Let me start out by saying that I am not talking about my arms, which are anything but young. This is a blog that talks about the Cleveland Indians so the arms I am talking about belong to the young starting pitching the Indians have.
Let me continue by saying that what you read below is not a condemnation of anyone. Terry Francona is not Don Baylor. Let's make that clear. Francona is not Don Baylor.
However, what hangs out there is that Francona will ride his prized stallions if he feels that is what he needs to do to win and if he has no confidence in his bullpen. That is little more demoralizing to a team than to consistently win 7 innings of a game only to lose the game in the last two innings. We have not seen that under Francona and there is a reason for that.
He will ride his starters further into games than he should if he feels he can shorten his bullpen (and the chance of the bullpen blowing the game) and increase his chances of winning the game.
Remember last year when Alomar let Beiber stay in for like a million pitches when we were already winning 100-0? People were upset. Most fans now get pitch counts and long-term wear on a pitcher's arm and how these guys are assets that we can't burn out. That was abusing Beiber's arm and, down the road it might have an impact. I remember Rick Sutcliffe saying that it took two months for the 'cold' to get out of his arm after one opening day start in 30 degree weather. Stuff like that sticks with you if you are a fan.
So, the conundrum is that we are trying to win but if any of our starting pitchers get hurt our chances of winning go way down and, likely, Francona stays with his remaining starting pitchers even longer as he knows he will already have an almost certain loss once every 5 days. This can snowball really quickly.
With a relatively inexperienced bullpen it is a real concern that Francona will go with his young starters too long and, frankly, there is no one in the minors nearly as talented as our top 4. We already have a question mark at the #5 starter and with a suspect bullpen and a suspect offense, we are set up to lose more games than last year.
Francona is no Don Baylor but he needs to be careful. He needs to value the young starting pitching on this team above all else. If he burns that out we are doomed for years. Let's hope he gets that while winning is important this year, if he burns these guys out we are screwed for years to come.
