On Gil Meche, Jim Bouton, and pitch counts

Jim Bouton is among the pitchers of past generations who wish this whole Pitch Count Era in baseball would've started earlier. Bouton pitched 249 1/3 innings, then 271 1/3 innings in the big leagues when he was 24 and 25. He threw a total of 23 complete games in those years, and figures he threw around 160 pitches or so in many of them. He doesn't think it's hard to figure out why such a promising career turned into disappointment. By the time he was 26, he says he couldn't pour a container of milk without his arm hurting. read more