Dear Bruce Bochy and Charlie Manuel,

We each have the distinct honor of playing a significant role in one of the most astonishing anatomical feats known to man. Somehow, through miracles of windups, scap loading, arm speed, and raw torque, Cole Hamels and Tim Lincecum are able to pitch baseballs with extraordinary skill. Both the Phillies and the Giants need their young aces a great deal. In the Phillies’ case, Hamels is the only pitcher in which the team can have consistent confidence. In the Giants’ case, well, Lincecum is the only player that matters. That is why, despite the fact that we are non-sentient ligaments in the pitching elbows of these two star pitchers, we have taken it upon ourselves to question the wisdom of your decisions.

You see, we are not just any elbow ligaments. We’re the critical ligaments in each player’s pitching elbow (for Hamels, the left, for Lincecum, the right) that create the torque and affords them such remarkable arm speed: the ulnar collateral ligament. Sure, you may have heard of us. But you usually only hear our names invoked when a pitcher has torn us. (More commonly, we are not even referred by name but by our initials: UCL. We hate that abbreviation. We think it is ugly.) The result of such a tear, unfortunately, requires the eponymous surgery first received by Tommy John in 1974. Though great gains have been made since Dr. Frank Jobe first pioneered the process of replacing ligaments like us that have torn (or snapped) with ones from the non-pitching elbow or knee, it is still an all too common occurrence, especially among younger players. Research has shown that excessive pitch counts, especially ones above 100 for a single start, can have tremendous impact on a pitcher’s health.

For the twofold reasons that, a) we don’t want to tear or snap, and b) as baseball fans we do not want to see these young pitchers get injured, we have to ask that you be very careful with us.

Allow us to use two in-game situations to demonstrate. Mr. Bochy, on April 24th against the Padres, you had Lincecum in the game. He had cruised through six innings, allowing no runs and just three hits while striking out nine batters. Needless to say, though, all those strikeouts had taken a toll on Lincecum’s arm, of which one of us is a central part. Through those six innings, he had pitched a total of 109 pitches. This excess by itself would not have been a big deal. We are reasonable; we understand pitchers need to finish innings. But then you ran Lincecum out to the mound in the 7th. After an 8 pitch walk to Kahlil Greene, Lincecum was up to 117 pitches. And yet, no hook. In fact, Lincecum was left in for two more batters, finally leaving after surrendering a single to Tony Clark. In 6.3 innings, Lincecum finished with a total of 122 pitches. Let me tell you, as ligaments with inside information, this was not pleasant.

Mr. Manuel (I hope someday you’ll let us call you Cholly, like hard-workin’ ligament-guys), we are equally concerned with your decisions. Just the day before Mr. Bochy made his error with Lincecum, you made a similar mistake with Hamels in a game versus the Brewers. Your star on the mound had pitched well through seven innings, allowing three runs (all in the first inning), striking out 11 and walking just two. He reportedly asked to stay in the game for the eighth inning to face the thunderous heart of the Milwaukee order: Braun, Fielder, Hart. You, being a player-friendly manager, understood and probably even admired Hamels’ determination. But you must not let Cole sway you, for he knows not how he hurts us. He had already pitched 110 pitches through those seven innings. Nevertheless, clinging to a narrow 4-3 lead, you stuck with your ace for the 8th. In the next 11 pitches, Hamels not only lost the lead (after two hard hit drives to right center, one by Braun good for a double and the next by Fielder an oh-brother shot to the bleachers), but he also put unnecessary strain on the same elbow that cost him a month at the end of last season due to injury. As a part of that elbow, we can safely say that we are trying our best not to snap. We just need a little help.

So that’s why we’re asking you, as ligaments first and as fans second, to go easy on the young arms. Because while it is true that there are some pitchers out there with rubber arms who always seem to defy the medical odds, there is no way to know if Lincecum or Hamels is one of those pitchers without first crossing the point of no return. And sirs, there is no one who is less eager to find out than us.

Signed,
Ulnar Collateral Ligament of Cole Hamels
Ulnar Collateral Ligament of Tim Lincecum

Cole Hamels says he won’t pitch game 4 on three days of rest. That is quite prudent, coming off a sore elbow just a couple weeks ago. Charlie Manuel is seriously placing his team’s future in jeopardy riding his young guns as he has. On Tuesday he kept Hamels in for 115 pitches, sending him back out for the 7th inning with 108 pitches already thrown. In his previous start, Manuel kept him in for 116 pitches in a must-win game where he was pitching like an ace. The Phillies won by 6 runs. The elbow problems are a concern, and they are not likely to go away with this usage pattern. Optimists will look at his reasonable total of 190 IP to date, but a deeper look shows that Hamels has gone over 110 pitches a whopping 12 times this season, and 10 of those games the Phillies won by 3 or more runs. I know their bullpen is bad, but there has to be someone you can trust with a reasonable sized lead in the mid-late innings. Next year’s playoff contention depends on it.

The Rockies and Diamondbacks are still not-slugging it out a mile up, but rookie Ubaldo Jimenez is out of the game. He put some nasty pitches past the Diamondbacks’ impatient hitters, racking up a pretty impressive line:

6.1IP, 1H, 1R, 1ER, 4BB, 10K

He held the D-Backs hitless into the sixth inning, and struck out 9 in his first 4 1/3 innings. The last time the Rockies were in the playoffs, 1995, Jimenez was just 11 years old.

Although the Mets were eliminated from playoff contention today (marking an all-time worst collapse of a seven game lead with 17 games to play), last night John Maine similarly pitched like he wanted it. Maine also flirted with a no-hitter en route to a line of:

7.2IP, 1H, 0R, 0ER, 2BB, 14K

That was exactly the kind of thing the Mets needed from Maine, who had struggled in the second half. The Mets scored 13 runs in the game, which leads me to believe that they should probably have tried to spread out their run scoring and run prevention more equitably.

Cole Hamels probably had the most impressive start of any pitcher in these all-important final series. His box-score-porn line:

8IP, 6H, 0R, 0ER, 1BB, 13K

For a pitching starved team like the Phillies, that performance was absolutely essential to their success in reaching the playoffs for the first time since 1993, when Hamels was a nine year old growing up in San Diego. With the NL contenders clustered so closely this season, high strikeout performances can set the tone of the game and lift teams who might otherwise have scuffled. The Padres just lost, and the Rockies are on the doorstep, so there might still be some baseball left in this regular season.

Cole Hamels pitched a gem last night to lift the Fightin’ Phils into first place in the NL East: 8 IP, 6 H, 1 BB, 13 K, 0 R. Throwing 116 pitches, he was above the supposed limit of 100, but when he batted for himself in the bottom of the 7th, the SRO crowd at Citizens Bank Park erupted in support of Hamels.

However, in their MLB Pregame show today, the bottom-third of the screen read: “Cole Hand Hamels,” a reference to the classic Paul Newman movie. Fox, come on, you can do better than that. How about Old King Cole references, Hamels’ Messiah, Cole in the Stocking, Cole Power or Cole-d Fusion? Someone get the guys from mlb.com over to help them out with the corny headline.