Reds (Abbott) vs Cubs (Horton): 8/6/25, 1:20pm

[muntjack]

  Kelly, Boyd and Pomeranz have had extended periods of success prior to becoming Cubs. Palencia is 25 and  still has under 100 IP in the majors.  

Issac Collins was organizational filler entering the year.  Andrew Vaughn had over 2000 MLB PAs of negative WAR, competing for worst player in baseball. 

[ILMindState]

7 minutes ago, muntjack said:

  Kelly, Boyd and Pomeranz have had extended periods of success prior to becoming Cubs. Palencia is 25 and  still has under 100 IP in the majors.  

Issac Collins was organizational filler entering the year.  Andrew Vaughn had over 2000 MLB PAs of negative WAR, competing for worst player in baseball. 

They gotta be either cheating or regression is gonna come at them HARD.  There's no reason this rag tag of nobodies is on pace for the best record of all time

[We Got The Whole 9]

30 minutes ago, JunkyardWalrus said:

Pitcher Abuse Points Situation PAP/Pitch Pitches 1-100 0 Pitches 101-110 1 Pitches 111-120 2 Pitches 121-130 3 Pitches 131-140 4 Pitches 141-150 5 Pitches 151+ 6

 

Id love to know how many pitchers like Rocket, Pedro, Unit, Ryan, etc. accumulated throughout their careers. It annoys me that we won't have pitchers with careers like that anymore. Many guys came out of the gate with the pedal to the medal and never slowed down. This blanket approach bugs me.

[JunkyardWalrus]

21 minutes ago, We Got The Whole 9 said:

Id love to know how many pitchers like Rocket, Pedro, Unit, Ryan, etc. accumulated throughout their careers. It annoys me that we won't have pitchers with careers like that anymore. Many guys came out of the gate with the pedal to the medal and never slowed down. This blanket approach bugs me.

Have I got something fun for you! (The article where the graph came from.)

[CubinNY]

51 minutes ago, We Got The Whole 9 said:

Id love to know how many pitchers like Rocket, Pedro, Unit, Ryan, etc. accumulated throughout their careers. It annoys me that we won't have pitchers with careers like that anymore. Many guys came out of the gate with the pedal to the medal and never slowed down. This blanket approach bugs me.

Many guys who had once promising careers were injured and their careers ruined. We only see the guys who persevered or were genetically or physically better. Before Tommy John, if a guy blew out his elbow in the minors, that was it. Sandy Kofax only played for 7 years. 

[Longhorn20]

On 8/6/2025 at 9:44 AM, Cubbies1996 said:

F it and put PCA in the lead off. Seems like that’s the last time the offense was truly electric 

Sure, why not. then he can strike out 4 times instead of 3.

[BigSlick]

I think whatever they're doing with pitchers arms is likely better than what coaches and trainers have done in past decades but its an imperfect science and I'll join with the poster above who said there's simply no sure-fire way to reduce injury. This is a world-class sport where pitchers are straining the human body to do things that are nearly impossible to accomplish, you're inevitably going to push people's bodies beyond their breaking point, particularly with the fashionable (and effective) focus on velocity. 

I feel bad for pitchers. No matter what, these guys are usually doing some massive damage to their bodies by the end of their career. Except for Kyle Hendricks. Good for that guy. 

[CaliforniaRaisin]

3 hours ago, Bertz said:

I think unfortunately with pitching there's just a really high degree of fragility as a baseline.  Like all of these machinations are to try and improve from say a 40% chance of a major injury in the next three years to like a 30% chance.

Because that baseline is so high and so much data is proprietary it's hard to do a study on what exactly works.

What we have seen is some pullback from the extreme babying that the league had moved toward late last decade.  It's been notable in the minor league threads how much deeper pitchers are working into games.  The current wisdom seems to be coalescing towards something closer to what Japan has, where you can ride guys a little harder on a game by game basis but the flipside is a push towards 5 or 6 days of rest as often as you can manage.  I wouldn't be surprised if next CBA drops down to 154 games and every team gets one off day every single week.

And no matter what major league teams do, an additional concern is these arms have accumulated quite a bit of damage as kids before they were ever drafted.

[BKHoo]

We can all root for the Pirates tonight - Skenes starting v the Reds. 

[Backtobanks]

4 hours ago, muntjack said:

  Kelly, Boyd and Pomeranz have had extended periods of success prior to becoming Cubs. Palencia is 25 and  still has under 100 IP in the majors.  

Issac Collins was organizational filler entering the year.  Andrew Vaughn had over 2000 MLB PAs of negative WAR, competing for worst player in baseball. 

