Odds and Ends: Darvish, Giles, Teixeira

165 pitches? The 21 year-old phenom may become the 22 year old Tommy John recipient. That's just unsafe.

'Bad teams should not be locking up their mediocrities to long-term deals, but rather should be looking to convert them all into any kind of young players.'

Words to live by. As an O's fan, I can only PRAY that Andy McPhail reads Keith Law.

Oh, and re: Darvish. Just remember this Yanks and Sox fans, when your team signs Darvish for 10 years and $200 million and pays the $2 billion posting fee and gives Scott Boras a 10% equity stake in the team for the pleasure of 'negotiating' with him...and his arms falls off during the third inning of his second MLB start (the first was a gem though).

Hey you never know. I kinda remember a story about a Japanese youngster throwing 148 pitches in a game... then throwing 250 over 17 innings on the very next day. He seems to be doing decent in the Majors now.

I wouldn't be so quick to draw that conclusion on Dice-K. He already missed time in Year 2 of a 6 year deal with a strained rotator cuff. We have a long way to go before we can call that $103MM expenditure a success.

"165 pitches? The 21 year-old phenom may become the 22 year old Tommy John recipient. That's just unsafe."

Funny, Nolan Ryan never seemed to have a problem.

"We have a long way to go before we can call that $103MM expenditure a success."

Posting fees may be an unreasonable skew, but there is no doubt he is a top flight MLB pitcher.

People are forgetting that Japan teams pitch with a 6 man rotation, each time around their starter has an extra day of rest so that they can go deeper into games on the days that they do start. It's like a college pitcher throwing 150 pitches in a game, he can do so because he starts only once a week.

Good point Venom. I was going exactly where you went with the college pitchers. I was thinking about how I read a story about Brad Holt after the Mets drafted him and how he threw 170 pitches or something in his last start for UNCW. By the way, Holt struck out 14 over 6 innings in Brooklyn last night. He has raised comparisons to Pelfrey with his stuff, though he is said to be progressing quicker then Pelf did. I am excited about this kid. Sorry to get off topic, but hey, maybe if you stretch a kid out when he is young, by the time he reaches the majors he will be used to it and he will be able to eat tons of innings. That is how they did it back in the day. It is not like all the sudden the 90's came and pitchers started to get hurt, resulting in a pitch count, it is more like the 90's came, and the pitch count was introduced, which is why pitchers started to get hurt. If a kid is throwing a ton of innings from the time he starts to pitch then he won't be ready to come out after 100 pitches and he will be used to the wear and tear of throwing deep into ball games all the time.