Paper-thin. Holding a GM responsible for young pitcher usage is like holding a NASCAR owner responsible for a breakdown in the 450th lap.

This arguement only holds water if Dusty Baker were manager.

34 games started, 220 IP now qualifies as abuse? Come on.

34 games started, 220 IP now qualifies as abuse? Come on.

It's certainly a heavy workload for 23-24 year old pitchers.

So because Zito threw full seasons at age 23 and 24, he collapsed at age 30?

What the hell was Beane supposed to do? Use inferior pitchers and lose? Zito, Mulder, and Hudson were primary reasons why they won as many games as they did.

There's also this myth that as long as you don't use them too much when they're young, most pitchers will remain healthy and strong until their late 30's. The evidence is pretty thin, in my opinion.

"A bit of a mention" does not equate a whole lot of blame.

It sounds reasonable enough to me that SOME blame goes to Beane for riding Zito hard, but a very small scintilla of blame...

That very small scintilla of blame should in no way be equated with the extremely bad decision by the Giants to pay Zito a gazillion bucks, when he was not an elite pitcher, so there....

Nevertheless, it's a theory some major league teams are operating under now.

A’s know that they likely have a player for no more than six-years until he becomes a free agent and bolts for a wealthier team.

Doesn't every team know this?

I thought this was a completely compelling argument. I have no doubt that once he's away from the game, Beane would acknowledge this.

It's one of the reason why I don't like the current structure of ownership of young players. Beane certainly isn't the limit of the possible in this case. I mean, what if a Koshien-ish scenario arises (I know bad example--Matsuzaka lives on)?

The title describes "blame" which might be hyperbole to hook us into the article. But whether or not we agree that Beane thought this way, wouldn't it be a logical way to think? And couldn't it cause problems for players?

And couldn't it cause problems for players?

I suggest the players consider themselves independent contractors, provide all their own equipment and training facilities, and create their own development system. Then they can tell the team to shove it when asked they are asked to pitch too often.

I thought this was a completely compelling argument. I have no doubt that once he's away from the game, Beane would acknowledge this.

I agree. Nothing wrong with it, it's just Oakland's way of doing things. But if I were a GM for another team, I would probably avoid acquiring Oakland pitchers if Billy came calling as the Cardinals can attest.

The Braves didn't do badly with Hudson.

But if I were a GM for another team, I would probably avoid acquiring Oakland pitchers if Billy came calling as the Cardinals can attest.

As #13 has pointed out, the Braves got Hudson, while the A's got a bunch of nothing.

And I would believe that the DBacks are content with the Haren trade so far.

As for Mulder, he was struggling with a hip injury, or something similar, the A's were not very forthcoming with details, in his last season with the A's, that was reportedly a result of something that occured in the gym while lifting weights.

(since when by the way, did the Bay Area – populated by more people than the entire state of Oregon – become a small market, I wonder?).

The A's share of the Bay Area market is essentially Alameda and Contra Costa Counties. They draw some fans from outside this area but not many. The transit systems of the Bay Area were not designed to move people from the Peninsula and Marin County to Oakland.

thought this was a completely compelling argument. I have no doubt that once he's away from the game, Beane would acknowledge this.

Compelling? Even though he acknowledges Hudson, he omits / forgets / is unaware of the fact that Hudson cut back on his winter workouts prior to the 2006 season, and that bad 2006 season was likely caused by this. From a USA today article on Hudson in 2007

The stronger body is because of health. He spent more time in the weight room without worrying about re-injuring the strained left oblique muscle — the side muscle below the rib cage — that limited his ability to rotate during his 2004 and 2005 seasons with the Braves. The strain came with the wear and tear of the strong torque in his delivery.

"Oblique injuries, they just don't go away," Hudson says. "They are ugly injuries. I thought the smart thing was to back off on the winter workouts. But over the offseason, I busted my tail. I did more weight with good effect. I had a more full-body workout, and I feel stronger."

And from an MLB.com article prior to the 2007 season, in 2006,

As he struggled throughout this past season, Tim Hudson regularly tweaked his mechanics in an attempt to find the groove that had been there throughout his successful days with the A's.

But Hudson's most influential adjustment may actually come from the fact that he's once again comfortable enough to push himself during his offseason workouts. The weightlifting and conditioning program that he's completing six days a week this winter is very similar to the one he utilized before his arrival in Atlanta.

(since when by the way, did the Bay Area – populated by more people than the entire state of Oregon – become a small market, I wonder?).

The A's share of the Bay Area market is essentially Alameda and Contra Costa Counties. They draw some fans from outside this area but not many. The transit systems of the Bay Area were not designed to move people from the Peninsula and Marin County to Oakland.

