He's pitched 190 innings so far and probably has 5 starts left, six innings a start puts him right at 220- last year year he went 220 plus 7 post season, 2013 214 plus 22 post season, 2012, 187 plus 15 post season. If it's fatigue, I'd say it has more to do Rizzo buying a used up pitcher than it does with his usage this year
If he had pitched six or seven a start during this skid and then pitched the many innings he was supposed to pitch in the playoffs he could have blown well past 270. They set him up to have way too many innings by year's end. And it's not just about how many you throw over the course of a year - it's how you go about them. Marathon runners flame out hard if they overwork one small stretch and they don't get the same result had they gone the same pace the whole time. If Max kept up a normal (by today's and his standard) workload perhaps he wouldn't have fatigue at this time. The body has a max workload it can take over a short term and a long term, and over the short term of one month, 6 starts, he pitched 47.2 innings and hasn't been the same since. He had never pitched that many innings in a 6-game stretch in his career, not even close (except for, funny enough, May of this season when he pitched 43), and let's not forget three of those games in a row were perfect games he was chasing, so those are some serious stress innings.
Think of doing bicep curls. If you do 10 reps twice a day, across many weeks, you can probably keep that up forever and eventually increase your workload. But if you do, say, 15 twice a day a day when your body isn't prepared for that, over the course of just a few days your arm may tire out and cramp, and either lift poorly or get injured. Or if you tried 50 reps in a single session, your arm would be exhausted and you'd have to shut down for like a week. So if you think numerically, over a week, you could have done 140 reps (10/2/day) 105-120 (15/2/day having to rest some days, and with poorer form/results from fatigue) or as little as 50 (all in one day to the point you injured yourself and had to shut down). Once you get too tired, the only way to get back to normal is to shut down, reduce your workload, and get back to form over time. The same probably applies to a marathon baseball season and innings pitched. It's not exact, but I think you get the point. If after the ASB Scherzer had gone 5 innings, 5 innings, 6 innings, 6 innings, then got back to normal, maybe he'd be better, but you don't get to do that in the middle of a baseball season.
Ironically, in that 6-game stretch, because he was so dominating he actually threw
far fewer pitches than he has over other 6-game stretches in his career. So who the hell knows. I think he would be better off one way or another had his workload been monitored better following that crazy three-perfecto streak he had. And hell, they could have pushed him back another day after the ASB, one more day's rest - and he would have started the first game against the Mets and been in line for another in the series the Nats got swept.
Poll
