Handle pitchers with care

To play or not to play. Once again, that was the question.

A lot of people want to blame the Minnesota Twins for allowing Francisco Liriano to pitch against the Tigers Monday night. The prized young lefthander lasted four very ineffective innings. The disabled list beckons.

Going on Liriano's word, the Twins -- that is to say, manager Ron Gardenhire -- acted in good faith. Liriano had been scratched from a start last Wednesday, but he assured the skipper he was available to pitch this one. It was a very bad misjudgment. Liriano left the game in pain and confusion, saying he was ``scared" about the nature of his pain.

``I am, because it really bothered me a lot and I don't know what it is," he reported. ``I couldn't throw my fastball, changeup, slider. It bothered me on every pitch I threw."

Think about that for a minute. If you or I know that a certain movement causes great pain, we try very hard to avoid that movement. Here was a very conscientious young man throwing 67 pitches over four innings, every one of them causing great pain. The amazing thing isn't that he gave up 10 hits and four earned runs. The amazing thing is that he retired 12 members of the team with the best record in baseball, five of them on strikes. These guys are definitely not like you and me.

This is not a new story in the world of baseball. It is only the latest chapter in the Book of Pitching. Pitching, of course, is baseball's game within a game. The action cannot start until the pitcher propels the baseball toward home plate. As has often been pointed out, baseball is the only one of our primary games where the defense has the ball. Standing in the center of the diamond, the pitcher is both the physical and metaphorical focus of all the action.

Handling pitchers is baseball's greatest challenge and mystery. The Great Sore Arm is a phenomenon as old as baseball itself, at least since pitchers began throwing overhand full time in the 1880s. Throwing a baseball overhand is an unnatural physical act.

The so-called ``rubber arm" is a rare gift. Bob Stanley had one. David Wells has always had one (his career is petering out because of his knees, not his arm). But very few pitchers have gone through a career without suffering from some kind of arm/shoulder/elbow trouble. If they're lucky, they recover well enough to re-establish themselves as quality pitchers. If they're Sandy Koufax, they retire at age 30 off a 27-9 year, embellished with 317 strikeouts and a 1.73 ERA. It should probably be mentioned that in his two final seasons, Koufax threw a total of 658 2/3 innings over 84 starts.

Compare that with Pedro Martínez's total of 820 innings in his last four seasons . And we know by his own admission that every pitch Koufax threw during those 658 2/3 innings was thrown in some degree of pain.

All arms are not created equal; that's for sure. How, for example, does one explain the great Warren Spahn, who, starting in 1947 at age 26, threw between 245 2/3 and 310 2/3 innings a year for the next 17 seasons, culminating with a 23-7 season (259 2/3 IP) at 42? Contemporary pitching coaches reading these figures must feel like historians reading about Alexander the Great conquering all that territory at age 33. It's utterly incomprehensible. There is no way to explain why this man of modest physical equipment (6 feet, 175 pounds) could handle such a tremendous workload for so many years.

You'll never see numbers like that again, if only because they were accomplished in the era of the four-man rotation. It's sobering enough for me to report that I lived through that famous 1971 season when the Orioles served up four 20-game winners for our perusal. I think it's safe to say that's a milestone that will last until the end of time.

The five-man rotation is one response to the eternal issue facing all baseball teams; specifically, how do we keep our pitchers healthy? Pitch counts were unknown in Spahn's day, and we never heard anything about them when Jim Palmer, Dave McNally, Mike Cuellar, and Pat Dobson were putting together those 20-win seasons for the 1971 Orioles, either.

In the entire decade of the '70s, I think I recall one reference to a pitch count, that being a Nolan Ryan game at Fenway when he was said to have thrown 140-some before, if memory serves, he was yanked in the ninth. Even in the '80s you didn't hear much about pitch counts, although there was that one infamous afternoon when Joe Morgan allowed Roger Clemens to hit 140 or thereabouts and a lot of tongues started wagging.

Now, of course, we live by them. For better or worse. But they're not always proof of anything. As Curt Schilling says, sometimes 80 feels like 110 and sometimes 110 feels like 80. They're gospel in the modern game, nevertheless.

The object of five-man rotations and pitch counts is to protect pitchers, especially young ones. So let's get back to Liriano.

Francisco Liriano is 22 years old. He's listed at 6-2, 200, so he's sturdy, not wispy. The Twins have not been reckless with him. He's thrown 119 innings in 27 appearances, which encompasses 12 relief efforts and the 15 starts he's made since entering the rotation in May. That's hardly an unreasonable workload, and I would have expected nothing less from either Gardenhire or general manager Terry Ryan, who is one of baseball management's guiding lights.

The Twins have dotted their I's and crossed their T's with this phenomenal prospect. They know what they have. They know what's at stake, both for the franchise and the young man himself. These are not stupid people, and I believe they acted in good faith when they allowed Liriano to take the mound Monday night against the Tigers.

But right now this prospect for the ages is incapacitated and he is ``scared." It reminds us that pitching is a tough way to make a living.

Bob Ryan is a Globe columnist. His e-mail address is ryan@globe.com.