The Bay Area also has a large population of immigrants from places w/o a baseball tradition, and a large number of transplants with loyalties to other teams. The "effective" baseball population is much smaller than the raw census number.

There's also this myth that as long as you don't use them too much when they're young, most pitchers will remain healthy and strong until their late 30's. The evidence is pretty thin, in my opinion.

It isn't "pretty thin." It's made up, pulled out of thin air.

If one is to posit that Zito was overused by the A's, and that overuse led directly to his current struggles, then one must present just what sort of alternative workload wouldn't constitute overuse, and present the evidence that such an alternative workload has demonstrably led to fewer injuries and longer, more productive careers.

We'd all love to see it.

As for Mulder, he was struggling with a hip injury, or something similar, the A's were not very forthcoming with details, in his last season with the A's, that was reportedly a result of something that occured in the gym while lifting weights.

Unrelated to the Veterans Stadium fracture of the year before?

You can add Harang to the "Pro" side on the discussion about trading for Oakland pitchers.

It isn't "pretty thin." It's made up, pulled out of thin air.

That's not true either. There's physiologic, anatomical and empirical evidence to suggest limiting work on a pitcher when young might be a good idea. How it plays out in practice is still uncertain but to say it's made up out of thin air is just plain wrong.

I'm still pretty sure this is stuff that Brian Sabean should have maybe considered before happily handing Zito 126 million dollars.

Theory isn't evidence. And while the concept of overuse is obvious, it isn't the same thing as asserting that a given workload is an example of overuse, because that assertion requires the support of evidence that an alternative workload is demonstrably less injurious. In other words, where do we draw the line? Indeed, what's the evidence that demonstrates that there is "a" line at all? What workload has been demonstrated as safe?

I know it's far from a perfect measure, but here are the Big 3s MLB ranks in PAP while in Oakland:



XX = not in top 100
-- = not on A's

Zito was ridden pretty hard in 2005 and 2006, throwing 110+ pitches in more than half of his starts. The other guys, not so much.

Theory isn't evidence.

Kerry Wood and Mark Prior are evidence, though. The fact that the bones don't achieve their adult density until around the age of 25 is evidence.

Steve, you've beaten this equine corpse long enough. At the very least, you could admit you don't really know either and to not disparage anyone who wishes to explore it further in the hopes of finding a way to extend the careers of talented young pitchers.

Unrelated to the Veterans Stadium fracture of the year before?

Don't know if it might have been related or not. IIRC, it was caused by doing leg presses or something like that. Unfortunately, I can no longer find the place where I read that.

Zito was ridden pretty hard in 2005 and 2006, throwing 110+ pitches in more than half of his starts. The other guys, not so much.

That chart is just regular season stats. The A's pitchers also made a couple of post-season starts to tack on to thier totals. And also note that the one XX year in there is the year Zito tossed 100 IP in the minors before coming up and throwing another 90 in the majors. That's a pretty heavy load at 22. He went from ~120 per year in college to ~190+ as a pro pretty quickly. That kind of jump would be frowned upon these days.

FWIW, I once looked at Zito's workload, including collge and post-season, in comparison to Steve Avery's and it matched up pretty well. Both guys were ridden a little hard in their early 20s and both completely lost their stuff in their late 20s for whatever reasons.

you could admit you don't really know either

Admit it? How can I possibly make it any clearer that I don't know, that nobody knows.

And I'll continue to beat this equine corpse as long as we continue to read stuff like this, the all-too-familiar modern refrain:

1. Pitcher gets hurt (or even, as in this case, pitcher loses effectiveness)
2. The cause of this is clearly and directly his past workload
3. The overuse is conveniently defined as whatever this particular past workload happens to be
4. And no plausible alternative workload is presented that should have been followed, that has been demonstrated as less injurious than the workload of the pitcher at hand


It's #4 that's the issue. No one disputes the concept that pitching is extremely risky to the health of one's arm. But until we manage to identify a workload that significantly reduces the risk, then the tsk-tsking each time a pitcher gets hurt is complete BS.

Anecdotal citations of pitchers who've gotten hurt is the furthest thing from evidence of what a safe workload is. All we know is that pitchers get hurt a lot, and pitchers have always gotten hurt a lot, year after year, decade after decade, under every workload pattern yet devised.

There could be another reason why Zito's pitch counts went up in '05 and '06: the inability to finish off batters meant he couldn't go into the 5th or 6th inning without a high pitch count. Macha would necessarily be leery of bringing Duke in that early in every Zito game because the A's SP was thin to begin with and Duke had to be saved for other starters too. Whether Barry's inability was due to heavy workloads as philly suggests or whether due to the AL laying off the big curve or Barry's inability to summon that curve/strikeout pitch at will is hard to know without parsing the gamelogs, video, etc.

