What's Wrong With Rich Harden?

Hoping Harden's just fatigued

By EAMONN BRENNAN

Updated 11:00 AM CST, Tue, May 5, 2009

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We've written before, not well, about how Rich Harden's injury history makes him a bit of a day-to-day adventure as a starting pitcher. How many pitches can he handle today? What's his workload been? How many days of rest does he need? Is he tired? Is he injured? Is there reason to freak out yet? Most pitchers hum along in their daily routines without need for these sorts of constant updates, but Harden's history hangs over almost every pitch.

Which is why his last outing, where Harden struggled with his control, walked four, and was pulled after 3 2/3rds innings, is disconcerting. But it is injury? The big brains at Baseball Prospectus took a quick look at his velocity in the start and compared it to other outings, and their conclusion is slightly heartening, we guess:

Let’s look at Rich Harden’s velocity in his first start of the year, when he went a pretty dominant six innings against Milwaukee.

AVG Velo: 92.7 MPH
% 89-91: 25%
% 92+: 75%
% less than 91: 14%
% 94 or greater: 32%

And now here’s [May 1].

AVG Velo: 90.9 MPH
% 89-91: 71%
% 92+: 29%
% less than 91: 42%
% 94 or greater: 2%

The conclusion here is that Harden's lost velocity is most similar to an outing on April 10. That's good in that it doesn't follow a specific pattern; Harden isn't losing velocity over time, nor is he appearing to get noticeably weaker with each start. That lends one to believe that he's just tired. Of course, the next problem is whether being tired is in any practical way different from being injured, but with Harden, it is. Avoiding injury is his primary concern. If it takes a few slow starts with low velocity to do so, fine. So long as he bounces back next time out, right? Right, Rich?

Oh, man. This is going to be a long season.

Eamonn Brennan is a Chicago-based writer, editor and blogger who is just fatigued, too. You can also read him at Yahoo! Sports, Mouthpiece Sports Blog, and Inside The Hall, or at his personal site, eamonnbrennan.com. Follow him on Twitter.