Armed and Dangerous
How hyper-specialized positions, like pitching in baseball, have changed the way we play — and follow — sports
THROUGHOUT THE SPRING AND INTO THE SUMMER — AS THE BLUE Jays scrabbled to reach the heights of last season, with some batters regressing while others soared, every bullpen appearance making fans quake in terror — the most pressing question felt weirdly paradoxical. Was Aaron Sanchez pitching too well? The 23-year-old pitcher had come into the season with 15 pounds of extra muscle, a sinker that made major leaguers look silly, and a tentative plan for the season. Sanchez had never thrown more than 133 professional innings. Bumping him up to the 200 or more a full-time starter would log could be taxing, and the Jays weren’t willing to risk their young right-hander. They would try him out as a starter, then move him back to his role as a set-up man to limit his innings.
Then the season began and well-laid plans met reality. Sanchez quickly emerged as one of the league’s best starters. He made the all-star game, showed no signs of tiring, and suddenly the idea of benching such a vital player began to seem absurd.
Fans and pundits jumped into the debate. The Toronto Star’s reliably regressive Rosie Dimanno railed against the “quantum analytics geeks” and the way that modern baseball teams baby their pitchers, denying them opportunities to log the long innings that might “stiffen their pitching spine.” Online, fans were outraged that a stubborn, overly cautious organization might threaten the season because of some seemingly arbitrary number.
Arguments about inning limits are a quagmire — the place where reason and logic go to die in a bog of conflicting studies and bewildering pseudoscience. The fight around Sanchez was a microcosm of the conversation happening everywhere in the league. In 2016, it’s become clear that a major league pitcher is an accident waiting to happen. And the simple truth is that no one — not Moneyball-savvy GMS, not doctors, and certainly not newspaper pundits — has any idea what to do about it.
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WHEN IT WORKS, PITCHING A BASEBALL is a kind of miracle — the fastest movement the body can produce, 30 times faster than a blink. Every pitch is a kinetic explosion that begins with a simple step toward the plate and then transfers energy up through the legs, the pelvis, the