The Haren and Swisher trades clearly focussed on getting young SPs (Gio, DLS, Anderson, Smith and Eveland are all SPs) so perhaps there is an implicit acknowledgement on Beane's part that the workload has to be spread out at the ML level with trips to the DL (truly warranted or not) factored in.

Holding a GM responsible for young pitcher usage is like holding a NASCAR owner responsible for a breakdown in the 450th lap.

I hope this isn't serious. Billy "Stand on the top step" Beane didn't wander off to a cave between April and October.

Admit it? How can I possibly make it any clearer that I don't know, that nobody knows.

Then why are you advocating a return of the 120-inning, 3-inning at a time, relief ace role?

Then why are you advocating a return of the 120-inning, 3-inning at a time, relief ace role?

Well, I'm not and never have advocated exactly that. But you're correct insofar as I do advocate higher top-end IP limits on both relievers and starters than we typically currently see.

And the reason I do is precisely because there is no evidence that current workload limits achieve any significant injury reduction. Given that, the clear benefit of concentrating more innings into a staff's best pitchers (and thus, fewer innings for a staff's worst pitchers) would come at no increased injury-rate cost.

It's simply because of the lack of evidence demonstrating a "safe" workload.

It's disingenious to suggest that somebody must put forth some sort of "magic" inning/pitch limit (over which a young pitcher is more prone to injury, both game to game and for the season), and, when such a magic number is not forthcoming, then to decry the entire point of limiting the workload of young pitchers. Can't we accept that being a bit cautious is good for both the pitcher and the ballclub, without having to try to figure out how many Lugos can dance on the head of a pin? Can't we accept that a high early workload may very likely be one of the prime aggravating factors when a pitcher gets hurt, without having to indulge in simplistic either/or arguments?

The evidence I've seen is pretty convincing. Here's one tack: examine the workload of all recent 280 game winners, and what do you see? For the most part they didn't pitch a huge number of innings from 20-24 (assuming they are in the majors at all), or if they did so, it was during the dead ball 60's, or there were other extenuating circumstances, or if they did their K rate dropped noticeably as they aged. Clemens turned 24 in the middle of his magical 1986 season (damn seems like an eternity ago), and Seaver unlike Rocket saw his K rate drop in half by his late 30's. Maddux was throwing 80 pitch CGs at age 23 (I personally scored a few), so that's his out; Glavine never cleared 200 innings until age 24. Blyleven benefited from the "mini" dead ball era of the early 70's AL. Other guys like Niekro, Ryan, Unit, Perry, and John were all enjoying light early workloads.

So why did we have 10 280 game winners, all clustered from birth years of 1938 to 1950, when we had only 4 (Wynn, Grove, Roberts, and Spahn), between the birth years 1887 and 1938? Because the low offensive environment of the 60's helped keep their early workloads down (pitches/batter, pitches/inning), even if they were up and doing over 200 innings in the majors. Not the only reason mind but a definite aid in their longevity.

Just a couple of pull quotes from Treder:

4. And no plausible alternative workload is presented that should have been followed, that has been demonstrated as less injurious than the workload of the pitcher at hand


It's #4 that's the issue. No one disputes the concept that pitching is extremely risky to the health of one's arm. But until we manage to identify a workload that significantly reduces the risk, then the tsk-tsking each time a pitcher gets hurt is complete BS.

And also more clearly presented above:

one must present just what sort of alternative workload wouldn't constitute overuse, and present the evidence that such an alternative workload has demonstrably led to fewer injuries and longer, more productive careers.

We'd all love to see it.

There is now an alternative that has been presented as a model that does not constitue overuse, namely the gradual increase of IP in increments of 30 IP per season. This alternative seems to have become pretty prevalent in the last few years. And, fwiw, it's one that the A's handling of Zito did not meet as he went from ~120 IP once a week as a collegian to 190 IP as a professional.

Of course, that's the easy part, but it's important to reconize that an alternative has been accepted by many MLB organizations and Treder seems glossed over it a bit for my taste.

Now the second, more important part, the presentation of evidence that the new model leads to fewer injuries and more productive careers is a much more difficult thing. To some extent that is by definition true of all new models. But there are supposedly peer-reviewed research articles by well respected doctors and trainers at ASMI that do support this newer usage model. I've never read them - I'm not sure that they're available online - but there is more justification than is implied by Treder's "tsk-tsking".

