Go for it.

[Guest Edgy DC]

Once upon a time, not too long ago, even after pitchers' workdays got shorter, a manager would've let Maine go for the shutout there.

Shutouts are still neat things. I remember Tom Seaver kept the final ball from each of his 60+ shutouts. Then I think of Tim Leary and of Generation K, and I say, "Maine did his job; get him out of there."

[Guest Yancy Street Gang]

It's still only April. We're just out of spring training and it was a cold night. Maybe if it was June Willie would have let Maine finish up.

[Guest Edgy DC]

Which is why I thought of Tim Leary.

[soupcan]

Yancy Street Gang wrote: It's still only April. We're just out of spring training and it was a cold night. Maybe if it was June Willie would have let Maine finish up.

Exactly what I was thinking when Maine came out. First start - let's not push it.

[Guest Johnny Dickshot]

I was a lot happier with the decision to yank Maine after using the half-inning to build an implosion-proof lead.

[HahnSolo]

Had Rolen's ball been hit about five feet to the left, Willie leaves him out there.
Chicks dig the No Hitter.

[metsmarathon]

once the no-hitter is off the books, i'm happy with pulling him there. give him a great start to build off of, rather than yanking him after he starts to tire, and has less of a good feeling going into the next game.

especially since the rap on him is that he needs to be better focused (and i think that might tie into confidence a bit), its a good move to build up your young starters in april.

besides, willie had said in pregame interviews that he wanted to get burgos into the game, and that he would've preferred it not be too much of a cookie, either, meaning that he would've like there to be pressure on burgos when he pitched.

i guess he'd take it the way it worked out as well. but you could tell in the post-game interviews that willie really wanted to get him in there in a live situation, instead of mop-up duty in a blowout, so that he could see what the kid's makeup is

[Frayed Knot]

Part of it is also the byproduct of simply having the larger pen as you've now got a lot of guys who need work on a semi-regular basis.
IOW, the lack of length from starters begets a larger pen but also the larger pen gives you an excuse to not let the starters go long.

[Guest Yancy Street Gang]

I like shutouts. I even like complete games that aren't shutouts.

I'm glad that complete games still exist, although they've become very rare.

Actually, I probably get more of a kick out of a complete game now than I did back when they were more common.

Now it seems unbelievable that Tom Seaver completed 21 games in 1971. In 2004 and 2006, the Mets team leader in CG's had only one! (In 2004 it was a two-way tie, in '06 it was a five-way tie.)

It's just a matter of time before we see a season in which the Mets have zero complete games.

Complete Game Leaders

It's even more likely that there will be a year without an individual shutout. As yet, that hasn't happened:

Shutout Leaders

[Frayed Knot]

Fans (accurately) bemoan the lack of complete games but often (inaccuarately) believe that it's a recent phenomenom:

Pct of complete games:
1890 - 86%
1900 - 65
1910 - 62
1920 - 57
1930 - 48
1940 - 44
1950 - 40
1960 - 30
1970 - 24
1980 - 16
1990 - 10
2000 - 5

[metirish]

] Tom Seaver kept the final ball from each of his 60+ shutouts.

WOW...not that he kept his balls but that he had that many shoutouts...

[soupcan]

I kept my balls.

[Guest Yancy Street Gang]

Yeah, but you probably didn't write the date on yours with a Sharpie.

[Guest Johnny Dickshot]

I thought you recently walked into the doc's office and asked him to remove them for you?

[Guest iramets]

metirish wrote: ] Tom Seaver kept the final ball from each of his 60+ shutouts. WOW...not that he kept his balls but that he had that many shoutouts...

YEAH! Another shoutout for my man Seaver!

The Tim Leary argument is unfalsifiable, and therefore invalid, unless you examine the numbers of present-day pitchers, protected and coddled and never overworked, whose arms somehow blow out anyway. DId Zambrano pitch too many innings? Did Padilla? Current young pitchers sometimes have arm injuries, despite all the protection, and I'm not at all sure that the number of sore arms, and skipped seasons, is any less than it was thirty or fifty years ago.

[Guest Edgy DC]

My experience is players get hurt more when they're pitching than when they're not.

[soupcan]

Yancy Street Gang wrote: Yeah, but you probably didn't write the date on yours with a Sharpie.