Kelly had a total of 4.1 WAR over 9 seasons before this year.  He was signed to be a backup C and was leading the league in OPS certainly qualifies as a surprise.  Boyd had a total of 9.7 WAR over 7 years before this one and hadn't pitched over 80 innings for the last 5 seasons and now is in the running for the Cy Young award.  Pomeranz had 2 good years in the 15 years before this one.  This year he had weeks of not giving up any runs.  Palencia never showed much in his ml career and now he is a shut-down closer for a playoff bound team.  The Brewers certainly have had surprise players who have exceeded their expectations, but The Cubs have too.

[chibears55]

My opinion, biggest difference between the pitchers of today compared to 30 plus years ago is a couple things.

one is that these kids are growing up throwing majority breaking balls from little league on up and it eventually catches up to them. I remember back in the days curveballs were limited in little league and  in high school coaches emphasized more on fastball location and change ups, with curves being the 3rd pitch.

That why guys like Ryan, Carlton, etc had longevity.

The other reason is all the weight lifting they do now is a major cause of injuries, especially with hamstrings and abdominal strains, back then it was more about stretching and running, just keeping the arms loose and legs strong.

 

We can also kinda blame that these kids aren't stretched out enough early on in minors to throw 100 plus pitches a game like before, now i think they mostly max out around 60 or so in minors  before being pulled and I'd bet the majority of their pitches are breaking balls for most of these starters. Why we see these kids coming up and majority struggle to go 5 innings and can pitch a full season.

[Bertz]

1 hour ago, BKHoo said:

We can all root for the Pirates tonight - Skenes starting v the Reds. 

Oh nice, I didn't realize it lined up like this.  Makes it almost certainly we'll miss him next weekend.

[Transmogrified Tiger]

44 minutes ago, Bertz said:

Oh nice, I didn't realize it lined up like this.  Makes it almost certainly we'll miss him next weekend.

And ensures his next start is against the Brewers

[Stratos]

6 hours ago, We Got The Whole 9 said:

Id love to know how many pitchers like Rocket, Pedro, Unit, Ryan, etc. accumulated throughout their careers. It annoys me that we won't have pitchers with careers like that anymore. Many guys came out of the gate with the pedal to the medal and never slowed down. This blanket approach bugs me.

Yeah some guys are just freaks and made out of steel.  Nolan Ryan was an animal.

And then there's Mike Soroka...

[Post Count Padder]

Skenes tossed 6 scoreless.....and was relieved by Cam Sanders. That is how I learned he was in a different organization AND had made his MLB debut. Good for him.

[Ding Dong Johnson]

2 hours ago, chibears55 said:

one is that these kids are growing up throwing majority breaking balls from little league on up and it eventually catches up to them. I remember back in the days curveballs were limited in little league and  in high school coaches emphasized more on fastball location and change ups, with curves being the 3rd pitch.

Curveballs don’t hurt an arm more than a fastball.

[BigSlick]

I don’t for one second believe weight lifting is bad for pitchers and there is zero chance the training regimen they had 50 years ago was better for pitcher health than what happens today 

we’re simply talking about the extremely rare physical freaks who had HOF careers and longevity and not the thousands of pitchers who washed out in the 20th century 

[cubfansince77]

4 hours ago, Bertz said:

Oh nice, I didn't realize it lined up like this.  Makes it almost certainly we'll miss him next weekend.

That would be....sublime. I watched a couple innings of him tonight. He's just about unhittable. 

[Derwood]

Skenes now just one game under .500

Stupid Pirates

[Tangled Up in Plaid]

7 runs for him tonight, probably as much as all his other starts combined.

[Stratos]

3 hours ago, Ding Dong Johnson said:

Curveballs don’t hurt an arm more than a fastball.

Depends if you're throwing the curve correctly or not.

Funny thing, my local little league has pitch counts now instead of just an inning limit for pitchers.  I guess the coaches or some parent have to count now LOL.

[Derwood]

8 hours ago, Tangled Up in Plaid said:

7 runs for him tonight, probably as much as all his other starts combined.

The 7 hits he allowed was a career high. That’s unreal 

[Irrelevant Dude]

8 hours ago, Stratos said:

Funny thing, my local little league has pitch counts now instead of just an inning limit for pitchers.  I guess the coaches or some parent have to count now LOL.

That is pretty standard now.  Everything is tracked pitch by pitch in the Game changer app and there are strict rules by age on the number of pitches allowed, combined with required rest based on how many pitches were thrown.

[Derwood]

2 minutes ago, Irrelevant Dude said:

That is pretty standard now.  Everything is tracked pitch by pitch in the Game changer app and there are strict rules by age on the number of pitches allowed, combined with required rest based on how many pitches were thrown.

And then in softball, they have the same girl pitch all 7 innings of a triple header

[mul21]

12 minutes ago, Derwood said:

And then in softball, they have the same girl pitch all 7 innings of a triple header

You realize how different those motions are biomechanically right?  And how you almost never hear about a softball pitcher with an arm injury?