Curse of the Barrybino?

I told you he was injury prone!

A non-arm injury provides the perfect excuse for the Giants to shut him down and save his arm. It's pretty much a good thing for the team.

The Giants need to do the old-timey Baseball thing by throwing at Ausmas' knees

Well, in fairness, you let Brad Ausmus hit a line drive, you deserve whatever happens to you.

A non-arm injury provides the perfect excuse for the Giants to shut him down and save his arm. It's pretty much a good thing for the team.

I'm a little less sanguine about this. Knee injuries can be a #####, and they can have a cascading effect. Still, he'll get the best possible attention, so I shouldn't generalize from my own experience.

Couldn't agree more, Mike, and that's exactly why you don't let him pick up a baseball until next March. Let that knee get 103% healed first.

I'm a little less sanguine about this. Knee injuries can be a #####, and they can have a cascading effect.

And if anyone knows about cascading injuries, it is Mike Hampton's number one fan. Pay attention and listen to this man.

Brad Ausmus is still in the league?

having gotten drilled by a scorching line drive off the bat of Brad Ausmus

Ausmus and scorching line drive in the same sentence - typo?

A non-arm injury provides the perfect excuse for the Giants to shut him down and save his arm. It's pretty much a good thing for the team.

Couldn't agree more, Mike, and that's exactly why you don't let him pick up a baseball until next March. Let that knee get 103% healed first.

He won't become a better athlete / pitcher by being forced to sit on his ass.

If you need to reduce his workload, you reduce his workload. You don't rely on an injury to do so for you.

For any athlete, losing any training time to an injury is not a good thing. An injury is not a good thing for the team.

Couldn't agree more, Mike, and that's exactly why you don't let him pick up a baseball until next March. Let that knee get 103% healed first.

If only things were this simple. Things like mechanics and technique also need to be considered. Who knows how ignoring them, not letting him pick up a baseball until next March, will affect his pitching form and technique?

And if anyone knows about cascading injuries, it is Mike Hampton's number one fan.

Well played, sir.

Tim Lincecum is the best pitcher in the National League, not a prospect coming up through AAA. He knows how to pitch, physically and mentally. He needs to be shut down until the knee is completely healed. He won't forget how in the meantime, and it's not like he can't do other things to stay in shape, or spend lots of quality time in the film room studying hitters.

Tim Lincecum is the best pitcher in the National League, not a prospect coming up through AAA. He knows how to pitch, physically and mentally. He needs to be shut down until the knee is completely healed. He won't forget how in the meantime, and it's not like he can't do other things to stay in shape, or spend lots of quality time in the film room studying hitters.

Nope. Sorry. Unless you think pitching is as simple as running. Technique for most complex sports is a not simple digital / binary one zero thing. It's not a simple case of someone being the best, "knowing how to pitch", and no longer needing to practice.

WTF do you think that most elite athletes, world and olympic champions, world record holders, in most technical sports, do technical, sport specific work, pretty much every day, year round? Or at least several times a week?

Studying film is not going to help his neural system retain form, the way actually doing the movement / technique will.

Also, if the knee injury is anything more than just a minor ding, it will prevent him from really doing work involving his lower body.

I repeat, you need to regulate his workload, you regulate his workload. An injury is never a good thing.

<edit: also, doing other general work, like say, swimming, will help him retain his general physical preparedness, his general athletic shape. It won't help him retain his special physical preparedness, ie his actual pitching shape.

Stop Sports Illustrated before it kills again.

Geez, pitchers are truly incredible people, then, to be able to come back from stuff like rib injuries or abdominal pulls that prevent them from pitching for months at a time. How do they do it?

Steady Diet of Phil Coorey Posted: August 13, 2008 at 02:23 AM (#2900840)


Ausmus and scorching [str]line drive[/str] in the same sentence

he is simply the hottest white boy EVAH

AND he had 2 walks and scored 2 runs tonight. bradley ROOLZ

Geez, pitchers are truly incredible people, then, to be able to come back from stuff like rib injuries or abdominal pulls that prevent them from pitching for months at a time. How do they do it?

Did I say that they can't do it?

Go ask any pitcher, would they prefer to get injured, or not get injured? Would they opine that getting injured is "a good thing", and that they are not prospects coming up from AAA, ergo, it won't matter if they go months without doing technique work?

<edited to moderate the nasty tone>

Never saw the nasty version, but it's cool. You'd have to get in line behind my wife if you wanted to get snippy at me, anyway. :)

Obviously the pitcher's opinion is far less important than the doctors' opinion, but setting that aside as irrelevant to this, I would still suggest that I would not want my ace pitcher throwing until I'm certain his knee is 100 percent. Throwing on a knee at 90 percent can cause a lot of harm as his body subtly adjusts; I think we can agree about this.

I threw out that line about 'don't let him pick up a baseball until March', and that's probably a case of excessive hyperbole to make a point there, but Lincecum's far too valuable to have him resume throwing before his knee is totally ready.

the pitcher fell to the ground, rolled over on his back and found himself on all fours near the bottom of the mound.

An odd description of the event that sounds more like it came from a dog show or a porn movie...

I guess Brandon Webb can finally start clearing space on his shelf for Cy Young award number two.

Obviously the pitcher's opinion is far less important than the doctors' opinion, but setting that aside as irrelevant to this, I would still suggest that I would not want my ace pitcher throwing until I'm certain his knee is 100 percent. Throwing on a knee at 90 percent can cause a lot of harm as his body subtly adjusts; I think we can agree about this.

Well, obviously you don't want him throwing with any kind of (serious) effort when (seriously) injured. That's not what I'm arguing. I'm not going to bother offering an opinion on how Lincecum should handle the injury, since there are too many details about the injury, his regime, etc, that are not public information.

I'm saying that the possibility that he cannot not throw for months, until spring training, is not something that you can write off as a good thing because it "saves" his arm. I'm only posting in response to the idea that Lincecum sustaining a non throwing injury is good.

As to the pitcher's opinion vs the doctors' opinion, the latter is going to be influenced by the former. For example, if Lincecum says he is in discomfort, then he is in discomfort, regardless of the doctors' opinion. The latter is going to also be influenced by the opinion of the coaches and trainers. A athlete coming back from an injury has to balance different concerns from a "normal" person coming back from an injury.