Trietley: Let pitchers pitch

Back in mid-August, Minnesota Twins pitcher Kevin Slowey threw seven no-hit innings against the Oakland Athletics. Then manager Ron Gardenhire opted to take him out.

Fans booed, but the baseball community largely backed Gardenhire for ending Slowey’s no-hit bid. It had to be done, he said. He hadn’t pitched in 10 days because of elbow tendonitis, and he had thrown 106 pitches. Slowey expressed disappointment in his manager’s decision, but he echoed the consensus… Back in mid-August, Minnesota Twins pitcher Kevin Slowey threw seven no-hit innings against the Oakland Athletics. Then manager Ron Gardenhire opted to take him out.

Fans booed, but the baseball community largely backed Gardenhire for ending Slowey’s no-hit bid. It had to be done, he said. He hadn’t pitched in 10 days because of elbow tendonitis, and he had thrown 106 pitches. Slowey expressed disappointment in his manager’s decision, but he echoed the consensus:

Protect a pitcher’s arm. It’s too valuable.

One week later, the Twins placed Slowey on the disabled list with a right triceps strain after he struggled in a 9-3 loss to the Los Angeles Angels .

Let pitchers pitch.

Injuries to pitchers will happen regardless of pitch counts. It’s a guy standing on a mound and trying to fling a tiny ball as fast as he can, making it dip and dive as much as he can, and teetering off-balance when it’s all said and done. The best advice a manager could give for a pitcher’s health is to tell him to play right field.

Let’s not return to 100 years ago and run Ed Walsh out there for 400 innings every year, but Slowey was pitching well. Taking him out after 106 pitches isn’t going to preserve his form for the next outing — an outing of four runs on seven hits in three innings — and it isn’t going to undo the gradual damage that each and every one of those 106 pitches did to his body. As Michael Lewis’ book “Moneyball” put it, if we were meant to throw overhand, we’d all walk around with our arms straight up in the air.

A pitcher’s ulnar collateral ligament can tear after 120 pitches. But one — namely, Stephen Strasburg’s — is as likely to tear after 56 pitches. Heck, San Diego Padres ace Mat Latos missed two weeks in July after holding back a sneeze.

Injuries plagued Mark Prior’s five-year major-league career, so if anybody has insight into what causes injuries, it’s him. He told XX Sports Radio in San Diego Monday that the Washington Nationals handled Strasburg’s promising arm “by the book, whoever wrote the book.”

“I don’t think it was handled wrongly,” Prior said. “I don’t think there’s a right way. I don’t think there is a wrong way … What was going to happen was going to happen whether he was in the minor leagues or the major leagues or if he was back in his senior year of college … Unfortunately, in professional sports, people get hurt. That’s just the reality of it.”

That’s the word: unfortunate. It’s not poor management. No athletic trainer should lose sleep. Their methods haven’t failed them. It’s just that the methods don’t help them.

Was there ever a time when pitchers were just falling down left and right, before “the book” came about? Managers rode players like Ed Walsh into the ground in an era before they’d call pitchers “investments,” but injuries occurred with the same randomness as they do now. “Smoky Joe” Wood’s career went downhill after he broke his thumb fielding a bunt.

Franchises should care for the well-being of their pitchers, of course, but there’s no need to baby them. Pitch counts are a numerical representation of something that can only be handled with common sense — when your pitcher is tired, take him out.

The number doesn’t mean much. Are we going to factor in the eight warm-up pitches before every inning soon? Slowey’s 106-pitch night suddenly becomes — gasp! — 162 pitches of agony. How about the weather? One hundred pitches in Arlington, Texas, can’t feel the same as 100 pitches in Seattle. And what about deliveries? Tim Lincecum definitely has more back-strain-per-pitch than Cliff Lee.

The Little League World Series even has mandatory days of rest based on the number of pitches thrown, and that count hangs like a shot clock in the dugout. Johnny’s arm can throw 20 pitches every day, but if he throws 21, he has to rest tomorrow.

The comedy of it all arose in Minneapolis with Slowey. Gardenhire worried his starter that night would hurt himself because he was too rusty. He hadn’t pitched in 10 days. Pitching into the eighth inning was therefore out of the question.

Managers monitor pitchers’ workloads to ensure they won’t hurt themselves. If they get too much rest, though, they might hurt themselves.

Edwin Jackson threw the best no-hitter this year. It was the worst no-hitter this season in the statistical sense — he walked eight Rays — but that’s why I like it. He threw 150 pitches. Nobody went to the bullpen because, frankly, Jackson, on his fifth team in eight years, wasn’t an “investment” to the Arizona Diamondbacks.

He was just a guy whose team gave him the chance to pitch.