The logic of limits

No spring training issue in recent memory has ignited debate the way Joba Chamberlain's role in the Yankee rotation has over the past month. Yankee fans have come down squarely on either side of the issue, and the campaigners on both sides are dug in so deep you'd think this was an Obama-Clinton moment.

But one thing that I've not seen discussed, at least not at the length of the starter vs. reliever issue, is the insistence the Yankees have on limiting the total number of innings thrown this season, not just for Chamberlain, but also for his fellow young hurlers, Phil Hughes and Ian Kennedy.

My question is this: When did this fear of flame-out get so out-of-hand?

Baseball is littered with stories of young guns who were shoved out to the mound too early and too often, and just a few years after these kids were supposedly on their way to Cooperstown they ended up going nowhere. And certainly, with young arms worth mega-millions of dollars, teams are more gentle and more deliberate with their seasoning of young pitchers. But at what point do we start to realize that babying these kids isn't necessarily the logical or the only approach?

Let's look at a few young pitchers of yesteryear, all rookies before their 22nd birthdays, to see how quickly or how slowly they were brought along as young phenoms.

Tom Seaver, one of the best pitchers of his or any other era, threw 251 innings when he was a 22-year-old rookie in 1967, and he averaged 273 innings per season over his first four years in the majors.

At 19 years of age, Dwight Gooden threw 218 innings during his rookie campaign with the Mets in 1984. The next season? He threw 276 2/3. Over his first four seasons, Doc averaged 230 innings per year.

At age 21, Greg Maddux threw only 155 innings in 30 starts during his rookie year in 1987, but his ERA was 5.61, which could have had more to do with his early exits than did a close watch on his innings total. Maddux threw 249 innings the next season and averaged 246 IP per year over the next four.

Mike Mussina was only 23 when he threw 241 innings for the Orioles in 1992. Mussina missed several starts over the next two seasons and threw for only 167 and 176 innings in '93 and '94, respectively, but a healthy Moose came back in 1995 and threw 221, 243, and 224 over the next three seasons. Despite the two abbreviated seasons after his first full year, Mussina still averaged 212 innings over his first six seasons.

At age 21 in 1984, Roger Clemens threw only 133.3 innings in 20 starts for the Red Sox, averaging over six innings per start. He was injured for much of 1985, but in 1986, at the ripe old age of 23, Clemens threw 254 innings, and averaged 263 innings over the next four seasons.

Admittedly, these are just a few samples, and just as many can be found of pitchers who had great careers after being started off slowly (Bob Gibson, Jim Palmer, Tom Glavine just being a few). But this post is not to argue that the Yankees are dead wrong with their softball approach. Nor is it to argue that the evidence suggests they go the other way and let these kids throw for all they can. The evidence doesn't support any single approach. Some pitchers can handle a tall workload when they're 22, and others might need a more gradual introduction into full-time starting. It's most likely a matter of what each individual arm can handle.

What I question is why, so quickly and vehemently, this blanket innings cap has been thrown over all three of these guys. Let's hypothesize based on recent evidence and suppose that April is over, Mussina is 1-3 with a 6.85 ERA, Andy Pettitte is 1-1 and missing starts with various ailments, and Wang is the only reliable veteran at 3-1/4.15. And..... Hughes is 3-0/3.75 and Kennedy is 3-1/3.50.

With those numbers at hand, would Girardi and Cashman continue to insist that looking down the road at the next 5-7 years is better than turning these young guns loose now and capitalizing on what seems like more-than-ready ability? Would they be willing to examine each arm on its own merits and say, 'Hmmmm... Kennedy just might have 200+ innings in him....'?

I understand the economic wisdom of taking the long view, but if guys are ready, they're ready. All three of these promising pitchers have had minor league and/or college experience. With the state of the Yankee rotation -- and to say it is a mystery is being both kind and conservative -- it might not be possible to maintain this kid-glove approach to these young pitchers.

Hindsight is useless despite its 20/20 ability. Looking too far ahead and anticipating hindsight can be equally useless if you paralyze yourself with fear of being second-guessed someday. This decision on the innings limits for these pitchers seems made at least in part to avoid any criticism down the road should one of them go off the rails, physically speaking. I hope Girardi, et al have the guts to let these kids go all the way if that's what it takes to have a successful season