Wednesday a.m. stuff

He may have- and I’ve also heard that the White Sox weren’t exactly careful with him either prior to his trade to Texas.

As for Valentine in New York, he didn’t break in many young pitchers at all during his time there. Here are the guys I’d classify as “young” pitchers who were on his teams and threw a decent number of innings:

Glendon Rusch, Octavio Dotel, Bruce Chen, Grant Roberts, Mike Bacsik, Paul Wilson, Jason Isringhausen, and Bill Pulsipher.

Wilson, Izzy, and Pulsipher were fairly damaged already when Valentine took over from Dallas Green, but even so, that’s not a really inspiring group there.

…for estimating pitch counts to Correa’s games in 1986, there are some ridiculous numbers, particularly for a 20 year old.

And go look at Bobby Witt’s pitch counts. Look at 1988, for example, when Witt missed part of the year with an injury:

http://www.baseball-reference.com/pi/gl.cgi?n1=wittbo01&t=p&year=1988

Witt throws 151 pitches in a meaningless game in the last day of the season.

Bobby V. was an abuser of young arms.

If only because the Washington experiment would have failed so badly. The problem is, there’s not a whole lot of “proven” guys who are also available.

Bobby V. isn’t leaving Japan anytime soon, methinks. He’s a god over there.

Its an Evan Grant mailbag

Ron Washington was hired based on his positive attitude and ability to motivate people. The Rangers had just gone through four years with a manager who was an excellent game-planner and strategist but was unable to relate to his players. The Rangers assumed they were getting a manager who would be off-the-charts on the positive side when it came to relating to players and who would need some help as he got used to managing for the first time.

Where Washington has struggled unexpectedly is in the motivational role. Often when coaches are elevated to managers for the first time, they get more involved in player evaluation (i.e., determining what a player can’t do) than in boundless optimism. Look, a little of both is good. You have to know how to best put a player in the best position to succeed. And to do that, you have to take into account those things he can do and those he can’t.

Washington’s “malady” isn’t uncommon and isn’t incurable. But as he grows as a manager, he must re-acquire some of that boundless optimism. If he does that with a better understanding of what his players can and can’t do, he’ll also become a better game strategist. Right now, I’d put him in the middle of the pack among major league managers when it comes to motivation, in the bottom third in game management and in the bottom half overall. I think there is still plenty of room for him to grow, and the Rangers believe he will.

In hiring Jackie Moore as Washington’s bench coach, the Rangers believe they will give Washington a stronger base of knowledge to draw from than he had with Art Howe.