Odds and Ends: Burnett, Inoa, Minaya, Glavine

I think the Richard Griffin article is somewhat comical. While wins are the point of playing the games, he states that Burnett has had 22 good starts and 7 terrible ones....so he gives his team a chance to win about 3 out of every 4 times, pretty good. However, to really gauge the value of a pitcher, you have to look at ALL of the stats. Burnett has been able to escape trouble this year due to his high strikeout total, and I give him big props for winning 16 games with that horrible Blue Jay offense....but I don't think anyone really would consider this a career year for him because of his WIN total!

Ah, Pitch Counts... Perhaps one of the worst things to come of age in modern baseball. Most of the young arms coming into the MLB are already victims of pitch counts from their youth. The overprotection of young arms has prevented their bodies from developing proper "recovery" in their muscles which leads to an inability to suddenly start throwing more innings as they mature. Despite teams trying to bring young arms along at the minor league level and then increasing their innings at the major league level; the inability for their muscles to recovery has already passed the developmental stage which occured during little league / high school years.
Until changes are made at this youth levels, more and more young arms will hit the DL and fewer and fewer pitchers will go past 5-6 innings a game. Chalk it up to our over-protective society.

Then on the other end of things; Pitch Counts fail to take into account the pitch thrown and the situation the pitch was thrown in.

A fastball in a 3-1 count when the hitter knows he is getting a fastball is often thrown with far more stress then a 3-0 fastball where the pitcher has a good idea the hitter is taking the pitch.

A pitcher who has a guy 0-2 and wants to burn a pitch in the dirt certainly doesn't put forth the same stress on that pitch as he will in a 3-2 count.

To put it simply; it is assinine to think each pitch thrown can be measured equally to previous pitches. Anyone who has ever pitched at any level will tell you that you pitch different and exert more or less energy depending on the situation.

Nevetheless, none of it will matter as the evidence will be ovewhelming in a few years that young arms are not getting enough development during the critical muscle development years as kids.

The list of young pitchers from this season who have been injured or experienced fatigue can be directly correlated to when pitch counts / limiting throwing started to creep into little league baseball about 20 years ago.

I'm glad Minaya's job is secure. He's a good GM, not great. If he got fired, the Mets would replace him with Tony Bernazard who would be horrible.

Yeah I don't see Burnett having his best season ever. winning a lot of games is nice. But his WHIP is 1.41 his ERA is over four and a half runs. So besides K's and Wins he is having his worst full season. If you go by his career averages (WHIP, ERA, BAA).

Richard Griffin doesn't exactly write the best articles.

Griffin is an idiot. Burnett has a lot of wins because he pitches late into games and the team scores a bunch of runs to win. Burnett has nothing to do with the offense, which averages over 5 (5.19 RS) runs per game in support of him, which isn't bad at all. (Roy Halladay has 4.63 RS) He also has a fairly solid bullpen behind him. Wins are a team stat, not a metric of how great an pitcher is. You don't have to be a DORK to know that.

"I'm glad Minaya's job is secure. He's a good GM, not great. If he got fired, the Mets would replace him with Tony Bernazard who would be horrible."

Agreed. He is a good GM and an outstanding judge of talent. He is also learning and improving, and hopefully will not make the same mistakes of having too many older guys (although when he came in, these guys gave the team the best chance to win, which he was under pressure to do quickly.). I love Minaya.

And I dont know that Bernazard would be horrible. I think a lot of people say this because he seems like he may be sort of a d-bag, after the Willie Randolhp thing. But he is a pretty good scout, and a nice man does not a good GM make. That said, Omar is my guy and I am glad his job is safe.