Madritsch out until September at least
DMZ · May 16, 2005 at 10:33 pm · Filed Under Mariners
Almost unnoticed, Madristch has talked about a timetable, and it made me sad. From MLB.com:
“The best-case scenario would have me coming back around the first of September, and the worst case would be pitching in the Instructional League,” he said. “The way I look at it, I’m not going to the Instructional League (in Arizona).”
Comments
92 Responses to “Madritsch out until September at least”
Well, just like we did with Suzuki the pitcher a few years ago, ironically, Ibanez, we have run out of options on Thornton and don’t think he can clear waivers. So we are keeping him, hoping he improves, instead of losing him for nothing. I dunno. Let’s see if he clears waivers. If he does, he can improve in Tacoma. If not, he becomes someone else’s problem.
Maaaaaaaaaan, going off-topic is the hip thing to do now.
I like the Hotel De Anza in San Jose.
On-topic: I’m not shocked at all about the news on Mads.
Off-topic: Dead Ball Tim is the Debbie Downer of USS Mariner commenters.
And DMZ needs a little Southern comfort and again, I’m not talking about the awful drink known as Southern Comfort either.
I like San Jose as well. Go Sharks.
What Dead-Ball Tim is essentially saying seems to be: “I pay good money to see teams win ballgames. Not to see teams do the things that win ballgames.”
You know what I haven’t had in a while? Big League Chew.
Back on topic:
Madritch (I believe) gets talked about an awful lot more than he ought to be.
1) He was definitely not any kind of saviour for the M’s pitching staff;
2) The (seemingly) lost season cannot be blamed on the M’s alleged mismanagement of him last year;
3) At best he can symbolize the general problems associated with Mariner mismanagement.
Am I off base here? I think this thread makes sense because there was a news item about him … just my $.02 …
Bobby Madritsch was arguably our best starter coming into the season. His injury has forced us to tolerate both Franklin and Sele in the rotation, a massive, almost unquantifiable downgrade. I think that’s pretty damn important.
A poster whose name is “Brett Farve” is asking if he’s off-base.
That’s high comedy, folks. A 92 on the UCR scale.
Seriously though, Jeff’s right. If Madritsch doesn’t get hurt, Franklin is still in the bullpen. As much as I like Julio Mateo, there’s no way I’d rather have him in the rotation than Madritsch. When Madritsch went down, the rotation took a big hit.
San Jose as a town, though, haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaate. Which reminds me, I owe them for a BS parking ticket they’re after me for.
Oh!
1. Um… no one said he was
2. It could too, and “alleged” my butt.
3. Um, sure.
At worst, preventing runs is half the problem. Madritch every 5th day would have likely been an improvement over either Sele or Franklin … I agree. However, the tenor of many threads on Madritch seems to be “if only we had Madritch”.
Actually, I haven’t seen that tenor in any thread.
And saying that Madritsch would likely have been an improvement on Aaron Sele is like saying Albert Pujols likely would outhit Willie Bloomquist.
Bobby Madritsch is the only enforcer M’s have. The 2004 series in Oakland Ichiro gets hit and Madritsch asks him “who?” have to love that. Unlike the game in KC when Ichiro gets beaned and nothing from Franklin or any other pitcher. 29 oyher teams retaliate.
No, it’s “if only we had Madritsch.” No one’s bemoaning the team’s lack of Mike Madritch, who Google informs me is a prof of entomology at the University of Wisconsin.
Dave: You can’t know that until you actually substitute Pujols for Bloomquist. Maybe Pujols would strikeout. Such a decision can only be evaluated afterwards, when you can look at the results.
DMZ … It sounds like you agree that he is not a savior, yet you then claim that the lost season can be blamed on his mismanagement.
???
About Madritsch… I sorta liked him. He strikes me as an undisciplined thrower with his hair on fire kinda like that Detroit pitcher from eons ago Mark “Bird” Fidritch… they even have a similar suffix… only Fidritch was more loveable and had no tatts. If only Bobbie would talk to the ball like Mark did he could have his own private cult and personal highlight film. That may yet happen but who knows. He had his moments of promise when his arm was well. He looks like a reasonable power-pitcher and you gotta give guys like that a chance to show their stuff. His arm broke in the process but hey… its a tough game and durability is part of it. Look at Meche… they kept him around in rehab for what?…3 or 4 years and he never threw a pitch for the M’s. At times it looks like they are just hoping for ONE good season out of him. Ryan Anderson? Whereforearthou young power phenom? Blown arm. Its fairly typical. They might rehab Madritsch for years too. Power starting pitchers are rare critters just because of that durability thing. What they try to do with their arms is pretty violent.
