May 12, 2003

Kerry Wood threw 141 pitches in just 7 innings on Saturday.

Geez, I am not a big supporter of PAP or PAP3 or any particular projection system that intends to identify an abuse pattern that leads directly to a torn up arm. But, and I have a big but, there is some logic to the recovery time for an arm after pitching a major league game, and given the investment – players are investments, not costs – teams have in number one picks and excellent pitchers, it behooves the teams and the pitchers not to throw so many pitches it takes longer to "bounce back". I don’t know where the line is, and I won’t pretend to, but I certainly feel 140 is too many, especially for a pitcher that has already had arm surgery. Now, Don Malcolm wrote an excellent lead-in analysis and I agree with that and several of the reader comments (#6 Walt Cook, #30 Rubber arm in Illinois).

I went back to mlb.tv and watched the last two innings pitched by Wood. He had some serious gas going. He was hitting 97 in the 7th, as well as the 6th, so he didn’t have a loss of velocity at all. However, in the 6th (and earlier in the game), he had a good curve and good slider. In the 7th, he didn’t. Almost all his breaking balls were a disaster. He threw one over Matheny’s head and one over Williams’ head. He hit Vina with an overthrown slider and made Palmiero skip rope on one that he swung at to strike out and end the inning.

After hitting Vina, Steve Stone, an excellent color commentator, really began to expound on Wood’s tiring and how his shoulder was opening up and how Wood really needed to focus on his mechanics. Stone further commented that Wood had "lost the release point" on his slider. If you can re-watch this game, do so, and see how his breaking pitches are wild. He threw twelve breaking balls in the 7th inning and two were near the strike zone. It looked like a 12-year old trying to throw a curveball in Little League, with fewer hit batsmen.

Many people who scoff at present systematic looks at pitch counts, and even some that don’t, generally acknowledge that "pitching tired" is what results in arm damage. A dozen strained sliders screams "pitching tired" to me.

I look at it this way: is it a necessary risk? Do the Cubs not have a lefty than can pitch to two guys in the seventh? Wood had thrown 112 pitches before the 7th. Any sensible manager would have had two guys ready to start the inning. You have Mark Guthrie for just this reason.

Is Wood’s arm ruined? Probably not. Was this a smart managerial move? Definitely not.

Mo Vaughn is talking retirement, but there’s no way he leaves $17 mil on the table. He’s not going to eat that. General Manager Steve Phillips spoke with Mike Piazza about first base. Stolen bases haven’t been a problem except against the Marlins, but Piazza sat out against the Dodgers after having a mole removed. Certainly chose an opportune time to have that done. That says to me Piazza is still plenty pissed about Mota. I personally think moving Piazza is a mistake, but we’ll see.

The Mets are slowly improving, as everyone in the April slump has begun to show signs of life. Robbie Alomar even hit a home run right handed. Armando Benitez has pitched well, and Art Howe has shown a propensity to listen to Walt Davis and Steve Treder and is using Benitez for more than one inning. Of course, looking good against the Padres is no real feat.

The Mets have lost two of last season’s worst performers and have replaced them with players that performed just as poorly last season. Fortunately, Roger Cedeno hasn’t been as bad at the plate since a little time on the bench. And Tony Clark – well, he leads the team in home runs, and playing a mediocre first base. That’s going to be a 20 run improvement over Vaughn just because he can catch. Now if only Joe McEwing would stop getting hits…