About what a disaster Dusty Baker was. The 2003 NLCS was like a junk food high. Overall, he was bad for this entire franchise.

Prior however, is just not physically capable of being a major league pitcher.

I’ll blame Dusty for psychologically damaging Prior to the point where he refused to pitch if he didn’t feel perfect, but I think Prior would have fell apart with a 100-pitch limit too.

And it’s nine starts that definitively ruined his career?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Correlation_does_not_imply_causation

Sorry, I just had to say that….. Thankfully, I think I’m finally ready to let it go……I’m so thankful for the old codger that we have now.

This has been endless debate for several years. Let it go. I firmly am of the belief that Dusty did little to abuse his starting pitchers. On the margin it can perhaps be argued that going to the whip hard on Prior was not wise. But the medical professionals were baffled for years what if anything was wrong with Prior’s arm. What it boils down to is that Prior was predisposed to flame out quickly, for a combination of factors to likely include his mechanics, physical DNA and makeup, and commitment to craft.

Kerry Wood? Well Wood was a china doll ever since his return in 2000. He was never remotely the same pitcher coming off of major surgery in 1999. His durability was never good, nor was the consistency of his performance on the mound. Laying blame on the doorstep of Dusty for the woes of Kerry Wood is wrong.

We as Cub fans were naive and gullible with both these pitchers. We let ourselves believe that Kerry Wood was going to be the next Roger Clemens or Nolan Ryan after his 1998 season. Then we let ourselves believe that Mark Prior was going to be the next Tom Seaver after his 2003 season. Meanwhile Carlos Zambrano was a near-after thought among Cub fans at the time but has gone on to be one of the best starting pitchers in baseball.

We have to acknowledge that times have changed in society, affecting baseball.

It IS true that the 1970s were a golden era for durable arms. Ryan, Carlton, Seaver, Blyleven, and Gibson among others, all had high pitch counts and remained healthy.

It is also true that the number of pitches per game hasn’t changed all that much. It’s still roughly 145-150. It’s just now you almost always have at least two and more often 4-6 pitchers making those pitches.

But life has changed, both in baseball and the real world. Here’s how:

Yes, there are still 150 pitches per game, but those first 85 pitches are arguably much tougher than they used to be. The DH removed the easy out. Smaller ballparks and strike zones meant pitches had to be much more precise. Steroids turned pop flies into home runs.

Nolan Ryan and Bob Gibson had the freedom to throw balls under the chin as well, opening up the outside corner, which the ump was far more likely to give them. That’s gone.

But even more, society has changed.

• Kids are instructed more thoroughly than ever before. Nolan Ryan and his ilk would play baseball from sunup to sundown and threw god knows how many pitches. Now, 8 year olds are on pitch counts.
• The best arms don’t always play baseball now. The kid with the strongest arm in school is now just as likely to be a quarterback.
• Pitch counts are now being tracked. And stop whining about it. Teams never used to track OPS either.

Simply put, today’s 17-year-olds, the ones scouts are watching, aren’t ready to throw 150 pitches. They haven’t been prepared for it. It’s not their fault, really.

And instead of whining about it and blathering on about the old days, managers should get with the fricking program and adjust to the tools they have.

So yes, it’s Baker’s fault. It’s every manager’s fault.

Nolan Ryan ain’t walking through that door. The old days are over.

I’m not going to defend Dusty Baker, but fact is he has been a big league manager for 15 years plus now. He had less than inspiring rosters in San Francisco, yet for the majority of his 10 years with the Giants his teams were solid ballclubs that contended. Dusty also did something in 2003 with the Cubs that nobody has been able to do in years, and that is to get the Cubs to the National League Championship Series. Now Dusty presides over an emerging Cincinnati ballclub that is bursting with good young talent.

Walt Jocketty is one of the most respected GMs in baseball. It speaks volumes that Jocketty has stuck with Dusty in Cincinnati even though his predessor Wayne Krivsky hired him. I dont’ see Jocketty lamenting about Dusty ruining bright young arms in Johnny Cueto, Edwin Volsquez or Homer Bailey. I also see that Dusty is committed to playing young talents in Joey Votto and Jay Bruce, among others.

Dusty got two bum raps in Chicago.

