Wednesday 24 September 2008

Purcey shut down

We're probably a little late to the punch, but bluejays.com is reporting that Purcey has been shut down for the year. The reason is because he pitched 182 innings this year over various levels, and they don't want to ruin his future by having him throw so many innings in a season.

Generally with young pitching the rule is never to increase a pitcher's workload by more than 30 innings over their previous career high. Purcey only pitched 62 innings last year, but before that his career high for innings in a season was 140, back in 2006.

The Jays must be well aware of the fact that young pitchers should not throw more than 30 innings over their previous career high, which is why it's odd that Purcey was allowed to throw 182 innings this season. Unless I'm mistaken, the most he's ever thrown was the 140 in 06, which means that he shouldn't have thrown more than 170 this year over AAA/MLB.

Purcey hit 171 innings on Sept 7, when the Jays beat Garza and the Rays 1-0. At that point, I believe they were around 6-7 games out of a playoff spot. Purcey should have been shut down then, with his starts being given to Richmond or Parrish. Purcey's future with the Jays is more important than trying to push him in order to compete for a playoff spot.

I'm sure some of you are reading this, wondering why I'm making such a big deal about an extra 10 innings. But with so many young Blue Jay pitchers getting injured, it would have been wise to take a more cautious approach than to push Purcey over the 30 inning mark.

The article also makes a brief mention about McGowan, stating that:

The Jays will also be missing starter Dustin McGowan at the onset of next season. The right-hander had shoulder surgery earlier this year and may not be ready to return until at least May.

That might change between now and spring training, but if that's the case then May might be a best case scenario. Dusty is more likely to show up in June after a couple of tune up starts down in the minors.

Twitchy.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

"The Jays must be well aware of the fact that young pitchers should not throw more than 30 innings over their previous career high"

The FACT?!?! *sigh*

The Southpaw said...

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2008/writers/tom_verducci/02/05/verducci.YAE/index.html

"Why can't they throw 200 innings? Simply put, they're not conditioned for it yet. It's like training for a marathon. You need to build stamina incrementally. The unofficial industry standard is that no young pitcher should throw more than 30 more innings than he did the previous season. It's a general rule of thumb, and one I've been tracking for about a decade. When teams violate the incremental safeguard, it's amazing how often they pay for it."

I didn't quote the article, and you can read it if you like.

Any of the names look familiar?

How about Dustin McGowan? Fausto Carmona?

Course, Purcey is older so as the article states, the effect won't be as big. But it's something to keep in mind.

And it may not be a "fact", but it's the "unofficial industry standard".

Navin Vaswani (@eyebleaf) said...

i would go to war with tom verducci. he is a god.

as for mcgowan, june!? JUNE!?!? fuckkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkk

The Southpaw said...

Yeah, Purcey's pretty much at physical maturity whereas Janssen/Marcum were 2 years younger when they came up, so that 30 IP ceiling might not need to be so strict. That and Purcey being on the cusp of turning into someone else's John Parrish if he didn't accomplish something in the bigs this year.

But I'm still guessing this was more a, "Shit, we should've done this last week and no one remembered!" kind of move.

JW

Anonymous said...

Writing for 15 years about baseball does not make one an expert on anything, not even journalism. I certainly don't think that Verducci knows more about baseball than most of the GMs who are actually allowing this kind of stuff to go on - I wonder what Mr. Verducci thinks about his prize pupil Tim Lincecum, about whom he wrote a great piece on his "perfect" mechanics - is he automatically toast too because of his innings jump?

This is one guy writing one article. Relax. I love how fans sit back and fret when a pitcher increases his load by 30, even 100 innings. Let's trust the people actually in charge more than ourselves and some SI journalist.

Anonymous said...

MAY not return until AT LEAST May.

Does that mean anything??? I can't get my head around it. Could that also mean that he definitely won't return until at least March?

What a stupid comment.

For the record, Alex the Greek said that Dustin would be fine by the end of Spring Training and JP said that they MIGHT just hold him back until May.