[WindyCityBlue]

Depending on where you work and the quality of the program, you will see more pitchers go down prior to the season than during. The off season workouts at most of the better programs are designed to take good arms and make them great. The luxury of scholarship baseball is the ability to have more than a few good arms. The coaches I see, ALL have set-up men and closers. Just like the bigs, the starter goes out to get the job done, but rarely goes the distance. I have seen only a few starters finish in the last few years. Most of the good programs recognize the importance of their rotation and rest. By and large, the injuries I'm aware of happen on off days or during training. A lot of casual fans don't know what these guys do on their "off days". In the Midwest, where weather wreaks havoc on early season scheduling, a kid may have seven or eight days between starts. If you ask around, You'll probably find that the pitch count has little to do with fatigue. Throwing 50 dueces, 20 sliders and 50 fastballs to guys with composite bats, takes a toll. Learning to throw a change up can help, but I always laugh at the kid that thinks he can rip it by any batter. That 90mph fastball on the outer edge just goes farther when the batter has guns the size of my thigh and is swinging a metal bat the size of a tree trunk.