The Padres were forced to make a choice last season -  go for broke in 2010 while possibly risking the future.  I was very vocal about my concern at the time and if it was in the best interest of young pitcher Mat Latos.  At the end of the day Latos was not the only Padres player over-used as the team fell short of the post season.

I tend to think of myself as an optimistic realist, but the way Mat Latos was handled in 2010, I find it hard to even be cautionsly optimistic.  This has nothing to do with the talent level of Latos, but in the way he was overworked last season.

This is a Padres organization that had shut Latos down in 2009 for the very reason of not over-using him.  Well, in all fairness that was Towers’ front office.   Jed did address the issue, came out numerous times and said he would throw around 150 innings in 2010.

Tom Verducci of SI.com listed Latos as a pitcher that could become a victim of the Verducci (year after) effect.  Verducci writes “More than a decade ago, drawing on the advice of pitching coach Rick Peterson, I developed a rule of thumb that pitchers 25 and younger should not increase their workload by more than 30 innings”

Mat Latos was a pitcher at risk in 2010, which is why the Padres were planning on limiting his innings.  Verducci wrote, “I hate to see guys with non-contenders getting pushed, as Kansas City and Pittsburgh used to do, but these guys have a common denominator: their previous workloads were depressed by injuries in minor league seasons.”

The problem was that the Padres were contenders, they could taste the post season and even launched the “Believe” campaign in an effort to rally fans.

After a short stint on the DL in July, Latos did not miss a beat.  The Padres had a comfortable lead during the month of August, yet they refused to rest the young right hander for the stretch run.  I lobbied on Friarhood Radio to skip starts against weaker teams such as the Cubs and Diamondbacks, but my requests fell on deaf ears.

 On August 25^th the Padres owned the best record in the National League at 76-49 and a 6½ game lead on the San Francisco Giants.  That was the beginning of the end for the Padres, who went on to lose 10 consecutive games and see the lead in the division shrink to one game.

 Two days later Mat Latos would throw 113 pitches (season high), earning his 14^th victory and keep the Padres one game ahead of the Giants.  No indication during the game would make one think that Latos had hit a wall, but at that point he had accumlated 162 ^2/3 innings pitched.

 Latos was not the only one hitting a wall.  The Padres offense started to sputter, with only 25 games remaining the Padres scored a total of 76 runs.  With the exception of a road trip to Coors Field in which they put up 19 runs in three games, the Padres averaged just 2.59 runs per game.

The Padres' front office was now forced to play Latos down the stretch.  In five remaining starts he gave up 20 runs in 21 innings, compiling an ERA of 8.57 during the stretch.  He did not strike out more than six batters in any game and was able to reach the sixth inning only once.  This during a 12-13 stretch for the team, that ended when we saw them finish in second place as they watched the Giants celebrate the division title in front of them on the last day of the season.

You may be asking yourself, why is he rehashing this?  Simple, because the Vurducci report came out for 2011 and guess who is on it…Mat Latos. Veducci had this to say about Latos, “It's not easy to make the list two straight years, but Latos took jumps of more than 60 innings in each of the past two years.”

Moving into the 2011 season I have many concerns about this team, but the biggest one is the 6’6’’ blonde with the million dollar smile and the bulldog mentality.  I just hope he has a rubber arm to go with it, otherwise Hoyer, Black and the Padres' front office will have mortgaged the best young arm since Jake Peavy for an exciting run at second place.

Photo: SD Dirk, creative commons 2.0