![\"\"](\"http:\/\/everyjoe.com\/files\/2010\/03\/stephen-strasburg-washington-nationals-20090822_ryn_cc2_001.jpg\")
<\/a>Stephen Strasburg and his electric stuff have usurped this season\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s headlines.\u00c2\u00a0 About a year ago, the Nationals invested $15.1 million in the now 21-year-old pitcher who had never faced a major league batter up until a few weeks ago.\u00c2\u00a0 Organizationally, it makes sense that they would do everything in their power to make sure that, ten years from now, Strasburg is not a name mentioned in the same sentence as \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Prior\u00e2\u20ac\u009d or \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Fidrych.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d\u00c2\u00a0 As a result, Washington\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s president, Stan Kasten, has already suggested that he will only allow Strasburg to throw between 100 and 110 innings in the majors this year.<\/p>\nAfter throwing 162 innings more than he had in 2007, Edinson Volquez underwent shoulder surgery in 2008 and has only recently begun rehab.\u00c2\u00a0 As a 21-year-old, can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t miss phenom, much like Strasburg, Mark Prior threw 116.2 innings in 2002.\u00c2\u00a0 In 2003, he threw 211.1.\u00c2\u00a0 He immediately experienced arm troubles and hasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t delivered a major league pitch since 2006.\u00c2\u00a0 Bill Pulsipher pitched 126.2 for the Mets in 1995, and didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t throw another one in the big leagues until 1998.\u00c2\u00a0 Finally, as a rookie, innings limit poster-boy, Mark \u00e2\u20ac\u0153The Bird\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Fidrych tossed 250.1 explosive innings in 1976 and was out of baseball within four years.<\/p>\n
As a result, clubs across the league have acted in accordance with the Verducci Effec<\/a>t[1]<\/a>.\u00c2\u00a0 Last season, the Braves kept highly touted Tommy Hanson in the minors until June 7, limiting his innings to 127.2.\u00c2\u00a0 After exploding onto the scene in the 2008 postseason, David Price remained in the minors until May 25 and threw 128.1 innings in 2009.\u00c2\u00a0 As galling and as difficult as it might be for baseball fans who revel in the days of pitchers grittily finishing what they started, innings limits have become as ingrained in modern baseball as pitch counts, specialized bullpens, the DH, and overpriced beer concessions.<\/p>\n Similarly, after implementing the Joba Rules in 2008 and 2009 with However, in Texas, Nolan Ryan is bucking the trend with the Rangers.\u00c2\u00a0 In Ryan\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s 27-season, Hall-of-Fame career, he averaged almost 200 innings a year, topping out at 332.2 in 1974.\u00c2\u00a0 Currently, he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s conditioning his young starters to pitch deep into games.\u00c2\u00a0 Like last season, this has paid dividends for the Rangers\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 pitching staff, which ranks fifth overall with 41 wins and eleventh with a 3.97 ERA.\u00c2\u00a0 Texas remains 3.5 games ahead of the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim in the AL West.<\/p>\n Just like the Ryan Express, there have been plenty of examples in modern baseball of pitchers immune to the dreaded Verducci Effect.\u00c2\u00a0 Roy Halladay (105.1 IP in 2001 at age 24, 239.1 IP in 2002), Mike Mussina (87.2 IP in 1991 at age 22, 241 IP in 1992), and Pedro Martinez (107 IP in 1993 at age 21, 144.2 IP in 1994, and 194.2 IP in 1995) are but three examples of modern-day pitchers who played Will Smith\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Robert Neville in I am Legend<\/em>.<\/p>\n So who\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s right, popular thinking or Nolan Ryan?<\/p>\n It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s impossible to tell right now.\u00c2\u00a0 Couldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t disrupting a young pitcher\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s routine cause problems with his mechanics and be just as damaging as overuse?\u00c2\u00a0 Time will tell.<\/p>\n Hopefully, the upshot of all this is that pitchers elongate their careers and have the opportunity to succeed or fail based upon their performance on the field.<\/p>\n Oh, and maybe \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Buddy Bands\u00e2\u20ac\u009d will come back in style.\u00c2\u00a0 I need a new go-to gift for anniversaries.<\/p>\n If Hamlet had been a modern general manager in Major League Baseball instead of the tragic heir to the Danish throne, the doomed Dane would have morosely uncovered the reports on his young talented pitchers and mournfully deliberated: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153To cap or not to cap, that is the question.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Innings limits have become ubiquitous as front […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":53,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[81,9,4235],"tags":[8577,459,8581,1632,2616,191,827,8579,8578,3910,463,609,1397,432,7894,8576,8580,3063,362,4456],"class_list":["post-5941","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-features","category-general","category-top-stories","tag-bill-pulsipher","tag-braves","tag-hamlet","tag-hasn","tag-heir","tag-major-league-baseball","tag-majors","tag-mark-prior","tag-mark-the-bird-fidrych","tag-mets","tag-nationals","tag-nolan-ryan","tag-pitch","tag-pitchers","tag-poster-boy","tag-president-stan-kasten","tag-rehab","tag-shoulder-surgery","tag-strasburg","tag-tom-verducci"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/seamheads.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5941","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/seamheads.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/seamheads.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/seamheads.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/53"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/seamheads.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5941"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/seamheads.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5941\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/seamheads.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5941"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/seamheads.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5941"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/seamheads.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5941"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/a>questionable success, the Yankees are planning to skip Phil Hughes\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 next start and are introducing what has come to be known as the PHIL-osophy.\u00c2\u00a0 Statistically, Hughes has been New York\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s best starter.\u00c2\u00a0 He\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s 10-1, with a 3.17 ERA and a 3.12 K\/BB ratio.\u00c2\u00a0 On average, he has gone 6.1 innings per start.\u00c2\u00a0 And therein lies the rub.\u00c2\u00a0 Based on the Verducci Effect, the Yankees don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t want Hughes extending himself beyond approximately 170 innings this season.<\/p>\n<\/a>The positive here is that everyone seems to have the same goal in mind: the welfare of the pitcher, or at the very least, the continued productivity of the investment.\u00c2\u00a0 It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s like in Saved by the Bell<\/em>, when the gang sold Friendship Bracelets as part of a class project for Mr. Tuttle.\u00c2\u00a0 The group split up, with Zack and Screech selling the original bracelets and the rest of the group pushing \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Buddy Bands.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d\u00c2\u00a0 Both groups wanted to get an A and ended up earning it when they all realized friendship was more important than success and merged their companies to produce \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Love Cuffs.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/a><\/p>\n
[1]<\/a> Baseball Prospectus defines the Verducci Effect as \u00e2\u20ac\u0153a negative forward indicator for pitcher workload,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d based on the study of Sports Illustrated <\/em>writer Tom Verducci, which contends that \u00e2\u20ac\u0153pitchers under the age of 25 who have 30-inning increases year over year tend to underperform.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"