Ah. Depends on whether we’re arguing about his lost season or the team at large.
Madritsch strikes you as an undisciplined thrower? He ran almost a 2:1 K/BB ratio.
Cy Young is dead. He’s not coming back. At some point, you’re going to need to adjust.
My original post was vague … my bad.
I was taling about the M’s lost season, not his.
BTW…
The intentional misspelling of his name is a tribute to my 7 year old son who has written dozens of letters to football players. The only one to respond was Seattle’s Shaun Alexander … and respond he did, with a autographed football card! Like all kids he was merely spelling the name how it sounded.
You taught your kid to spell phonetically? That will never work in the English language.
Like Madritsch over Sele, or Leone over Dobbs, incremental improvement matters (though Mads over Sele is a pretty big jump). If you want to win games, you should eke out every advantage available to you.
Evan … I agree with everything you said, except for the part that had absolutely nothing at all to do with baseball.
Me fail English? That’s unpossible!
“He ran a.. 2-1 k/bb ratio”
Yeah I liked him. He was off to a good start but he’s only pitched in 16 games. Not even half the M’s schedule even saw him. He’s a two trick pony which is good enough to be very successful. Intimidating fastball up to 95 and an evil change and he could spot them both for strikes. But until he is forced to make adjustments to the book being written on him he is still a big question mark in my opinion. 6-3 record in 11 starts last year. Very nice. Can’t wait for Chapter 2.
Why the hell was Melvin allowed to abuse Madritsch? Or for that matter, was Piniella allowed to similarly abuse Freddy Garcia his first year (another meaningless season)? Or, to take another organization, Jim Leyland and Levon Hernandez? Why do organizations allow their managers to destroy their most precious commodities???
I like pie.
I’m picking up the idea that the conventional wisdom on this board is that Bobbie M.’s injury was due to incompetent management and coaching. How so? Last year he appeared in 16 games and ran 88 innings. Average is less than 6 innings per outing. Averages lie too, surely. He had one complete game which was important for no other reason than to prove he could do it. However, it seems to me if you’re coming on as The King-Hell Power Pitcher you should be able to hump up for 7 or 8 innings per start. And if his style, mechanics, body type, etc can’t take the punishment… well at least he had his chance and tried his best. I’m sure he’ll be back but he surely can’t come back as a 5 inning wonder and hope for the pen to save him – type of pitcher. We have those already.
a) conventional wisdom here? whaaaaaaaaaa?
b) This has been talked about extensively before. There’s a search box on the upper-right you can use to look for entries about this. Short version is that Madritsch was badly overworked in pointless games by Melvin last year
This might be the pithiest summary.
Thanks for the link. I looked up his game log and it shows pretty much 7 & 8 innings per game from Aug 5, 04 out to his last game, the CG. Seems to me that this is what a power pitcher is expected to do. He was doing it. How does a manager know that an injury is coming? When Pineiro went down was it because he was overworked? Are pitchers only worth 5 innings? Is that the new ball game? *swigs some geritol* =)
Why exactly is a power pitcher be supposed to go long distance whereas another type of pitcher, say a Moyer-type, would not. Conventional widom to me would be that a power pitcher would place more wear on his body and would, therefore, be tired sooner. Also, innings have less bearing than actual pitches.
You can go look up info on pitcher workloads if you’re interested, but it’s not the # of innings, it’s the # of pitches. An efficent pitcher can go a full nine and be fine. It’s the pitches over 120 that put their health at risk (generally)(standard disclaimers apply)
Tim,
Velocity has nothing to do with strain on the arm. You can throw 98 and be doing less damage to your arm than someone who throws 75.
Also, what Derek said. Looking at innings per start is useless in finding out how Madritsch was overused. The number of pitches per start Melvin had Madritsch throw last year placed him in a high risk category. Considering his history of arm problems and the total lack of anything productive that could come out of Madritsch’s overuse, well, it was a foolish thing to do. We said so at the time. Who knows if Madritsch would have gotten hurt again had he been used more judiciously? No one. But lowering the risk couldn’t have possibly hurt.
Dead Ball Tim, here’s my post on Madritsch’s pitch counts at Sports and Bremertonians from last month.
Madritsch’s pitch counts
Another thing, this is 2005. As Derek mentioned earlier, Cy Young is dead.
Off topic: What happened to the column in the PI?
