130 PC Night Moves Big Z to 2nd in PAP

[OleMissCub]

He came into the league on fire as a young pitcher, threw an absurd amount of innings and loss all effectiveness. Just because he's been healthy enough to throw 200 innings doesn't mean he's been healthy enough to pitch effectively.

 

I gotcha.

[CuseCubFan69]

I think he'll be fine. Obvioulsly you don't want to see him do this every time out, and he hasn't.

 

You can just look at pitch count either, it is too simplistic. There are other more imprtant things involved, mechanical issues, etc. It isn't the number of pitchers, its how you are throwing them in most cases.

 

Yeah I agree. Some guys just get into a nice groove and as long as they don't change anything mechanically, they're fine.

[SouthSideRyan]

I think Z is one of those guys that could throw 150 pitches in a start and be fine like Randy Johnson or Livan Hernandez. I'd prefer that he NOT throw a lot of pitches, but I doubt it hurts him that much.

 

 

You realize Livan hasn't been fine in years?

 

What are you talking about? He's pitched over 200 innings just about every year of his career. Just because he sucks now doesn't mean that his excessive innings are why. When would you consider Livan to have been "fine"?

 

Livan's velocity fell off a cliff at a very young age. It's usually attributed to overwork.

[CuseCubFan69]

I think Z is one of those guys that could throw 150 pitches in a start and be fine like Randy Johnson or Livan Hernandez. I'd prefer that he NOT throw a lot of pitches, but I doubt it hurts him that much.

 

 

You realize Livan hasn't been fine in years?

 

What are you talking about? He's pitched over 200 innings just about every year of his career. Just because he sucks now doesn't mean that his excessive innings are why. When would you consider Livan to have been "fine"?

 

Livan's velocity fell off a cliff at a very young age. It's usually attributed to overwork.

 

Did he also pitch on short rest during the playoffs as well?

[jersey cubs fan]

I think he'll be fine. Obvioulsly you don't want to see him do this every time out, and he hasn't.

 

You can just look at pitch count either, it is too simplistic. There are other more imprtant things involved, mechanical issues, etc. It isn't the number of pitchers, its how you are throwing them in most cases.

 

Yeah I agree. Some guys just get into a nice groove and as long as they don't change anything mechanically, they're fine.

 

I would agree to an extent, however, in this specific instance Zambrano was hardly in a groove. He was fighting himself all night.

[CuseCubFan69]

I think he'll be fine. Obvioulsly you don't want to see him do this every time out, and he hasn't.

 

You can just look at pitch count either, it is too simplistic. There are other more imprtant things involved, mechanical issues, etc. It isn't the number of pitchers, its how you are throwing them in most cases.

 

Yeah I agree. Some guys just get into a nice groove and as long as they don't change anything mechanically, they're fine.

 

I would agree to an extent, however, in this specific instance Zambrano was hardly in a groove. He was fighting himself all night.

 

I didn't see the game so I don't know. Was he missing by a lot or just off by a little? Plus, I think it depends on what pitches he threw/throws. He's mostly fastball slider...correct?

[Ding Dong Johnson]

I think he'll be fine. Obvioulsly you don't want to see him do this every time out, and he hasn't.

 

You can just look at pitch count either, it is too simplistic. There are other more imprtant things involved, mechanical issues, etc. It isn't the number of pitchers, its how you are throwing them in most cases.

 

Yeah I agree. Some guys just get into a nice groove and as long as they don't change anything mechanically, they're fine.

 

I would agree to an extent, however, in this specific instance Zambrano was hardly in a groove. He was fighting himself all night.

 

I didn't see the game so I don't know. Was he missing by a lot or just off by a little? Plus, I think it depends on what pitches he threw/throws. He's mostly fastball slider...correct?

the zone was a little tight so that didn't help any, but he was all over the place.

[Transmogrified Tiger]

One outing moved him from 39th to 2nd? Everyone's had upwards of 10 starts at this point, that seems kinda strange.

[CubinNY]

One outing moved him from 39th to 2nd? Everyone's had upwards of 10 starts at this point, that seems kinda strange.

It's a standard deviation artifact.

[Sammy Sofa]

Lousy deviant antiques.

[seanimal]

PAP, by the admission of the BP crew, isn't all that great at predicting pitcher injury. It's more food for thought than anything.