The constant demands that other people provide proof for new theories can often be rhetorically successful. But it also often covers up a lack of evidence on the other side of the debate. Steve, you may believe that your demands for "evidence" put you on the side of science and reason, but the manner in which you make them often makes it indistinguishable from some curmedgeonly it was better in my day nostalgic bs.

It's disingenious to suggest that somebody must put forth some sort of "magic" inning/pitch limit (over which a young pitcher is more prone to injury, both game to game and for the season), and, when such a magic number is not forthcoming, then to decry the entire point of limiting the workload of young pitchers.

Yes, and the next time I "decry the entire point of limiting the workload of young pitchers" will be the first.

Can't we accept that being a bit cautious is good for both the pitcher and the ballclub, without having to try to figure out how many Lugos can dance on the head of a pin?

Of course, being "a bit cautious" is entirely sensible. That isn't the same thing at all as automatically, reflexively pointing to the past workload every time a pitcher gets hurt, and describing that workload as overuse.

Can't we accept that a high early workload may very likely be one of the prime aggravating factors when a pitcher gets hurt, without having to indulge in simplistic either/or arguments?

Simplistic either/or arguments are exactly what I deeply desire us to avoid. The entire issue is that this stuff is complicated, and we should all admit that what we don't know about the relationship between workload and injury rate is far greater than what we know.

And I would say that the population of 280-game winners is such a microscopic sample of the population of pitchers as to almost certainly provide no meaningful predictive power.

The constant demands that other people provide proof for new theories can often be rhetorically successful. But it also often covers up a lack of evidence on the other side of the debate. Steve, you may believe that your demands for "evidence" put you on the side of science and reason, but the manner in which you make them often makes it indistinguishable from some curmedgeonly it was better in my day nostalgic bs.

To the extent that my style is less than elegant, I'm happy to plead guilty as charged.

As for the substance of the matter, it remains the case that these peer-reviewed articles by well-respected doctors and trainers aren't cited by Van Zandt. What I'm opposed to is the all-too-typical mode of argument in this realm which retroactively points to workload and says, "See?" every time an injury occurs, but offers no predictive causal linkage.

If the 30-IP-increase-per-season model actually succeeds in meaningfully reducing injury rates, then that will be tremendous. But until and unless it does, it remains just a theory, not evidence. And until and unless that happens, then it remains the case that no pitcher workload pattern yet deployed in professional baseball has any empirical claim as "safe."

Now the second, more important part, the presentation of evidence that the new model leads to fewer injuries and more productive careers is a much more difficult thing. To some extent that is by definition true of all new models.

It's also true of any model attempting to describe or explain dynamic human behavior. I'd listen to the biomechanics experts before I'd listen to the sabermetricians here.

This discussion is interesting, but I'm not sure that Barry Zito is much of an exigence for it. Zito has thrown 1,660 major-league innings, most of them very good until very recently. He made a few leaderboards in innings pitched when he was in his mid-20s. So what? His occupation is to play baseball. The extremely vast majority of professional pitchers have never made it to 1,660 innings, or won 20 games in a season, or 100 in a career, or four more in the postseason. This guy is a success story, not a cautionary tale.

If a GM or a manager does something outrageous with a teenage pitcher and blows out his arm in a single identifiable stint of overwork, that's very bad. If a star pitcher turns 30 and runs out of gas, that's life in the big leagues.

Indeed. I'm a lot more worried about the workload of 15-20 year olds than I am young big leaguers. I have no evidence either but I'd guess that is where we can make significant progress in pitcher health. The pitchers of yesteryear didn't play year around and didn't play lots of organized ball as they grew up. They played pick up games and threw a lot, but didn't necessarily pitch a lot. I suspect with modern training and medicine a human could throw 400 innings per year, but they'd have to be raised to do that from childhood, not pitched relentlessly from age 13-18 and then brought to the bigs.

No one under 18 should pitch more than 120 pitches per week and shouldn't throw a breaking pitch more than 5% of the time. They should also run a lot.

FWIW, I once looked at Zito's workload, including collge and post-season, in comparison to Steve Avery's and it matched up pretty well. Both guys were ridden a little hard in their early 20s and both completely lost their stuff in their late 20s for whatever reasons.

Was the load any worse than what Maddux, Smoltz, or other pitchers at that time were given?

I think the best contemporary comparison to Zito's workload is Mark Buehrle.

Was the load any worse than what Maddux, Smoltz, or other pitchers at that time were given?

Don't know, didn't look. As Zito's stuff appeared to taper off without apparent injury, it just struck me that Avery was an interesting comp so I went looking to see how thier workloads compared.