1. He was unwilling to play the kids. To that, I say horseshit. Fact is the youngsters supplied him by the Cub farm system were crap and Dusty was smart enough to know it. Just like Sweet Lou has been smart enough to smell out crap.

2. He ruined Mark Prior and Kerry Wood. Again, to that I say horseshit. Wood was never the same after 1998 and will go down in the annals of baseball as one of the most enigmatic pitchers of all time. Prior was and is a medical mystery with bad mechanics and where you seriously have to question his commitment to craft.

but a year or so ago, Rick Peterson, who does work with one of those sports health institutes that focuses on pitching, mentioned in an article, which I’ll try and dig up, that when he looked at Prior coming out of college, he saw a pitcher whose mechanics were a mess and would lead to injuries throughout his career.

Ah … it was actually last summer in this Verducci article. It also noted the Bobby Brownlie situation.

Mark Prior is a classic example of a high-performing pitcher who was permitted to break down because of poor mechanics. Ironically, Prior was often hailed for his “flawless” mechanics when the Cubs drafted the righthander out of USC with the No. 2 pick in 2001, though that assessment seems to have been influenced by scouts’ preference for his 6’ 5", 225-pound body type. Studied closely, his mechanics included two severe red flags: 1) Prior lifted his throwing elbow higher than his shoulder before reaching the loaded position, increasing the stress on his elbow and shoulder; and 2) unlike Lincecum’s dynamic late torso rotation, Prior rotated his hips and torso before getting to the loaded position. With the letters of Prior’s jersey already facing the target, his arm could not simply “go along for the ride” — the ride was over, so his arm had to generate all of its own power.

Prior went 41-23 over his first four seasons in the big leagues. During that time, in 2003, when Prior was on his way to a career-high 18 wins, Peterson gave a presentation to the Oakland scouting department about “certain red flags in a delivery that we can’t do much about” as the A’s prepared for the draft. The idea was to avoid sinking large signing bonuses into players with a high potential to break down. (Late picks, because of their lower cost, don’t carry the same concern.)

One of Oakland’s scouts, responding to Peterson’s red-flag warnings, said, “Hey, that’s what Prior does. Are you saying that we shouldn’t draft a player like that?”

Replied Peterson, “No, not exactly. He’s one of the best pitchers in the league right now, but what I am saying is, If he doesn’t have maximum [shoulder] rotation, it will lead to injury. It’s like slamming the brakes over and over. The brake pads are going to wear out until it’s metal on metal.”

Prior has suffered a series of shoulder injuries that have limited him to one win and nine starts in the three seasons since. Still only 27, he is out for the season — again — after surgery to repair a tear in his right shoulder. “Prior is almost all upper body,” Chris Lincecum says. “You could cut his legs off and he would throw just as hard. I don’t like to put my finger on players, but I’ve been doing this a long time. I’ve said, ’He’s going to blow his elbow out’ or ‘His back will go out.’ Sure enough, it happens, including Dice-K [Daisuke Matsuzaka], Jake Peavy, Prior. . . . I have a hard time enjoying the game. I’m sitting there criticizing the pitcher. It hurts to watch pitchers. Seventy percent of the pros have poor mechanics.”

Bobby Brownlie was supposed to be Tim Lincecum. A 6-foot righthander from Rutgers who hit 97 mph on the gun, Brownlie was regarded as one of the top pitchers in the 2002 draft. Peterson was working as the A’s pitching coach at the time. Just before the draft, Oakland G.M. Billy Beane gave Peterson videotapes of some 20 pitchers the A’s were considering as draft picks and told him to break down each pitcher not by stuff and performance but by the biomechanics of their deliveries.

The previous winter Peterson had met Brownlie at a banquet and told him, “Hey, I hear you’re great. Congratulations, I hear you’re going to be a [first round] pick.” But when he watched Brownlie on the tape Beane had given him, Peterson says, "I’m literally sick to my stomach. I’m going, ‘This is so sad.’ "

A few days later, when Beane asked Peterson what he thought of Brownlie, the pitching coach replied, “He has certain characteristics in his delivery that will lead to shoulder problems.”

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i cringe whenever lou lets zambrano throw a 120 pitches.you need to really baby these guys.in the 70,s you had guys like jenkins and gibson and lolich throwing 200 to 300 innings.and they were never hurt.how things have changed.