Seattle Learns a Lesson From Prior's Misfortune

On Wednesday, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer ran a remarkably illuminating bit of news. In reporting on the decision to push back 21-year-old Mariners ace Felix Hernandez's return to the field after a stint on the disabled list brought on by a strained forearm, John Hickey quoted the pitcher as saying, "I'm not disappointed. If I can't pitch until Tuesday, then I can't ... I'm not ready." Hernandez's return had been scheduled to take place Friday night in the Bronx.

Hernandez may not have been disappointed, but the rest of the baseball world was. Anyone who saw his nationally televised start against Boston last month, in which he carried a no-hitter into the eighth inning, knows that given his health, Hernandez is ready to establish himself as one of the game's foremost stars. His gifts are not unlike Jose Reyes's — transcendent, nearly limitless assets to the game itself, as well as to his team. One has to rue not only the lost opportunity to see him test himself against the Yankees' collection of great hitters, but any news that he doesn't feel perfectly healthy.

To return to that news item, though, it's important to note both what Hernandez didn't say, and what he did. He didn't express regret that he would be unable to stare down Alex Rodriguez and Derek Jeter in the House That Ruth Built; he didn't claim that it took the physical intervention of an army of trainers to hold him back from the mound, and he didn't insist that he felt fine. He said he wasn't ready to pitch, and seemed to consider it obvious that he shouldn't be pitching if he doesn't feel that he's ready to do so. Neither he nor Seattle's manager, Mike Hargrove, paid any notable deference to the idea that he ought to suck it up and take the mound like a real man.

Without wanting to put too much weight on it, this seems to me a moment worth savoring. In the last few years, baseball has made remarkable advances in the degree of caution with which young pitchers are treated. In 1989, for instance, manager Dallas Green had a 23-year-old Al Leiter throw 163 pitches on a cold, rainy night in April, which almost cost Leiter his career — and may well have cost him a shot at the Hall of Fame — since it took him about six years to recover. That sort of thing would never happen today. Still, while changing the way teams use young pitchers is the most important factor, avoiding that kind of inane mistake is just one part of keeping pitchers healthy. Nearly equally important is changing the culture of baseball, something far more difficult to achieve. A wellinformed general manager can simply order his manager not to allow his 22-year-old phenom to throw pitches while laboring under the effects of fatigue, after all, but changing the mindset that makes a manager even think that's a good idea in the first place, or that makes the phenom think it's his duty to the team, is trickier.

That mindset has effects in the real world. In Chicago, for instance, this way of thinking nearly ruined the career of Mark Prior, and he serves as a brutal testament to its effects. Prior was worked like a dray horse in 2003, sparking a downward spiral of injuries that culminated last month in surgery to repair a torn-up shoulder. It seems Prior had been trying to pitch through the kind of injuries that would have prevented a entirely healthy person from even trying to comb their hair for years, all the while dealing with whispers and innuendos — some coming from his own team — that he was soft, weak, and insufficiently committed to winning. Would a different baseball culture have made manager Dusty Baker use Prior more conservatively, or helped Prior and the Cubs decide at some point to end the endless cycle of half-hearted attempts at rehabilitating injuries that needed to be fixed once and for all? Perhaps, and perhaps not — but it certainly wouldn't have hurt.

In light of the experiences of Prior, his teammate Kerry Wood, Leiter, the Mets' once-vaunted Generation K, and all the other pitchers who were either handled badly or ruined their arms trying to pitch through injuries because that's just what you're supposed to do, Hernandez's simple admission that he doesn't want to pitch until he's healthy looks a lot like progress. The Mariners deserve praise for promoting a climate in which a young pitcher can be entirely forthcoming about how he feels without inspiring a whisper campaign against him, and baseball as a whole deserves praise for the advances it's made in the past five years. There is no magical way to keep pitchers healthy, and for all anyone knows Hernandez may end up no better off than Prior, but at the least, if he gets hurt it's not going to be because of blatant bad practices on the part of his managers. It's not something to take at all for granted.

tmarchman@nysun.com