Is Dusty Baker to Blame for Edinson Volquez's Arm Problems?

When it was announced Monday that Edinson Volquez had Tommy John surgery, my immediate gut reaction was: "Everyone will blame Dusty Baker for this." Of all of the managers in baseball, Baker is the most notorious destroyer of young arms after his stint in Chicago dramatically altered the careers of Mark Prior and Kerry Wood.

With another promising young starter getting ligament replacement surgery under his watch, the easy assumption is that this is just another notch on Dusty's belt. The easy assumption isn't always the right one, though, and immediately blaming him didn't quite sit right with me.

I remember watching how he handled both Volquez and Johnny Cueto last August and September and nothing jumped out at me as out of the ordinary or abusive. So is it Dusty's fault that Volquez will miss the rest of 2009 and most of 2010?

Volquez threw 196 innings with the Reds last year. That's a pretty hefty total for a 24-year-old pitcher, but in 2007 between Texas and three minor-league stops, he tossed 178 2/3 innings. That puts him well inside the short-hand "Verducci Rule," named for Tom Verducci's theory that increasing young pitcher's inning total by more than 30 from one year to the next dramatically increases their risk for injury. If anyone's to blame for ramping up Volquez's workload too quickly, it's the Rangers. Before throwing 178 2/3 innings in 2007, he threw 120 2/3 in 2006.

Volquez's 17 1/3 inning increase from 2007 to 2008 pales in comparison to the increase Mark Prior saw between 2002 and 2003; Prior threw 135 innings (in the minors and in Chicago) in 2002 before jumping to 235 innings between the regular season and the playoffs in 2003, the last season of his career that he was effective. Really, the Reds did a decent job reining in Volquez's inning count last year.

Of course, inning counts are only one quick way to track pitcher abuse. Keeping an eye on pitch count is also important. In Prior's fateful 2003 season, he crossed the 120-pitch threshold nine times in the regular season, exceeding 130 pitches in three of those starts. Even worse, he threw 123 and 124 pitches in consecutive starts in late May/early June, then closed the season with back-to-back 130-plus pitch outings. After a 97-pitch outing on May 1, he threw fewer than 100 pitches twice in his final 24 starts. Then, following that abuse in the regular season, he threw a 133-pitch complete game (his third straight game at 130-plus) in the NLDS and followed that up with 116- and 119-pitch outings in the NLCS.

That sort of abuse placed on a 22-year-old arm is, in a word, negligent.

All in all, Prior threw 3,767 pitches over 33 starts in 2003. That's an average of roughly 114 pitches per start or about 16 pitches per inning. Volquez only crossed the 120-pitch barrier once last year (he hit 121 on Sept. 13) and in fact, I think Baker probably avoided crossing that barrier like the plague after all of the criticism he took for the way he handled Prior and Wood. In Volquez's 32 starts (he also made a relief appearance in an 18-inning game in May), he threw 3,340 pitches in 194 2/3 innings. That's about 104 pitches per start, but 17.2 pitches per inning.

It seems pretty apparent from the numbers that either Baker learned from his mistakes in Chicago, or someone in the front office forced him to keep Volquez's pitch count low. The problem is that each pitcher is a little different and each arm has different thresholds after which it can break down. Seventeen pitches per inning is a lot for any pitcher. The average that Baker held Volquez to, 104 pitches per start, seems reasonable at first glance, but Volquez only averaged about six innings per start, which gives that number a little more perspective .

If it sounds like I'm blaming Baker for that, I'm not. I doubt there are many managers in the league that monitor pitches per inning over more than one start closely, especially with the way that Volquez was throwing last year. It's pretty faint praise to say that Baker didn't abuse Volquez the way he abused Prior, but besides a run of five straight 110-plus-pitch outings in August and September (including that 121-pitch outing) he actually did a pretty decent job handing his young ace.

Given the way Texas jumped his innings two years ago, it's hard to pin this surgery on Dusty. Hopefully, Volquez's arm troubles will end with this surgery and he'll be able to make the recovery Prior never could.