Mets take risk with arms

The short history of the World Baseball Classic has already provided enough evidence, anecdotal or otherwise, to provide the New York Mets with enough incentive to make an organizational decision to ban future player participation in the event.

The Mets management could reduce the scope of evidence and make their decision based on the news over the last 72 hours.

On Sunday, Mexico manager Vinny Castilla had Met starter Oliver Perez throw 85 pitches in an 8-2 loss to South Korea. It’s a managerial decision motivated by selfishness. With three weeks of preparation Perez, whom the Mets invested $36 million over three years this past winter, risked serious injury.

Monday night, Mets closer Francisco Rodriguez was summoned from the bullpen for the second time in three days by Venezuela manager Luis Sojo to record a four-out save. Time out. The Mets three-year, $37 million “No. 1 priority,” their solution to the back-to-back seasons ending in misery is being used like it’s Game 7 of the World Series … in mid-March!?

According to a report in the New York Post, Met officials were “hot.”

Hot? This should be a full-blown four-alarm fire. The alarms should be sounding, the red flags up at attention. No more. Just look around. Since Saturday, four members of Team USA were out due to injury — Chipper Jones, Dustin Pedroia, Ryan Braun and Matt Lindstrom.

Former Mets manager, now skipper of the United States team, Davey Johnson sorted through the triage and refused to put players in harm’s way for the sake of a tournament, saying he would “forfeit” future games if necessary.

One day after being squeezed into putting catcher Brian McCann in left field, Johnson said: “I’m definitely going to have a list of things to submit to MLB” to avoid injuries … I damn sure wouldn’t want to be lynched or hung up in some city if I put (Kevin) Youkilis behind the dish or something. I would definitely had to gone out and said we had to forfeit this ballgame. Yeah, I’d forfeit it.”

These are not isolated injuries. They are not freak injuries. It’s a result of poor planning and bad timing by Major League Baseball. Initial statistical evidence published by the USA Today suggests players — especially pitchers — aren’t prepared to perform at a high level in March, a level that has been described as “playoff intensity.”

“Pitching coaches and organizations are trying to build our arms in spring training,”Chicago Cubs ace Carlos Zambrano told the USA Today. “By the time the WBC is started, you have to throw four to six innings, and I think that affects you.”

In the published report by the USA Today prior to the opening of the 2009 WBC, reporters Mike Dodd and Scott Boeck wrote:

The average ERA of the WBC pitcher 3.69 in ‘05 to 4.37 in 2006 … Among the 77 pitchers who appeared in the majors in 2005 and played in the WBC, 36% were placed on the disabled list by at some point during the 2006 season … 12 of the 13 pitchers for Team USA in 2005 recorded higher ERAs; eight went up more than a run … Nearly four out of every five pitchers recorded a higher ERA in 2006 than in the previous year … more than one in three spent time on the disabled list in ‘06.

“Do I have an opinion? Boy, the potential for me to get into trouble with the answer to that question is immense,” asked Ken Williams, Chicago White Sox senior vice president/general manager, rhetorically. “They need to be a little bit more careful.

“It’s simply they’re not necessarily ready for the intensity. With greater intensity, it is greater violence in the delivery, which takes you out of sync. … It can have drastic consequences.”

San Diego Padres ace and Team USA starter Jake Peavy was 13-7 with 2.88 ERA in 2005 and 11-14 with a 4.09 ERA who suffered shoulder tendinitis in 2006. “Whether it was related, I don’t know,” he said.

St. Louis Cardinals manager Tony LaRussa said he knows. He “absolutely” believed Ricardo Rincon’s season-ending shoulder injury in 2006 was caused, at least in part, by the stress of put on his arm during his performance in 2005. Former Met Luis Ayala also suffered an elbow injury during the tournament that required season-ending surgery.

The Mets spent a combined $73 million to sign sign Rodriguez and Perez, and traded six players to obtain relievers J.J. Putz and Sean Green, then signed Tim Redding and invited Tom Martin, Casey Fossum, Valerio De Los Santos, Elmer Dessens, Freddy Garcia, Livan Hernandez, Rocky Cherry (placed on waivers), Darren O’Day, Ron Villone, Fernando Nieve, Matt De Salvo, Kyle Snyder, etc. to add more assurance — and insurance — to avoid another September collapse.

But for all that effort, all that money, the two most important names on that list — Rodriguez and Putz — are still exposed to the Classic. Let’s hope it doesn’t backfire and, after the tournament, the Mets are pro-active in making an organizational decision not to putting players at risk in the future.