Aug 30 2013 08:50 AM
Mets great Tom Seaver reacts to Matt Harvey's injury by saying today's pitchers are being babied
With that, the Mets’ greatest pitcher, with three Cy Young Awards and 311 victories, who averaged 265 innings his first 13 years in the big leagues, cited the examples of all his Hall of Fame pitching cohorts in the ’60s and ’70s as guys who got to Cooperstown, without incident, because they just pitched.
Mets legend Tom Seaver says pitchers of his generation just went out and pitched.
| When word of Matt Harvey’s partially torn ulnar collateral ligament reached the mountaintop in the Calistoga, Calif., wine country the other day, the still one-and-only Mets “Franchise” shook his head and let out a sigh. “That’s all I could do,” Tom Seaver said of the player touted to be the next “Franchise.” “Naturally, I felt terrible for the kid. He’s got such a bright future. But at the same time, all I could think of was how it just goes to show how all this babying of pitchers — pitch counts and innings limits — is a bunch of nonsense. You can’t predict these things, and there’s really not a whole lot you can do to prevent them other than refining your mechanics as (’60s and ’70s Mets pitching coach) Rube (Walker) did with us. But one way I know doesn’t do anything to prevent them is babying these kids like they do.” With that, the Mets’ greatest pitcher, with three Cy Young Awards and 311 victories, who averaged 265 innings his first 13 years in the big leagues, cited the examples of all his Hall of Fame pitching cohorts in the ’60s and ’70s — Juan Marichal, Steve Carlton, Ferguson Jenkins, Jim Palmer, even Warren Spahn, who was still logging nearly 260 innings in 1963 when he was 42 — as guys who got to Cooperstown, without incident, because they just pitched. “Take a look at all of them, Marichal, Jenkins, Spahn, what do you think made them successful?” Seaver asked. “They conditioned their arms by pitching more, not less, starting from when they signed their first contract. Jenkins threw 300 or more innings half a dozen (actually five) times. Same with Palmer, Carlton and Marichal. I keep going back to that (July 2, 1963) Marichal-Spahn game when they both pitched 16 innings and threw almost 500 pitches between them. “Neither one of them had any adverse aftereffects from it.” RELATED: WRIGHT LOOKS TO RETURN THIS YEAR, SET COURSE FOR '14 By contrast, as Seaver noted, so many of today’s top young pitchers — Washington’s Stephen Strasburg and Jordan Zimmermann, the Blue Jays’ Kyle Drabek, the Orioles’ Dylan Bundy, the Twins’ Scott Baker, the Braves’ Brandon Beachy and the Yankees’ Joba Chamberlain and Manny Banuelos, to name just a few prime products of the modern pitch-count, innings-limit era — ended up blowing out their elbows anyway and getting Tommy John surgery. The problem, said Seaver, is that pitchers today are treated like robots, with too much emphasis on how many pitches they might have in their arms instead of weighing the determination and competitive spirit they have in their minds and hearts. “These kids today, they want to be men, they want to be foxhole guys, but they’re not being allowed to do that,” Seaver said. “Imagine if these computer geeks who are running baseball now were allowed to run a war? They’d be telling our soldiers: ‘That’s enough. You’ve fired too many bullets from your rifle this week!’ ” he old “Franchise” was really getting worked up now as he spoke by phone from his vineyard atop Diamond Mountain in Calistoga. He acknowledged that in Harvey’s case, the Mets didn’t go overboard in the babying and did let him be “the man” this year, going deep into games. (“They did all the right things with him. It’s nobody’s fault this happened. It just did.”) But he hopes this will not scare the Mets into putting more stringent innings limits on their other top pitching prospects, Noah Syndergaard and Rafael Montero. “There is no set numerical value you can put on a pitcher,” Seaver said. “They’re all different. “What’s important is to get into the pitcher's head, to know what he’s made of. “I guarantee most of these pitchers today would like to realize their full potential and pitch more. Unfortunately, this is what the game has come to and sadly there’s no turning back.” Another loud sigh could be heard at the other end of the phone. So how, he was asked, does one explain how Harvey, who certainly has the competitive heart and bulldog approach Seaver and all the others had back in the ’60s and ’70s, not to mention the good mechanics Walker emphasized, still got hurt? “It’s gotta be genetic,” Seaver said. “He’s a great competitor and the Mets let him pitch to his potential. “Look, I don’t blame these organizations for what they’re doing with pitchers. There’s just too much damn money in the game now. “But it’s the wrong approach. I can only speak from experience.” Some 4,783 innings of it. |
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