You'd be surprised at the things I've done to my balls.

="Johnny Dickshot"]I thought you recently walked into the doc's office and asked him to remove them for you?

You misunderstood. The doc just steralized me. It was my wife that removed them

I keep them in a jar on the mantle.

[Guest iramets]

Edgy DC wrote: My experience is players get hurt more when they're pitching than when they're not.

So the best way to keep pitchers healthy is to keep them off the mound?

All I'm saying is that there SEEMS to be a SMALL percentage of pitchers, AT BEST, who avoid debilitating arm injuries due to 5-man rotations, low pitch counts, no complete games, etc. There's no data, as far as I know, and no reliable methodology for getting any, for being able to know what that percentage is, or even if it exists.

We appear to be operating under a "better safe than sorry" principle, which isn't so bad, but the possibility exists, at least for me, that a current manager could overwork his four starters and closer, concentrating an enormous (by current standards) number of innings in his five best pitchers, kick ass in his league AND suffer no more arm injuries to his pitchers than any one else.

Whether this is psychologically possible is another question. Probably not. Pitchers would panic at the workloads, I think, saying "If he's wrong, my career is ruined" and refuse to go along, so there's no way to tell--certainly there's no way to run several MLB pitching staffs on these principles for long wenough to generate valid sample sizes. But if pitching staffs are (say) 10% less effective today, at a savings of (say) 1% of all pitchers' arms, is that worth it? Do we want to operate on the BSTS principle? If we MAYBE prolonging a TINY fraction of pitchers' arms, is it worth it?

[Guest Yancy Street Gang]

I know you've said in the past that you'd like to see managers innovate more, and I pretty much feel the same way.

One innovation that would be very minor (I think) would be to treat your fifth starter as if he were the least important member of the rotation. If you have five all-star starters this won't work, but that's not the case for most teams.

Here's what I'd do if I was a manager:

Barring nagging injuries or fatigue, whenever my best starter has four days rest, he's going to pitch.

When he's not available, when my second best guy has four days of rest, he's gonna pitch.

I'm hoping that Mike Pelfrey will be the rookie of the year, so let's take him out of the equation. Let's say instead that the Mets fifth starter is Dave Williams. Or Jeremi Gonzalez.

When there's an off-day or a rainout, I would never let Williams pitch when Glavine has his proper rest. I'd send Glavine to the mound even if it's Williams' turn in the rotation. Williams would pitch only when there's nobody who's had four days of rest.

By doing that your fifth guy would be shelved more often. (He could pitch some long relief if the schedule permits.) But you'd get more starts from your better pitchers. Your number 1 guy would really get the most starts. Your number 2 guy would get the second most starts.

And they wouldn't have to pitch on short rest to do it. They'd lose the occasional start that comes on five days rest, but I think they can weather that.

[Guest Edgy DC]

iramets wrote: So the best way to keep pitchers healthy is to keep them off the mound?

One way to help them is to keep them off the mound in inconsequential innings.

[dinosaur jesus]

iramets wrote: We appear to be operating under a "better safe than sorry" principle, which isn't so bad, but the possibility exists, at least for me, that a current manager could overwork his four starters and closer, concentrating an enormous (by current standards) number of innings in his five best pitchers, kick ass in his league AND suffer no more arm injuries to his pitchers than any one else.

Billy Martin did it. Five pitchers on his 1980 Oakland staff started 159 games among them, and completed 93. None of them was ever the same again, and no manager has been willing to try something like that again.

Obviously there are pitchers working today who could pitch 300 innings if called upon and not endanger their careers. But which ones, and is it worth the risk to find out?

[Guest iramets]

Billy Martin went nuts. I'm not suggesting anything like that. Something more moderate, along Yancy's lines, would be what I'm thinking of.

A beginning would be

an 11-man staff

Pitchers finishing games if they've got a 2 to 4 run lead, and haven';t thrown an inordinate number of pitches (how often have you seen a starter leave the game after seven effective innings, only to have the bullpen pour gasoline on the game?)

A pitcher who gets bombed out early comes back two or three days later instead of taking his full rest

starters pitching in relief once in a while

It just isn't clear to me how any of these things are clearly contributing to ruining pitchers' arms.