There are a multitude of reasons why pitching prospects don’t pan out. I believe that, after talent, the biggest reason is health. Every organization has had its share of pitching prospects that have flamed out, or at least have had their career temporarily derailed, due to injury and the Cardinals are no exception.
There is no absolute connection between workload and injury - certain “rubber armed” pitchers seem to be able to throw endlessly without injury (Livan Hernandez comes to mind), but there is enough of a connection that teams are paying much closer attention to pitch counts than they used to, especially with younger pitchers. The depth of the Cardinals system, at least according to most prospect lists, lies in our pitching prospects. The question then, is what has their workload been thus far, and what would be ideal for 2008? I’m going to take a look at five of the Cardinals top starting pitching prospects after the jump.
I mentioned the Verducci Rule in my Top 25 list (in conjunction with an erroneous comment on PJ Walters). You can read about the Verducci Rule here, but the bottom line is that pitchers who have an increase of more than 30 innings pitched from one year to the next have an heightened risk of injury. The Rule only applies to major league innings because minor league innings don’t seem to translate, but I think we can use the 30 inning increase limit as a conservative baseline when looking at prospects.
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2005 |
High school stats unknown; 8 IP after draft | Instructional league only |
| 2006 | Combined innings of 155 | Splitbetween A and A+ |
| 2007 | 103.1 innings | AA; shut down early |
It is impossible to say if the 155 innings during his first pro season were too many, leading to his elbow issue last season. Keeping that issue in mind, though, I would like to see the Cardinals treat Garcia a little carefully this season and limit him to between 130-150 innings. I think that would be enough of a workload to gauge his progress and to get him on pace to eventually take a rotation spot, while still being cautious about his health.
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2004 |
63.2 innings | Northeastern Univ. |
| 2005 | 96.0 innings | Northeastern Univ. |
| 2006 | Combined innings of 159.2 | Split between Northeastern, A- and A |
| 2007 | 143.1 innings | A+ |
The jump in innings between 2005 and 2006 is steep by Verducci Rule standards, but it doesn’t appear to have had any ill effects on Ottavino. I would assume that he will spend the year in AA, and I think a workload of 160 innings or so would be about right.
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2005 |
High school stats unknown; 49.2 ip after draft | Rookie league |
| 2006 | 76 combined innings | Rk league and A- |
| 2007 | 137.1 innings | A |
Again the jump between 2006 and 2007 violates the Verducci Rule, but I suspect that an increase from 76 innings to 137 innings when you are in A ball doesn’t have the same heightened risk as going from 150 to 200 innings at the major league level. All the same, I would advocate for a conservative approach to his workload and aim for no more than 150 innings this year.
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2004 |
58.1 innings | Treasure Valley JuCo |
| 2005 | 88.1 innings | Treasure Valley JuCo |
| 2006 | 81.0 innings | Gonzaga |
| 2007 | 180.0 combined innings | Gonzaga/A-/A |
Now that is a scary looking increase in innings for a young pitcher. Mortensen had already pitched 119.1 innings for Gonzaga before the draft, which was already a decent increase from the year before. Then the Cardinals gave him 60 more innings of combined work at Batavia and Quad Cities. I would hope for a considerable downshift in innings in 2008, somewhere around the 140 mark would be nice.
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2003 |
11 innings | Georgia |
| 2004 | Did not pitch – tried football for a year | UTC |
| 2005 | 119 combined innings | Georgia/A- |
| 2006 | 145 innings | A+ |
| 2007 | 152.1 innings | AA |
Boggs, as with most pitchers, saw a hefty increase in innings during the year he was drafted. That increase is especially interesting considering that Boggs had taken a year off to try his hand at football. Since that point, however, the Cardinals have handled him very nicely, in my opinion. They have increased his workload every season, building up his stamina without any increase that you could consider a shock to his system. I would hope that he would get 175-180 innings this year in preparation for the big league rotation in the not-too-distant future.
Filed under: Adam Ottavino, Clayton Mortensen, Jaime Garcia, Mitch Boggs, Tyler Herron
erik
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roarke49
theredbaaron
There is an interesting point to be had with the season’s in which the pitcher pitches for college and in the pros, but I can’t flesh it out. But, I think it makes a difference that they are pitching more innings over more months in the year. One could say something to the effect of innings per month per year.
But, I don’t have enough time to think about it fully now.
Nice post, Roarke.
I did a similar thing last year for a few guys I was considering for my minor league FBB draft, and saw the Brewers did THIS with Yovanni Gallardo
2005 - 122
2006 - 155
2007 - 190
When looking at Manny Parra, it also seems like there might have been some modulation (though this was confounded by his arm injuries a few yrs ago).
Bottom line is, I wonder if some of our in-division competitors are paying attention to this - and if they are, how does their rotation health compare to ours? The Brewers strike me as staying pretty healthy over the years - they’ve lost Rogers, but have nursed guys like Sheets and Parra along so far, and have had good luck with guys homegrown talents like Capuano, Davis, Eveland, Gallardo, Inman, Hammond, Jeffress, etc.
