media are always going to look to point to the Yankees not knowing how to develop pitching talent.
It’s easy to look back and say this should’ve been done and this shouldn’t have been done when you have all the information in front of you, but I can’t find any reason why I wouldn’t have put Hughes in the pen that season. You correctly point out that Hughes sort of shat himself once the playoffs came around, but in season he had been looking pretty inconsistent and lacking with his fastball command (common theme with Hughes velocity or not). On top of that the Yankees had no one in the pen bridging Mariano, and as I re-call it was an adventure just getting to Mo with a 3 or 4 run lead, with the likes of Jose Veras and Brian Bruney struggling to throw anything over the plate and stay healthy respectively. Putting Hughes in the pen made a lot of sense and was called for weeks before by David Cone on air if I remember correctly.
Hughes had already spent loads of time in triple A and more starts in Scranton wasn’t going to get him prepared for major league batters. The ultimate problem with putting Hughes in the pen to me isn’t the innings limit he happened upon because of it, it’s the fact that he fell in love with his fastball in that time. Phil went to the pen and picked up an extra 2-3 MPH on his fastball and could fire a 95 MPH heater in with regularity, he hadn’t improved upon his command at all (in fact it got wilder within the zone) but he was making up for with speed and racking up the K’s. I believe this mindset never left him, and I credit this love of his fastball with his steady decline in the effectiveness of his curve. He only rarely used it in the pen, and once he transitioned back to the rotation he still seemed more interested in throwing his 4-seam and newly fashioned cutter than he was in perfecting the curve.
I fully believe Hughes can be an effective (not great) starter with diminished velocity but he needs command of his pitches to do so. He may never get back to 92 MPH average again, there is always that chance, so instead of spending all this time trying to force velocity on a “dead-arm” he needs to be trying to be more of a pitcher and less the gunslinger he seems to want to be but doesn’t (and never did) posses the stuff to be.
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