Rookie's success puts Red Sox brass in tough spot

The Red Sox weren't going to allow Clay Buchholz to go much further than 120 pitches on Saturday -- even if a no-hitter was at stake. AP

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The evolution of pitching -- or devolution, depending on your point of view and, likely, your age -- took a place in the spotlight last Saturday night as Clay Buchholz became not only a folk hero in Boston but also a premier example of how pitchers are developed in this cautionary age. Without ever having seen the eighth inning before in his life, and without ever throwing more than 98 pitches in a game, Buchholz, 23, was given the ball in the pennant race. And he did not want to give it back --which, as odd as it may sound, worried Red Sox brass.

And so modern pitching has come down to this: The manager actually calling the general manager twice, once after the seventh inning and once after the eighth, about when to take out his starting pitcher. The problem: Exactly how many pitches should young Clay throw? The general manager, Theo Epstein, decided that Buchholz would not pitch to another batter once his pitch count hit 120. One hundred twenty has become the one-size-fits-all egg timer for today's pitchers. Conventional wisdom around baseball, not just in Boston, holds that 120 is the upper end of the safe zone.

"I swear that's the right thing to do," Epstein said afterward. "The kid's career is bigger than any single-game accomplishment."

Buchholz, to the relief of manager Terry Francona, who didn't want to take him out, and Epstein, no-hit the Baltimore Orioles with 115 pitches. And his stuff was better in the ninth inning (he hit 93 mph on the gun and broke off a particularly nasty hook to end it) than it was all night. One hundred fifteen was fine. After five more pitches? No can do.

"Did he look like he was tired, laboring?" asked one veteran pitching coach when told the Red Sox would have hooked Buchholz at 120 pitches. "That's what you should base the decision on. Are you telling me once he gets to 120 pitches he's in danger? Why? And is it the same for every pitcher? What we're doing in this game is turning out a generation of five- and six-inning pitchers, and it's only going to get worse."

Once there was a day -- July 3, 1992, to be exact -- when a manager (Tommy Lasorda) gave the ball to a 21-year-old rookie (Pedro Astacio) for his first major-league start, said, "Go get 'em," and let him throw 144 pitches -- for a team hopelessly out of the race, mind you.

And there was a time (Aug. 11, 1991) when, just like Buchholz, a rookie (Wilson Alvarez) threw a no-hitter in his second major-league game, but nobody said boo about the kid needing to throw 128 pitches to do it.

And what about the year (1995) when the Mets and their old school manager (Dallas Green) allowed a potential impact pitcher (Bill Pulsipher) to throw 129 and 122 pitches in his first two starts, even though the games were blowout losses for a team going nowhere?

Were those days better? Given the leaps that baseball has made in understanding how the body works and how to smartly collect and analyze data, you would think that these are the better days. But we don't know for sure. Maybe Buchholz, rail-thin with slightly flawed mechanics, will break down anyway. Likewise, maybe the Joba Rules are no measure against whatever structural predisposition may be associated with the shoulder of Yankees right-hander Joba Chamberlain. Teams can only do the best they can to protect the young pitchers, which now means being as cautious as one can be.

There is no doubting the current trend: A great generation of young pitchers is asserting itself, coincidentally timed with the Testing Era that has followed the Steroid Era. Indeed, Sept. 1 was a symbolic day for Generation Next. Fourteen of the 15 winning pitchers that day were 29 or younger: Buchholz, Ian Kennedy, 22, Mike Pelfrey, 23, Endison Volquez, 24, Justin Verlander, 24, Edgar Gonzalez, 24, Dustin McGowan, 25, Joel Hanrahan, 25, Jake Peavy, 26, Adam Wainwright, 26, Dave Bush, 27, Carlos Silva, 28, Byung-Hyun Kim, 28, and Jason Marquis, 29.

Most of them were groomed with care afforded Ming vases. The Yankees' Phil Hughes, for instance, was in the big leagues without ever throwing 90 pitches in a professional game.

The irony for Boston, which has as conservative a pitching culture as any organization, is that it "pushed" Buchholz further than any young pitcher in recent years. In the past five seasons only two pitchers have been allowed to throw as many as 115 pitches in either of their first two starts: Buchholz and Ervin Santana of the Angels (May 23, 2005). In the five seasons before that, 15 pitchers threw 115 pitches or more in their first or second starts. And the last one to hit that 120-pitch mark in either of his first two games was Oliver Perez with the 2002 Padres.

Buchholz has a chance to be something special. He throws a wicked 12-to-six curveball and a covert changeup that is so good that Hall of Famer Jim Palmer said on Sunday, "It's like a right-handed version of [Johan] Santana's changeup." His fastball is a third "plus" pitch, though the same mechanics that allow him to get such great movement on his off-speed pitches -- he leans leftward, opening his front shoulder slightly -- sometimes causes him to lose command of his fastball. He will be a fixture in the Boston rotation next year, likely replacing Curt Schilling. He's that good.

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