Cup of jO's: Paul Richards and Dylan Bundy

This is probably the first Cup of jO's in about five years.  When we first joined ESPN, we had a short post almost every morning chewing on the events of the previous day.  Nothing intense, just a little jaunt.  This morning I am thinking about two things: Paul Richards and Dylan Bundy.

Last night, the Orioles victory lifted Buck Showalter's win total past Paul Richards for him to take second place on the all time Orioles win list.  Strangers, or infrequent visitors, of the site might be unaware of Paul Richards, but basically Richards established the infrastructure of the Baltimore Orioles.  His tenure during the late fifties was not exactly one of on field success, but he created the infrastructure, teaching philosophies, and talent investment that created the dominating Orioles teams of the sixties and seventies.  If you are a casual fan to the history of the Orioles, simply credit Richards with what you had thought Weaver had done.  This is not to diminish what Weaver achieved because it takes a brave soul to have seen Richards wisdom through his failures, but Weaver was a devout follower of Richards.  Anyway, it can be simply said that the Orioles Way was Richards Way.

Here is a batch of writing here at the Depot on Paul Richards that actually includes some notes on Dylan Bundy.

Speaking of Dylan Bundy, he did last night what talent evaluators has dreamed of for years and what Keith Law gave up on this preseason by not even listing Bundy among the club's organizational prospects.  The controversy with Bundy has never been about his talent or stuff (please walk past the cutter discussion).  It has been about his health and how exactly to bring along a pitcher who had put up only 60-some innings of professional ball from 2013 to 2015.

Off the bat, no one is 100% certain about arm injuries and rehabilitation.  It has been a slow slog of medical innovation that is greatly hampered by strong desires to hide any beneficial medical information from competing organizations.  Conventional wisdom borne out of the pitcher death spirals of the early 1900s was that young pitchers need years to build up muscle and bone structures to be able to be workhorses.  The first five man rotations began popping up in the 1950s, became the norm in the 1970s with swingmen, and fully entrenched by the late 1980s.  Bullpen specialization then rose to minimize impact of backend arms as well as to take advantage of specific matchups.

Also borne in the 1940s and 1950s were pitch count limits.  Back then, they sat around 110 and the managers who used them tended to use them solely for pitchers under the age of 25.  After half a century, firm 100 pitch counts were established even though that specific number is generic and somewhat arbitrary.  The problem with pitch counts largely is that it is difficult to know whether a manager or pitching coach is accurately observing when a pitcher becomes tired, so it bluntly takes guesswork out of it.  That largely is what most the arm fixes MLB has implemented: things that over time feel right.

The science, often due to the aforementioned proprietary drive of MLB clubs, is far from certain.  It is fair to say that throwing a whole lot increases risk of arm injury.  It is fair to say that based on studies in other sports that stamina is something that is built incrementally and is not an on/off type of switch.  It is fair to say that other sports have established that switching from a short, daily event to a weekly long event increases injury risk.  However, there is nothing to directly say that about pitching.  And so, does it make sense to take a promising young pitcher with potentially dominating stuff and see whether or not he, individually, can defy the body of literature in other sports, and the strong implicatory information about baseball, and come out of this both unscathed and a high performer?

Back in Spring Training when Buck suggested that maybe Bundy will be starting in the second half, I scoffed.  True, to do this to a non-prospect as Law's writing might suggest would be something worth a shrug, but Bundy has franchise altering potential.  My view was simply have him as a late inning to multi-inning arm this year.  Next year, have him entrenched as a long relief arm with swingman status in the second half.  In 2018, pop him into the starting rotation.  The Orioles skipped my first year suggestion and have ramped up swingman status to full starter.  Again, my judgment was based on an abundance of caution, evidence, and expert opinion.

Is this current path for Bundy the right one?  I do not know.  It worries me because it is trailblazing, but done at such a small scale that it does not inform us much about any other arms in the future.  What is worth more: a dominant 7 inning start or two dominant multi inning relief outings protecting leads?  Right now, the start.  In the future? Well, I do not know, but I feel more comfortable with the latter.