I wonder what teams definitively use this, and how their arm health has been?
Jeff, after keeping an eye peeled on this for a couple years, I think you are probably correct - it may not be total innings that is doing it, but rather, total innings is a proxy for or is correlated with things that really influence things. Maybe it’s # of pitches thrown per month, for example….and total innings in full season ball is just a surrogate for that.
Like most things, it’s probably not that simple - probably an interaction among physical development stage, pitching rate or total, change in rate (e.g., difference from prior year), mechanics, and inherent arm health. Whew.
while it is hard to come up with these stats, you are missing some innings on some of these pitchers and it doesn’t make their innings increases look quite as bad. in 2005, ottavino also threw 51 innings in the cape cod league, so his total was really 147 and he only jumped 12 innings. in 2006 tyler herron spent the spring in extended spring training before going to short season ball. i don’t remember the exact numbers, but i think he threw something like 30 innings in extended. adding that in, he did only jump the 30 or so innings. clayton mortensen also threw 61 innings in the west coast collegiate league in the summer of ‘06 bringing his total that year to 141 innings, so while it still was a pretty big jump, it wasn’t as dramatic as it looks.
FGC - I had to limit the analysis at some point, because some of the information (and value of the information)becomes unreliable. You can see that I included the 8 innings of instructional league for Garcia after the draft, but I quickly decided just to stick with college and minor league innings because a line had to be drawn somewhere (similarly, I don’t think that Will or Tom Verducci consider Spring Training innings in their analysis).
Frankly, if we really want to do a complete and in-depth analysis of workload, we probably should be looking at pitch counts rather than innings. Innings becomes a proxy for that because over a large enough number of innings the average pitches per inning levels out. In the same way, I am taking minor league and college innings and using them as a proxy for all innings pitched by these prospects because an assumption can be made that most of these guys are in some kind of summer league during college, or instructional leagues, or Team USA camps, or whatever. Instead of endlessly searching for all of those innings (which could be futile in some situations) I assume that most of those will level out year to year. The college and minor league innings become a proxy then for total workload for each year. It certainly isn’t an exact science, but I think that it works reasonably well for this exercise.
Hey,
While summer league stats do add to the total amount of innings a pitcher throws in a year, a lot of pitchers get 2-3, maybe even 4 weeks off from baseball before the summer leagues begin. The Cape Cod league’s first game is around June 15. Northeastern’s last game in Ottavino’s soph season was around May 23. So Ottavino got 3+ weeks of rest before going out for another 51 more innings. Mortensen was in the same situation. The WCCBL starts around the same time as the Cape Cod League. Mortensen pitched his last game on May 25.
That rest, even if its just 10-12 days, is huge. You look at Braden Looper last year, spending two weeks in June on the DL gave him a shot in the arm for the second half.
In the minor leagues, pitchers don’t get that rest. They have to pitch every 5th day(or 4th day in some systems) and they are training their arms to handle that continuous workload.
And really you can apply what I just said to the college to pro transition, not just college season to summer season.
When I said Mortensen pitched his last game on May 25, that was his senior year. His first game in the Cardinals system was sometime around June 20th. So thats even more time off. While his inning total took a big jump last year, he had a nice long break to build his arm back up and ready himself for the 2nd wave of innings.
Of course the break doesn’t always work for some. Look at Nick Schmidt, the Arkansas LHP drafted by San Diego. He needed TJ surgery after a month into his pro debut. Of course a lot of the damage had probably already been done at Arkansas.
“…a lot of pitchers get 2-3, maybe even 4 weeks off from baseball before the summer leagues begin. … So Ottavino got 3+ weeks of rest before going out for another 51 more innings.”
Is that really a good thing? I’m totally talking out the arse here but it seems like taking 3-4 weeks off would allow the pitcher to get out of shape while not thinking he’s out of shape, and then stepping up a level exacerbates it.
I think these guys are thinking along the lines of healing more than losing form. Although I don’t know where the info came from, I read that any overhand throwing motion does some sort of damage to the rotator cuff. However, most people heal quickly from those microscopic injuries. Give a man 3 weeks, and he would heal from most of those minor injuries rather completely.
i don’t know how many people got to see it, but jaime garcia was nasty today. 2 shutout innings on a hit, a walk, and 2 strikeouts. he ran his fastball up to 94 while also showing a good hook, and one of the strikeouts was on a nasty 90 mph cutter in under the hands of a righty.
I think most of these guys are conditioning and throwing long-toss/bullpens during the break between college and summer ball, so they actually probably come back stronger after the break. The guys who get lazy during their breaks are either immensely talented or never make it very far.
I think most college pitchers throw some kind of a fall season as well. My son pitches D-1 and the only time he gets completely off from throwing is from mid-November to early January.