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Dr. K: An Excerpt from "Winners: How Good Baseball Team

Rotblatt Feb 23 2006 09:50 AM

Sniffle. Excerpt courtesy of Baseball Prospectus. Incidentally, one of the Baseball Prospectus writers recently called King Felix the best pitching prospect he's ever seen--including Doc. This article makes it clear just how bold that statement is. http://www.baseballprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=4789

Bret Sabermetric Feb 23 2006 10:01 AM

"GM Frank Cashen favored a more conservative tack for his 19-year-old phenom. Fresh in Cashen’s mind were memories of Tim Leary, a then recent Mets pitching überprospect who, less than three years prior, blew out his arm pitching on a frigid, inclement day in Chicago while concealing an arm injury. Cashen, aware of Gooden’s redoubtable promise yet wary of the fragile nature of young pitchers, envisioned a more neighborly debut for his prize prospect" This thinking strikes me as that of a cat who has sat on a hot stove and so will never sit on a cold one again. If your phenoms tend to blow out their arms by lying about soreness, or by being pitched in atrociously harsh weather conditions, then DO SOMETHING ABOUT THAT. The idea that Gooden could be better protected at the minor league level from lying or pitching under harsh conditions or anything else (which is not the point of the above article, though a frequent and correct charge about Cashen) is silly. If a kid is ready to play MLB ball, then he's ready.

Edgy DC Feb 23 2006 10:04 AM

]Going into the 1984 season, accomplished minor league manager Davey Johnson, who was up for the Mets job and had been Gooden’s skipper the previous year in Double-A, joked that in the upcoming season he’d be managing wherever Gooden was pitching. Wrong on a couple of counts here. Johnson was managing the AAA Tidewater Tides in 1983. Gooden spent the entire season in the South Atlantic League, before joining Tidewater for the AAA playoffs. Any comments Johnson made on Gooden, he made after only managing him for a few starts. An oversight, more than a mistake, but the controlled atmosphere they were going for by placing Gooden's first start in the Astrodome backfired to an extent. Something was wrong with the air conditioning, and Gooden was sweating like it was August at Colt Stadium.

Frayed Knot Feb 23 2006 10:17 AM

It didn’t take long for the Dr. K nickname to catch on and begin an upper-deck trend that’s still very much with us. Fans in the far reaches of Shea Stadium, after every Gooden strikeout, would hang a red “K” placard over the railing. More of a minor point, but also not entirely accurate; The K-cards were used during Nolan Ryan starts for a while - probably starting in Anaheim. It was new to Shea with Gooden but it was a "tradition" which was, how you say ... borrowed from elsewhere.

rpackrat Feb 23 2006 01:34 PM

]This thinking strikes me as that of a cat who has sat on a hot stove and so will never sit on a cold one again. If your phenoms tend to blow out their arms by lying about soreness, or by being pitched in atrociously harsh weather conditions, then DO SOMETHING ABOUT THAT. The idea that Gooden could be better protected at the minor league level from lying or pitching under harsh conditions or anything else (which is not the point of the above article, though a frequent and correct charge about Cashen) is silly. If a kid is ready to play MLB ball, then he's ready. Except that more recent studies on pitcher injuries has shown that younger pitchers ARE more likely to suffer arm injuries. So, while your point about controlling for other conditions that exacerbate the risk of injury is valid, Cashen's instinct that young pitchers need to be handled with greater care is also valid.

Willets Point Feb 23 2006 10:35 PM

Oh Doc . . . <sniff>