Romero pitching too much = more injuries

[anotherhomer]

I heard from before, there's a correlation between pitchers who pitch too many innings early on in their career and being plagued by injuries down the line.

http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/players/s ... erId=30025

Ricky Romero pitched 177 innings last year in the major leagues not counting the innings he pitched in the minor league while in rehab. This year he's on pace for 225 innings.

Usually, rookie pitchers have a limit of 150 innings or so. Given how much he pitched already, wouldn't this be a concern for blown elbows and tommy-john surgerry down the line?

[Modern_epic]

Maybe, but probably not.

A pitcher's assumed limit is based on IP in previous years, not how far they are in to their major league career. Romero isn't really a big concern because he was in the minors for a while, so he has been slowly ramped up to this level. Last year was only about 30 more than the year before, which people consider to be the high end of acceptable. Including the minors (though I should point out counting rehab assignments to the limit is debated), he pitched around 190 innings last year. So 225 would be on the high end of acceptable again.

He is also 25, which some people hold to be the age where you can throw these rules out. And I recall seeing a study saying that the relationship of these things was pretty weak. So all in all, I'm not too worried about it.

[jalenrose#5]

epic brings up a good point...Romero is in his sophmore season at the age of 25...he's not a 21 year old anymore. He's went through the cap on innings all throughout his minor league career and to start out the rookie year last year.

Marcum is on pace for just about the same innings and he's coming off of Tommy John..that's the one I'd be more worried about personally.

[Michael Bradley]

In the four seasons leading up to this one, Romero threw 125.2, 93 (injured IIRC), 164.1, and 192.1 innings. Other than that one dip in innings due to injury, he has had a fairly typical innings increase from year to year.

Could Romero get injured? Sure. All pitchers are injury risks. However his innings this season even if it tops 200 should not be a problem. Now if Brandon Morrow were on pace for 225 innings, then yes, I'd say an injury is far more likely. In this case, Romero is probably ready for it. Let's just hope he stays healthy.

[OldNo7]

Ricky had limited mileage on his arm prior to finally making it to the bigs. He was "late" making it to the major leagues and pitching big innings. I dont think its a concern with him at this point unless he ends up throwing 125 pitches a night.

[Randle McMurphy]

All pitchers are injury risks no matter how many innings they pitch. I wouldn't worry about it.

[ItsDanger]

You could say this about all pitchers. In fact, pitchers today throw less and less as each yr goes by. He seemed to run out of gas late last season though. Id be more concerned over Cecil who hasnt built the stamina yet.