The Arm, The Original Earl Weaver, And Dylan Bundy

Earlier in the day, I discussed Jeff Passan's new book, The Arm: Inside the billion-dollar mystery of the most valuable commodity in sports, and Dylan Bundy's short appearance in the book.  As noted then, the book tries to tackle the acknowledged elephant in the room: how does the industry stop all of these arm injuries.  Things have changed quite a bit over the past 150 years except for the fact that a great number of pitchers crash and burn.

My great great aunt has something in common with 20 year old pitchers in the 1930s.  While she was 75 years old, what she had in common was the same surgical procedure.  Her issue was arthritis and the medical world largely thought that arm injuries in baseball was actually an arthritic condition.  A popular perspective was that arthritis was caused by bad teeth.  The idea was that bad teeth leached poison into the blood stream and that the poison collected in and destroyed joints.  My great great aunt had a lovely set of teeth that she took great pride in as many her age had succumbed to cavities and other maladies.  Her teeth looked perfect, but with arthritis crippling her the doctors suggested pulling out all of her teeth.  It did nothing.  Likewise, many a young phenom whose arm died either in the minors or majors had their teeth removed for what now is obvious as no good reason.

One revolutionary thought about bringing up young pitchers was brought forward by Paul Richards, which is presented in the book, who was named the Orioles manager and general manager prior to the club's second season.  Richards was a product of the Branch Rickey legion of thought.  What became the Oriole Way was the same thing as Dodger Baseball, Cardinal Way, and a half dozen or so other organizational approaches to developing winning baseball teams.  Due to Weaver on Strategy, many erroneously think that the ideas he proclaims in there are his own ideas, but they are almost all Richards.  To some extent, many are also found elsewhere.  In other words, what you knew about the Oriole Way, well, you probably should forget it.

Anyway, the original Earl Weaver, Paul Richards, was actually the one who came up with the idea that rookie pitchers should be brought in slowly.  A rookie pitcher would first be brought into the bullpen to be introduced to the MLB game.  Then easing him into a swing starter role and, finally, into the rotation.  The idea was that by easing a player into the high effort, high leverage game that his arm would adjust, get use to the work load, and then be dependable as a 200+ IP arm year-in and year-out.

As opposed to Weaver, Richards actually did what he preached.  Each year in Chicago, he would stretch out his pitchers in that manner.  Mike Fornieles and Jack Harshman were both examples of that approach.  With the Orioles the framework was used for Milt Pappas, Jerry Walker, and Jack Fisher.  When he moved on to Houston, he continued this practice with Mike Cuellar, Dave Giusti, and Larry Dierker.  While Earl Weaver's team were largely known for picking up veteran retreads like Mike Cuellar.

Now, bringing this back to Dylan Bundy.  Without subscribing to Paul Richards' approach or the ideal that Earl Weaver spoke of but never truly implemented, the Orioles will be taking this route with Dylan Bundy.  Bundy was part of the final draft class that was permitted to sign Major League deals.  It was suggested at the time that by signing a MLB deal that the Orioles saved some money.  The club thought this was not much of a risk because as Bundy was, he was already rather close to being a MLB pitcher right out of high school.  He was not considered much of a risk to run out of options before he was ready to play.  Unfortunately, after his first taste of the Majors in 2012, he then found himself suffering injuries that limited him to 42 innings over three years.

The Orioles, concerned about keeping Bundy healthy and stretching out his stamina, will now ease him in.  Buck mentioned a similar Richards' approach.  Bundy would work relief in the first half and then at some point find himself starting a few times in the second half.  All of this would be done to target 2017 as his time to enter into the Orioles' rotation.

We shall see.

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The Arm: Inside the Billion Dollar Mystery of the Most Valuable Commodity in Sports
by Jeff Passan
368 pp