TTIB (4)
Innings Management
Mike Matheny has a bit of a questionable rap when it comes to in-game decisions. I honestly cant really speak to that but I think we may have something on him now with innings management stuff. This is from an AP article following a strong start a couple weeks ago for Casey Mize in Detroit.
Mize tried to avoid manager A.J. Hinch at the end of the fourth, but it didn’t work.
“I was hoping to stay away from him, because I wanted to go another inning,” he said. “But we’re being careful with innings right now, and I understand that.”
Mize was playing Hide-and-Seek! Now Peralta in Milwaukee. Counsell pulls him mid-shutout last night…
“We’re just trying to conserve innings as we go,” manager Craig Counsell said. “He threw 50-some pitches last time, a little more this time and he’ll be full go next time. We were hoping to be a little shorter today.”
Now lets go to a post-game interview with Matheny after their July 20th game.
“We knew at some point we were going to have to take a break with our young pitchers, for sure,” Matheny said. “Instead of limiting them from the beginning, kind of let’s go, let’s pitch, let’s just see how they feel, and if at any point we need to take a pause, we do it. And this isn’t necessarily a shutdown as much as let’s just make sure that he’s feeling how he should be feeling and watch closely, use the medical team, use sports science, and figure out when it would be best to get him back in there.”
That was a quote on the day one of his promising young arms, Brady Singer, was put on the IL, and 3 days after he was rocked (2 IPs, 7 ERs). Matheny has cred in his dealings with pitchers considering his very successful catching and coaching careers, but his thinking here seems outdated. Hinch and Counsell come across as way more pro-active with limiting workload with their young-ins. Matheny would appear to favor the approach that as long as you swoop in directly after an issue has begun to emerge, thats an acceptable approach to innings management.
Again, the purpose of this series is to pin down things that are true. We honestly dont even know if Singer is legitimately injured, or if KC and Matheny are just creating something to give him a rest after getting shelled. What we can say confidently; of the 3 young pitchers discussed here, the only one that has gone on IL this year is the one with the coach saying “let’s go, let’s pitch, let’s just see how they feel.” The other 2 are humming along.