[Soul]

It was a one run game, and you can bet if he pulled Z and the relief pitcher blew it people would be lambasting Lou for that, too. As long as Lou in conscious of it and gets Z more rest to make up for it, Z will drop back down on that PAP list and everything will be fine. If he continues to ride him like that all year, then yea there's a problem.

 

I get so tired of this argument. If he pulls Z after 110 or so pitches and the reliever blew it, very few people on this board (outside of the game thread, where overreaction rules) are going to complain about taking Z out. We have 7 people in the pen, might as well use them. I mean, other than just Marmol and Wood.

 

I wasn't talking about this board. I'm talking about all Cub fans. You know if that happened Lou would be just as criticized for it. Overreaction rules everywhere in sports, not just NSBB game threads.

 

I'm sorry you are tired of the argument. I happen to have seen this sort of thing happen dozens of times. I'm only pointing out that it's possible Lou could be put into a no-win type situation, that's all.

[Brett]

PAP, by the admission of the BP crew, isn't all that great at predicting pitcher injury. It's more food for thought than anything.

 

Oh, I thought I had read that it was a surprisingly accurate predictor (albeit two or three years out)?

[Soul]

PAP, by the admission of the BP crew, isn't all that great at predicting pitcher injury. It's more food for thought than anything.

 

Oh, I thought I had read that it was a surprisingly accurate predictor (albeit two or three years out)?

 

I remember the same, but only when applied to young arms.

[BigbadB]

To move from 39th to 2nd in one outing tells me that most of the pitchers in that group are not really all that overworked, since Carlos hasn't really been "overworked". It seems as though most managers have caught on to lightening starter's workloads.

 

Although, I have noticed that Dusty is starting to let Volquez and Cueto get their pitch counts up there a bit more the last few weeks. All it will take for Dusty to blow those guy's arms up is a few bullpen collapses.

[mul21]

I wasn't a huge fan of it by any means, but Lou's acknoewledgement of the situation in the post game and him saying he would get him a shorter outing next time out makes me not all that worried about it. It's not a Dusty situation where he has to "ride his horses", especially this early in the season and with as many BP options as they have.

[CubColtPacer]

This is also a main reason why I'm not too worried about this. Here's Lou on why Dempster left early today (courtesy of Cubs.com):

 

The converted closer, who had thrown 117, 109, 115 and 118 pitches in his past four starts, threw 93 pitches on Saturday.

 

"He was actually getting a little better as the game progressed," Piniella said. "But we wanted to really shorten him today to 85 or 90 pitches. The last couple games he's pitched, he's gone through seven innings throwing a lot of pitches. We want to make sure that we got his pitch count down, this start in particular and hopefully one more."

[CubbieBum]

over reaction much??? I'm sick of the media, fans, managers, and pitchers themselves babying starters. They used to throw 130 every game and not have problems. What happened? They started getting babied from little league on up and have never trained their arm to handle big pitch counts. Maybe because he grew up outside of America and thus wasn't babied at every level but Z has always been able to handle large pitch counts. Should he get 110+ every game; of course not. But once a month or so staying out a little longer than normal isn't going to hurt Z. Stop overreacting.

 

And to the guy who said no one outside the game thread would criticize Lou in the hypothetical situation of pulling him and us losing ... um do you read the board much? How many threads do we have going that are something along the lines of "What is Lou doing?" Lou is one of the top managers in baseball for this generation and we still have a good number who criticize him despite us being in 1st place. Do you really think a handleful of people wouldn't start a thread bashing Lou for 'costing us a loss.'

[Hairyducked Idiot]

over reaction much??? I'm sick of the media, fans, managers, and pitchers themselves babying starters. They used to throw 130 every game and not have problems. What happened?'

 

These things you are saying never happened.

 

Early in baseball history, the soft ball meant that pitchers didn't have to throw as hard for as many pitches. Christy Mathewson's book on pitching talked about maintaining good shape because sometimes you had to "throw as many as 100 pitches to complete a game." 130 didn't need to happen because the ball was put in play much more often, batters were less selective.

 

Later on, as pitchers threw more pitches, many of them *did* hurt their arms. There wasn't this "not have problems" that you think happened. There were tons of problems. Few ever heard of them, though, because there were so many levels of minor leagues that by the time a pitcher made it to the bigs, he had won a war of attrition that proved his arm was one of the few that could handle exceptional workloads. Many more arms burned out in the minors.

[Vanilla Ice]

Z has always been able to handle large pitch counts.

