THE JOBA RULES

Stephen Strasburg

Stephen Strasburg, of the Washington Nationals was told by manager Davey Johnson: that the most he would have was two or maybe three starts then they would shut him down. This was said in late August, while the team was in the heat of a pennant race, and faced the real possibility of a post-season appearance.

The Nationals are a good team judging by their position for so long in the National League East for most of the season.

In the last few years, starting with the Yankees and the Joba rules, there is this idea that you need to shut down pitchers, young ones that is and limit the amount of innings they pitch. There is this insane pre-occupation with pitch counts and the magic number 100, as the limit for a pitcher. This number usually coincides with the 7^th inning for some reason, and the thinking is that the pitcher will not last longer.

Tom Seaver

Based on a 162-game schedule, which has been in place since the early sixties, there have been numerous pitchers who never had the rules imposed upon them, and one shining example would be Tom Seaver. In his 20-year career with 516 decisions, over 300 of them victories, he never had the management shut him down. He went out and pitched time after time, and focused on winning and getting to the post-season. That was why he was out there to begin with. In the later innings when he tired, they took him out, not because of pitch counts, but because of runners on base and the score. Sometimes, if his team was ahead late in a game by enough runs they let him pitch through his troubles, and if it didn’t work out, they put someone else in.

Joba Chamberlain

I could see the Nats or Yankees winning a pennant early on in September, then giving their pitchers a rest or an extra day off, but not shutting them down! You sign hitters to hit and pitchers to pitch, period. So where does this come from? I’ll tell you where.

The owners invest a lot of money into pitching, and the young guys you look to for long-term deals, especially the very talented. You don’t want them walking for free agency and some other team steals them, yet you don’t want to wear out an investment, not an arm or a person, but an investment. The game has changed that much, that every so-called ’baseball decision’ is really governed by money and bottom lines. The fans who come to root for their team into the post-season are disappointed if they think they are getting baseball, they are not.

That’s all I wrote, folks!