With the plethera of young pitchers that the Reds have I thought it might be interesting to revisit some of the theories on limiting young pitchers pitches and innings. My thought has always been that pitchers should be handled the way the Braves used to do when they had the great staffs between 1988-2002. Those guys threw lots of innings and had very regimented schedules between starts. I think that today there is too much emphasis put on modern research and they try to treat all young pitchers the same. Bottom line is that the pitching arm still has muscles with ligaments and tendons and need to be worked to keep them strong. I know that a lot of people will say that that Braves staff was the exception but I offer this. Could it have been because of the way Mazzone handled the pitching staff during that era? Part of his philosophy was that pitchers should throw more between starts, 2 sessions instead of 1. Here is a nice article on pitching with limits and pitch counts. Your thoughts??

 

Do Innings Limits Work In Baseball? MLB Working Toward New Solutions

I'm with you and I believe we're the minority on this subject.

Finnegan is now 50 innings over his most ever. It would be pretty silly to keep starting him at this point IMO. He probably should be shut down for good at this point.

Braves fan here.

 

I will say that I would handle them that way. Those guys avoided major issues until they were advanced in age or away from the Braves.