Guardians starters to be limited a few more turns
CLEVELAND — The regular season is already more than a week old, but it’ll still be a while before many starting pitchers are up to speed.
That has left the Cleveland Guardians, like the other 29 clubs, balancing the goal of winning on a daily basis with being responsible regarding their pitchers’ health.
It’s a delicate line that manager Terry Francona, who has often said a team can’t only do what is right by the players when it’s convenient for the club, doesn’t want to cross.
The lockout led to a shortened spring training that didn’t give many pitchers enough time to prepare for their full workloads. Guardians starters were able to throw about 70 pitches in their first starts of the season.
“Normally they have, what, six weeks of buildup in spring training and then it usually takes three or four starts in the season where you start to feel [comfortable],” Francona said. “That’s probably a number of starts away. I think we’ve built them up a bit quicker, but right is right and wrong is wrong still, regardless of the length of time we had at spring training.
“Zach [Plesac], I thought he was getting tired, but we wanted to kind of push him a little further just so we can start to extend him a little bit.”
In his second start, Plesac threw 81 pitches in Friday night’s 4-1 loss to the San Francisco Giants. Cal Quantrill pushed it to 91 pitches in a 4-2 loss Saturday.
Quantrill entered Saturday’s outing thinking he’d be closer to a normal pitch count. He spoke last year of a mindset that seemed to work as he transitioned from the bullpen to the rotation: maintain the same aggressiveness, even if it means he wouldn’t pitch as deep into games as he maybe otherwise would have. It worked, as he put together the best second half of any American League starting pitcher.
That mindset has been carried over to 2022 as he slowly gets closer to a normal workload.
“To me it’s only 100 percent,” Quantrill said. “Length, pitches, that’s all part of the coaches’ decision. That just makes it easier for me. I don’t think about it.”