MAILBAG Tom Verducci will answer select questions from SI.com users in his Baseball Mailbag. Your name: Your e-mail address: Your home town: Enter your question:

You stated in a recent article that Mark Prior and Kerry Wood have been having so many problems because they were overworked when they first came up. There is no evidence to support this and the Japanese have clearly shown us that pitching a lot doesn't equate to injury problems. Isn't that a little careless to say about Prior and Wood when you have no proof?
-- Joe P., Las Vegas

No proof? Just check out the times Prior was allowed to exceed 130 pitches at the end of the 2003 season, when he was already beyond his pro high in innings. You can't pitch a lot if you haven't been trained to pitch a lot. But let me emphasize that pitch counts and innings are only part of the equation. Both Wood and Prior (despite talk in the past about his great delivery) never had great mechanics. A veteran baseball person told me years ago he recommended against drafting Prior because he was a breakdown waiting to happen -- that opinion was against the grain at the time. Wood always threw across his body with tremendous torque on that breaking ball. Some of it is just plain DNA, too. It's the rare pitcher who doesn't break down.

Can you please explain to me why we are so afraid to "overthrow" young arms nowadays but in the '50s to early '80s you never heard of such a thing and pitchers seemed to be injured LESS than they are now? It seems that in the medicine age we currently find ourselves in, this trend should be reversed.
-- Rick, Mount Kisco, N.Y.

It is counterintuitive that pitchers work less when we have all these advances to better condition them. The two biggest reasons are 1) an inning now is much tougher to get through than an inning in the 1950s (hitters are far superior) and 2) clubs have universally adopted a cover-your-butt mentality as the sport has become so well-covered by the media. They know they can't be accused of "ruining" a pitcher by underusing them, so they always lean toward the conservative side. This is true throughout the sport. It's amazing to me that 30 clubs and 30 managers pretty much operate similarly. I mean, where are your mavericks?

Do you think MLB teams would invest money in hometown baseball academies, as you suggested in last week's mailbag? It makes more sense for them to develop kids outside of the U.S. and then sign them to a minor league contract if they develop. Any kid they develop in the U.S. has to at least go through the draft process. So there is no guarantee they get to keep the kids they develop.
-- Kevin Boetcher, Kansas City, Mo.

You're right, and no, I don't expect it to happen. I would LIKE it to happen because I think it's an investment in the overall good of the game, but I realize purely from a club-by-club business approach they will get a bigger bang for their buck in the international investment. Anything domestically would have to be done out of the MLB Central Fund.

Is Josh Hamilton's story not just another example of athletes getting about a million more chances than anyone else in life? Come on, if I was addicted to drugs for four years, I doubt whatever organization I worked for would stick with me. One failed test where I work and your fired. But if you're an athlete, we'll give you five years to clean up and then talk about how courageous you are.
-- Myles, Charlotte, N.C.

Can't argue with you, though I think the same would hold true in arts and entertainment. The bottom line is that Josh Hamilton has a skill set that is rare in the world, just like a painter, a singer, an actor, etc. Only a small percentage of people can actually do what he does at the world class level. So of course such people are going to be afforded more chances than people who are more easily replaced.