I appreciate your views but I’ll continue to point out that the goal of a pitcher isn’t the pitch count, at least as I see it. My version is this: A starting pitcher’s success is based on (1) how many outs he can get and (2) being stingy with runs. Everyone has their limits and fatigue defines how far a guy can go in a game. 7 innings, 8 innings is not too much to ask for a starting pitcher especially one whom management expects to take a dominant role. Can he do it or not? If he is a strike-out type pitcher like Randy Johnson he’s going to need a lot of pitches to get it done. If he is a ground ball pitcher like Moyer he may not need so many. His personal style may be demanding on his body but the job doesn’t change. The starting job is to get 21-24 outs. If he can’t last for 7 innings over the course of a season then he’s applying for the wrong job. Perhaps his best productivity would be from the 7th innning on… or perhaps as a closer. Be a one inning marvel and let it all hang out! If he was overused it was because the demands of the job, his physical capacity, his mechanics, his style, and his methods didn’t line up. But the job is still there and its always the same. Give us 7 or 8 innings whether it takes 13 pitches or 130.
Die.
Tim,
The goal of a pitcher is to get outs. If he can consistently get 18 outs — 6 innings — but can never go 7 or 8 he could still be a useful starting pitcher.
Jamie Moyer went 20-6 with a 3.43 ERA in 2001. I’d call that a pretty good year.
He averaged 6.35 innings per start that year. He had 1 complete game. Are you saying he didn’t do his job because he didn’t go 7 or 8 innings?
Ralph, if Jamie could have gone 7 he would have. As Lou used to say, “You play the hand you’re dealt.” The team wants their top pitchers to go deep in the game. No secret. In 2001 they had a guy who could and they relied on him a lot. F. Garcia. He was 20 something. Jamie was 36 or so. Jamie lost .65 innings to Father Time and the M’s had a great pen who put his leads on ice. Yes, there’s more than one way to do it. But every good team needs young guns who eat innings for lunch. Freddie pitched 238 innings in 34 starts. 7 innings per game average. Now in Madritsch’s case if they wanted to find out if he could do what Freddie could do they had to test him.
Here’s another thought: A good team is a happy team, right? Well, exception taken to the Yanquis who behave like an extension of Stienbrenner’s corporate shipping operation. All business. blah. But if management wants contented players they try to encourage their strengths and cultivate their desires. In B.M.’s case he is driven to be a starting pitcher and not just any old starting pitcher! He wants to be King Hell Bad Ass Lock Up Yer Daughters Take No Prisoners, etc etc. Add to this the fact that his current salary is only $335K. Now suppose management sat him and his agent down and had a nice chat. Madritsch says, “My goal is to be your #1 starter and get a fat salary to match and I won’t be happy til I get there.” Management says, “Cool. We are with you on that. But here is the deal… we are gonna give you the chance to show us you can handle the workload and it won’t be easy.” After a chat like that, do you think B.M. would have taken kindly to being pulled in the 4th or 5th when his pitch count hit 90-100? A dissed prospect is an unhappy prospect. PLUS, I’ll bet you anything that management considers it much better to find out if their potential #1 guy is gonna break down BEFORE they write him a 10 million dollar per year contract.
What are ya gonna do? Tough call.
7 innings per game average. Now in Madritsch’s case if they wanted to find out if he could do what Freddie could do they had to test him.
So you’re of the opinion that its better to have an injured pitcher not capable of pitching at all than one who is capable of getting those oh-so-critical 19th, 20th, and 21st outs? Seriously? You would rather have Bobby Madritsch throwing pitches 125+ to try and prove he’s some mythical workhorse innings eater than actually protecting his arm (which has already endured surgery earlier in his career)?
What are ya gonna do? Tough call.
No, its not. When faced with a decision of “hey, my best pitcher, who has a long history of arm problems, is at 110 pitches in the 6th inning, and my team is 50-80 with no prayer of making the playoffs, I’m not sure if I should send him out there for another to prove he’s a man”, it’s pretty much the easiest decision in baseball.
If you want your young pitchers to go 7 innings every start, make them earn it. They have to do it within a reasonable pitch count, or they don’t get to try.
“They have to do it in a reasonable pitch count or they don’t get to try.”
That’s a valid thought and I’m sure a fair number of pitching coaches and managers would agree. And following that logic, if Madritsch hits his pitch count limit before he can be a ‘useful starter’ in the sense of how many outs he can produce then he must have a different calling… like bullpen. He can’t be the team’s best pitcher and only be worth 100 pitches AND be the type of pitcher that he is. It takes him too many pitches to put the hitters away! If he’s only worth 4 innings he doesn’t get to try!? My thought is that its better to try than to die wondering.
Madritsch averaged 15.5 pitches per inning last year. The league average? 16.1.
Basically, there’s no evidence that he didn’t have the endurance or type of stuff necessary to stay in the rotation. Trying to defend how he was used last year is grasping at straws. He was overworked for no reason, and this whole “oh well, we had to try” argument is just lame.
fooey