2016 MLB Regular-Season Thread

Not nearly as bad. See, this is why I think people miss how egregious what Baker did was. Because it gets lost in all the other "how much should you let a young pitcher go" debates. Rodon was 22 all year and maxed out at 116 pitches.

Prior pitched 116 or more 14 times in the regular season and 3 more in the playoffs. He broke 130 four times.

This wasn't an ordinary "how hard is it OK to push a young pitcher" argument. This was Baker pushing a pitcher who had never thrown a full season before harder than *any pitcher in baseball was pushed all year*, including veterans whose arms could handle it. And he refused to take advantage of numerous opportunities to give him a lighter day when the game was out of reach, including 116 pitches and 7 innings in Game 2 of the infamous NLCS when the Cubs led 11-0 after five.

Goddamit now I'm pissed. I hate Dusty fucking Baker so much.

 

The Orioles are going to have to score nine runs a game to contend, but at least it'll be fun to watch.

 

Am I crazy to think the Phillies won't be as awful as people expect? By "not as awful" I mean that they'll only lose 80+ instead of the 90+ everyone predicts.

 

Not sure but Franco is going to bust out this season.

 

LOL, so we gather.

 

Prior had a terrible delivery. Dusty didn't help, but he was always an injury risk.

 

Terrible is overstating it, but it is true we can never know for sure whether Prior would have been bum-armed regardless.

 

All the talk when he came up was that Prior had perfect mechanics and that would keep him healthy. Then, after the injuries hit, you started to see stories about how his mechanics led to health problems.

 

I challenge you to find anyone who said or wrote that before he was injured. All I heard about was how he had perfect mechanics, because people were trying to distinguish him from Wood.

 

He had the flying W or whatever that is supposed to put more strain on the elbow. Everything else was pretty textbook.

 

There was this one weird amateur pitching coach whose name I forget who had a web site that claimed Prior was doing something wrong. It made a minor dent in the headlines in Chicago his rookie year.

Wood was damaged goods before Baker got to him, probably before the Cubs even drafted him.

 

I'm not sure I'm even getting across the true depth of my hatred.