HOW MANY PITCHES WILL YOUR $36M STARTER THROW?
WILL YOUR NEW $37M CLOSER BE ASKED TO THROW ANOTHER FOUR-OUT SAVE?
TUNE IN TO THE WORLD BASEBALL CLASSIC TO SEE MLB PLAY RUSSIAN ROULETTE WITH YOUR STARS
DON’T DELAY! AT THE RATE THESE PITCHERS ARE BEING OVERUSED, YOU MAY NOT HAVE THE SAME CHANCE TO SEE THEM AT THEIR BEST DURING THE REGULAR SEASON!
There are some people who only watch a NASCAR race to see if there will be a crash. I wouldn’t put it past Bud Selig to adopt a similar cynical marketing campaign for the World Baseball Classic.
Or is baseball so cynical that, now that Oliver Perez and Francisco Rodriguez have landed their guaranteed long-term contracts, it doesn’t matter if they get hurt?
As Metsblog points out, Oliver Perez threw 85 pitches in his last game – after throwing 65 pitches the game before. Weren’t there supposed to be pitch counts in the WBC?
This on top of K-Rod being asked to make not one, but two four-out saves, after making NONE all last season, according to the Post. In other words, the Angels, knowing that K-Rod was in his walk year and was likely to leave the team, protected his arm more than the WBC is doing.
The most disturbing thing, also from the Post article (and also highlighted in The Mets Police):
USA Today reported last week that its own study showed nearly four of every five pitchers in the 2006 WBC recorded a higher ERA that season than the previous year. Even more ominously: More than one in three WBC pitching veterans spent time on the disabled list in ’06, including 14 who landed on it in April and May.
I’m not even going to get into David Wright getting kneed in the head and feeling dizzy afterwards. After all, Ryan Church suffered his first concussion last year during a Grapefruit League game.
At least, according to Kevin Kernan, the WBC news is not all bad for the Mets. Carlos Beltran is having a great tournament. And K-Rod threw only 20 pitches in his last save and said “I’m not going to put my future at risk at all… I feel tremendous. If I feel like I can, I will. If I cannot do it I will not do it.”
I hope he’s right. But if something happens to K-Rod, at least the Mets have a good backup closer this year. Oh, wait, J.J. Putz is in the WBC, too.
This tournament can’t end soon enough.
What do you think of the WBC?
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