I thought it was strange that he didn’t play in the Olympics; now we know why.

I don’t see any reason why pitching in the majors would be harder on a young pitcher’s arm than pitching in Tacoma. Unless he’s getting used more, which wasn’t the case with Blackley.

Really, there is no simple answer. If you want to assign blame, you should focus on the medical guys, and the lower level pitching coaches.

But really, I think that Adam hit the nail on the head: high-school pitchers just get hurt a lot, and the M’s have drafted a lot of them. They obviously need to try to identify injuries before they get bad, or perhaps look at guys when they struggle. Soriano, Guardado, and Blackley all pitched really badly for a while before they were diagnosed with problems. Perhaps the M’s should be more anal about checking guys out when they struggle.

But really, most of the guys that are getting hurt are not going down in Seattle, and of the guys that have, only Pinero’s injury is probably liked to high pitch counts (and even this was not blatant).

It sucks that this happened. But it does happen. Hopefully Blackley’s injury will be less severe than they thought. And hopefully this will be a warning call for the M’s to keep a closer eye on young pitchers. But firing Price is probably not the answer. Unless they can bring in a very good replacement (Leo Mazzonne or Peterson from the Met’s).

He only faced nineteen batters, and struck out the side in order in his fifth and last inning, so I’m guessing that his assignment was just to go five, give himself a chance for the W, and get a good night’s sleep. (Or at least that had BETTER be what it was; if he had to be pulled due to a shoulder injury, I think I’m going to run off and become an Oakland A’s fan.)

As for the weather hypothesis, since Soriano’s injury happened in Arizona, that can’t be the sole cause…still, you wonder why some teams seem to avoid these injuries entirely. Another factor might be the M’s drafting philosophy: they have drafted a lot of high-school pitchers over the last few years, and I thought part of the reason the “Moneyball” guys recommended avoiding HS pitchers is because they had a much higher risk of major arm injuries. Maybe this just reflects that correlation?

Young arms is one aspect one can blame, however, I also believe that Mickey Mantle/Babe Ruth/Legion teams, as well has high school teams, play a role in abusing young arms. Because of aluminum bats, more and more pitchers throw breaking pitches at a young age, increasing the risk of injury at later ages.

Those are my two thoughts, YMMV.