Humber

[greg775]

I sense the general feeling is Humber hasn't been very good of late and I've read a lot of comments indicating he's spent, or out of gas.

 

To the pitching experts, maybe ptatc ... is this natural? What are the technical reasons for his being spent at this time?

 

Can we expect his arm to be all strong next season at this same juncture? Or will he be spent after the all-star break again?

 

I'm just wondering why his reaching a certain amount of innings is suddenly the reason for his being not as effective as the first half.

 

If we are to assume his arm is fatigued because he's pitched more innings than ever before ... my question is, when can we expect him to be able to pitch into August, September, October effectively? Would that be next year? Never? I truly would love to be enlightened on arm strength.

[lostfan]

The only way to build arm strength and endurance for a whole season is to pitch... not so much were you want to risk getting hurt, but you have to build up to it. That's a problem Peavy faces too, where he has trouble making it through a game sometimes. Humber's never thrown for more than ~140 innings when you count the majors and minors (definitely not the majors, he was never good enough until this year). So you kind of want to be careful with him for now, not let him get too worn down, but you can't baby him either, he has to pitch or he's never going to build that endurance. If he makes it to about 170 innings this year, he should be good for probably all of next season. The last young guy on the Sox to make that leap that I can think of off the top of my head was Danks, and I thought I remembered a rough patch for him in about August but of course he ended up being nails in game 163.

 

(not a professional opinion or anything, just me gleaning what I think I know)

[cabiness42]

I can't speak to how tired Humber might be, but his mid-season numbers suggested that he was going to regress a bit. He was getting Buehrle-esque results in having a low hit rate despite not striking out a lot (or a really low BABIP for those of you that speak stathead), without the history to suggest that he could sustain it like Buehrle.

 

I still think he's an above-average #5 starter, though for the immediate future that may not be good enough for a team that is 4 games down on the Tigers and has 4-5 automatic outs in its lineup.

[southsider2k5]

I sense the general feeling is Humber hasn't been very good of late and I've read a lot of comments indicating he's spent, or out of gas.

 

To the pitching experts, maybe ptatc ... is this natural? What are the technical reasons for his being spent at this time?

 

Can we expect his arm to be all strong next season at this same juncture? Or will he be spent after the all-star break again?

 

I'm just wondering why his reaching a certain amount of innings is suddenly the reason for his being not as effective as the first half.

 

If we are to assume his arm is fatigued because he's pitched more innings than ever before ... my question is, when can we expect him to be able to pitch into August, September, October effectively? Would that be next year? Never? I truly would love to be enlightened on arm strength.

 

The rule of thumb is your are supposed to be able to build about 30 IP per season with out having a much larger risk of regression and/or injury. It looks like his career high is about 148 innings combined between ML and minors in 2008, but he has been right around that mark pretty much every year (2007-146, 2008-148, 2009-128, 2010-140.1, 2011-130). The difference is that this year all of his innings have been in the majors, versus the vast majority of other years being in the minors. I wouldn't be surprise if he is feeling like he is hitting the wall earlier because of the high stress innings at the major league level. Keeping him in the 6IP range for the rest of the season probably puts him in the 170 IP range for the year, which sets him up nicely for 2012.

[greg775]

Interesting replies.

[ptatc]

I sense the general feeling is Humber hasn't been very good of late and I've read a lot of comments indicating he's spent, or out of gas.

 

To the pitching experts, maybe ptatc ... is this natural? What are the technical reasons for his being spent at this time?

 

Can we expect his arm to be all strong next season at this same juncture? Or will he be spent after the all-star break again?

 

I'm just wondering why his reaching a certain amount of innings is suddenly the reason for his being not as effective as the first half.

 

If we are to assume his arm is fatigued because he's pitched more innings than ever before ... my question is, when can we expect him to be able to pitch into August, September, October effectively? Would that be next year? Never? I truly would love to be enlightened on arm strength.

Pretty much what the other replies says is accurrate. Pitching is like any other physical activity, you need to train to do it efficiently and have increased endurance. Compare it to running. You can't train at a 5K distance and expect to finish a marathon without struggling with form and cause tissue breakdown with injury. You need to slowly build up. You can do cross training like bike riding to help some but it won't get you in the best form possible.

 

Humber could continue to pitch regularly but it will add extra stress on his arm and cause him to be inconsistent with his form. This generally doesn't turn out well.He needs either more rest or going to the pen to decrease the amount of work.

 

Peavy is the same but different story. He needs to throw to build strength to go deeper in games. His decrease in performance after 75-80 pitches has been discussed but the solution isn't as straight forward due to the unique injury. He needs to throw to build strength so you don't want to limit his pitches. However, no one knows how long or if the strength will return to do this. This has been the X factor with him all along. Everyone knew he would throw again and he did it in a reasonale time table. What non one knew and still doesn't know is how long it will take for the lat strength and subsequent shoulder motion to return. Most professional athletes say that it takes 18 months after major surgery to feel "near normal" again. They return usually around 9-12 months after but need to re-acclimate the body to sports again. The only way to do this is to participate in the sport but it can be a frustrating process with performance

[oldsox]

Last year, Justin Hammel of Rockies had a 'tired arm'. He was useless for last 30 days or so of 2010. This year his arm is still strong. Not the best pitcher in the world, but his arm is still strong. Most likely, he built up his endurance through pitching a lot of innings.