He has not gotten hurt but he was getting much less effective

[Tracer Bullet]

over reaction much??? I'm sick of the media, fans, managers, and pitchers themselves babying starters. They used to throw 130 every game and not have problems. What happened? They started getting babied from little league on up and have never trained their arm to handle big pitch counts. Maybe because he grew up outside of America and thus wasn't babied at every level but Z has always been able to handle large pitch counts. Should he get 110+ every game; of course not. But once a month or so staying out a little longer than normal isn't going to hurt Z. Stop overreacting.

 

And to the guy who said no one outside the game thread would criticize Lou in the hypothetical situation of pulling him and us losing ... um do you read the board much? How many threads do we have going that are something along the lines of "What is Lou doing?" Lou is one of the top managers in baseball for this generation and we still have a good number who criticize him despite us being in 1st place. Do you really think a handleful of people wouldn't start a thread bashing Lou for 'costing us a loss.'

 

This post is insane. The first paragraph is testosterone driven junk. Do you have anything on which to back this up? Any evidence of routine 130 pitch games in the good ol days or that having young pitchers throw tons of pitches would "build arm strength" - you know what would be great, if every high school pitcher pitched both ends of a double-header. That would certainly build arm strength, so they should be immune from abuse injuries in the future, right?

 

The second paragraph (aimed at me) isn't much different. People will certainly criticize Lou. But many of the people that criticize Lou on this board aren't the ones that would say "you should leave Z out there for 130 pitches Lou, quit being a ninny."

[Sammy Sofa]

over reaction much??? I'm sick of the media, fans, managers, and pitchers themselves babying starters. They used to throw 130 every game and not have problems. What happened? They started getting babied from little league on up and have never trained their arm to handle big pitch counts. Maybe because he grew up outside of America and thus wasn't babied at every level but Z has always been able to handle large pitch counts. Should he get 110+ every game; of course not. But once a month or so staying out a little longer than normal isn't going to hurt Z. Stop overreacting.

 

And to the guy who said no one outside the game thread would criticize Lou in the hypothetical situation of pulling him and us losing ... um do you read the board much? How many threads do we have going that are something along the lines of "What is Lou doing?" Lou is one of the top managers in baseball for this generation and we still have a good number who criticize him despite us being in 1st place. Do you really think a handleful of people wouldn't start a thread bashing Lou for 'costing us a loss.'

 

This post is insane. The first paragraph is testosterone driven junk. Do you have anything on which to back this up? Any evidence of routine 130 pitch games in the good ol days or that having young pitchers throw tons of pitches would "build arm strength" - you know what would be great, if every high school pitcher pitched both ends of a double-header. That would certainly build arm strength, so they should be immune from abuse injuries in the future, right?

 

Posts like the one you're replying to act like the game itself hasn't changed over the years. Mound height, types of hitters, types of pitches...all factors that change how pitchers can approach the game.

[Tracer Bullet]

over reaction much??? I'm sick of the media, fans, managers, and pitchers themselves babying starters. They used to throw 130 every game and not have problems. What happened? They started getting babied from little league on up and have never trained their arm to handle big pitch counts. Maybe because he grew up outside of America and thus wasn't babied at every level but Z has always been able to handle large pitch counts. Should he get 110+ every game; of course not. But once a month or so staying out a little longer than normal isn't going to hurt Z. Stop overreacting.

 

And to the guy who said no one outside the game thread would criticize Lou in the hypothetical situation of pulling him and us losing ... um do you read the board much? How many threads do we have going that are something along the lines of "What is Lou doing?" Lou is one of the top managers in baseball for this generation and we still have a good number who criticize him despite us being in 1st place. Do you really think a handleful of people wouldn't start a thread bashing Lou for 'costing us a loss.'

 

This post is insane. The first paragraph is testosterone driven junk. Do you have anything on which to back this up? Any evidence of routine 130 pitch games in the good ol days or that having young pitchers throw tons of pitches would "build arm strength" - you know what would be great, if every high school pitcher pitched both ends of a double-header. That would certainly build arm strength, so they should be immune from abuse injuries in the future, right?

 

Posts like the one you're replying to act like the game itself hasn't changed over the years. Mound height, types of hitters, types of pitches...all factors that change how pitchers can approach the game.

 

pitchers are babied into becoming pansies...lots of changes

[Sammy Sofa]

I prefer "pansied into becoming babies."

[Tracer Bullet]

I prefer "pansied into becoming babies."

 

tomato/tomahto