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July 25, 2008

Prospectus Today

Manageable Workloads

by Joe Sheehan

It’s been a couple of days, but I can’t get Tuesday night’s events at Shea Stadium out of my head.

In case you missed it, the Mets held a 5-2 lead over the Phillies through eight innings on a night when their closer, Billy Wagner, was unavailable due to some shoulder soreness. Mets ace Johan Santana had thrown 105 pitches through the eighth and had gotten through the eighth on 14 tosses. With Wagner out, it seemed like a good idea to leave Santana in. Interim manager Jerry Manuel decided instead to lift Santana, batting for him with no one on and one out in the bottom of the inning, and bringing in Duaner Sanchez. Six runs later, the Mets were down 8-5 on their way to an 8-6 loss.

Here’s what bugged me—we’d just seen this movie. On July 4 against these same Phillies, Santana had made it through eight innings of two-run ball on 95 pitches, getting through the eighth on just 11 and retiring the last seven men he faced. He was cruising with a low pitch count, yet Manuel pulled him in a tied game, double-switching Sanchez in. Four batters later, the Mets had lost, 3-2.

The former game made an impression because about six hours after it ended, I was in a car headed upstate with my uncle to play some golf, and we ended up talking about it for much of the trip. As I’ve mentioned, my family likes sports the way most people do, where they watch the games on TV and read about them in the paper. They’re not the kind of people who read BP or get into analysis. They know I write about baseball and think it’s neat that I get to go places, be on TV, write for books and for Sports Illustrated, and at the same time, they don’t completely get what we do here. I’ve probably had more success discussing the economics of the industry and moving people off of the "greedy players" meme than in changing anyone’s mind about, say, Derek Jeter’s defense.

So it was interesting to spend an hour kind of working through an argument with my uncle. He actually didn’t have the reactionary stance you might expect, and was patient as I did a filibuster on the history of pitching that took us well past the Tappan Zee Bridge. What I kept coming back to, though, was that I couldn’t defend Manuel’s decision. This wasn’t removing a gassed 23-year-old coming off of a 30-pitch inning that pushed his needle into the red. This was the best pitcher in baseball, making about $700,000 a start, throwing well with a pitch count in double digits. This was, I hoped (as we reached Route 17) the nadir of a trend that, while probably a net positive for the industry and for hundreds of individuals, has gone too far in the handling of veteran pitchers.