# 38: Yep.

# 39: All very sensible, and I'm inclined to agree, so long as we admit that we're working within the realm of intuition and common sense, and not from any kind of knowledge basis that changes in major and minor league pitcher usage patterns over the past few decades has provided.

Avery dropped below average at 25, never to return. Zito was darn good until 29 or 30. That's a pretty big difference, I think.

The idea that vets can be pushed hard if they were taken care of as youngsters basically stems from a few data points:

Warren Spahn: Not in the rotation until 26.
Bob Gibson: Not in the rotation until 25, not in the league's top 10 in innings until 27.
Nolan Ryan: Not a rotation regular until 25.
Randy Johnson: Not a rotation regular until 25-26, not a top-10 innings pitcher until 29.
Curt Schilling: Not a rotation regular until 25

This is, of course, five guys out of thousands of major-league pitchers and their relatively-low early workloads were due more to inconsistency than their being protected. Johnson and Ryan weren't worked hard early in the majors because they couldn't hit the broadside of a barn, Schilling didn't take his job seriously enough to impress his managers, and Spahn's career was delayed by war (does anyone know about the delayed start to Gibson's career? was it basketball?).

That Zito's current problems stem largely or at least in part from his Oakland workloads is certainly possible, but I think the evidence is rather tenuous. Zito threw 214.1 innings at 23 and 229.1 (fifth in the league) at 24. Those aren't Dwight Gooden/Sam McDowell numbers. Just two years ago he was a solid pitcher, and in truth was never really a great one. Which is more likely, that Zito's post-28 career was damaged by 230 innings a year with the A's after age 23, or that he was a good, but not great pitcher who, like many of the breed, is declining at the age of 30? Teasing out workload-driven ineffectiveness from all the other thousand and ten things that determine whether a pitcher's ERA+ is going to be 130 or 85 in a given year is always difficult. Blaming a run-'em-into-the-ground philosophy on Beane's part -- and I'm not saying that Beane did not believe in or did not implement such a philosophy -- for Zito's 2008 is something of a stretch.

And really, is placing fifth in your league in innings at 24 really a damagingly-high workload? Maybe it was for Zito (and it's worth remembering that even at his best, Zito was never a pitch-efficient pitcher, often exceeding six pitches per out in even his better starts), but is there any way for Oakland to have known that at the time? If "#5 in innings at 24" was too big a burden for BZ, then to what kind of a workload should the A's have limited him, and how would reducing that have affected their pennant chances? They were involved in some close races and were winning on pitching.

We're really at the very, very beginning of discovering what constitutes the optimum workload, considering both the pitcher's near- and intermediate-term health and performance outlooks and his ball club's needs. Do teams really have adequate medical information? There's a story circulating that Boston is the only team which baselines its pitchers in February when they're well rested. Is that true? If so, why aren't more teams doing it? Is it possible to really maximize a pitcher's durability and effectiveness, and thus his value, without having such baselines in hand? What is the empirical evidence that a given set of workload rules/guidelines will increase durability and or effectiveness? Why is the Verducci Rule 30 innings, and not 40 or 20? Which pitchers, or which type/class of pitchers might be exceptions to the rule? If maximizing durability and effectiveness are at cross purposes, on which side, in general, will we err? We know that no matter what rules we come up with, a good many pitchers are going to be outliers on both the durability and fragility ends of the spectrum. Do we take a "when in doubt, baby them" default approach? If so, doesn't that give a big advantage to teams willing to ride young guns hard, like the '03 Cubs? If some teams are better than others at identifying and developing pitchers, might that give them an incentive to go to the whip at the risk of burnout, on the idea that their scouting and development program can replace anyone whose arm falls off?

And, as others have mentioned, in this thread and others, what of amateurs' workloads?

It's important to remember that for most of the majors' first century, no one game a tinker's damn about workloads. Some guys were durable, others were pansies better off discarded to the junk heap. That war, as Joe Sheehan pointed out in a recent BP chat, is over. EVERYONE cares about workloads now. We're just now starting to get around to what managing workloads really means. It's going to take many years before we have it right, assuming that we ever do.

Oh, and I don't think that Avery is a good comp for Zito; Avery was worked harder younger, had better control, kept the ball on the ground more, threw a bit harder, was in a much tougher pitchers' park, and didn't have that kind of a curve ball.

Happy Base Ball

does anyone know about the delayed start to Gibson's career? was it basketball?).

More like Solly Hemus.

Kerry Wood and Mark Prior are evidence, though. The fact that the bones don't achieve their adult density until around the age of 25 is evidence.

What happened to Wood, Prior, and Zito's bones that makes this relevant?