Wednesday MLB ⚾️

I don't think it's that cut and dried.  Joba lost his mojo because the Yankees continuously shuffled him between the rotation and the bullpen, and then he had that crazy trampoline accident.  But you can't move guys back and forth like that, especially with young players.  The preparation, the training, the mentality, it's two completely different animals and baseball players, moreso than any other sport, are creatures of devout routine and regimen adherence.  

As far as yesteryear goes, for every Nolan Ryan throwing 150 pitchers per game, there were dozens of guys who flamed out after a handful of years in the big leagues, if they even made it that far because teams would just ride them into the ground.  Matt Harvey came back after Tommy John surgery, and openly said no to innings limits (publicly against his agent's words as well) and within one year, he had devolved into one of the least reliable pitchers in the game and needed Thoracic Outlet surgery, which has basically ended his career.  If he had eased back into a full workload after getting TJ surgery, would that have happened? Tough to say definitively, but it's worth considering as a possibility.  

I'm not saying innings limits are an automatic savior and it's not the same for everyone.  Guys like Strasburg, he's just injury prone whether he throws 2 innings or 200 innings. But teams have too much money invested in these pitchers and there is too much data which shows, pretty clearly, that guys wear down after x number of innings and if that's the case, they'll be useless come playoff time, or they'll start to slow down at a younger age.  

I think the other side of the coin is that modern technology and training protocols show injuries more clearly than they used to.  Back in the 80s, a little forearm soreness would basically be chalked up as just that, and a guy would make another 10 starts before actually being in pain, en route to missing the rest of the year, or worse.  Nowadays, they shut that guy down immediately because missing 2-3 starts and getting rest is better than missing a whole season, especially when you're paying 8 figures for that arm and you have him for several more seasons.  That's part of what is happening with deGrom, although these last 2 issues are a bit more alarming (shoulder inflammation and elbow soreness).