This afternoon news broke around Twitter that St. Louis Cardinals rookie wunderkind Jaime Garcia would be shut down for the rest of the season. It makes a lot of sense: Garcia pitched just 38 innings in 2009 while recovering from elbow surgery, and he's hit 163 this year, which is an incredibly rapid increase for any young pitcher, let alone one who's been so effective. With the Cardinals on the ropes and Garcia stretched enough to flirt with a full workload of 200 innings next year his last few starts in September seemed... inconsequential.
↵This just in, on Twitter: A baseball player doesn't want to stop playing baseball:
↵↵↵dgoold Garcia made case to TLR that caused team to reconsider "shutting door" on his season. #stlcards
↵Fox_Sports_MW Tony says "the mistake I made was not talking to Jaime". So news continues to change. 630 pm #stlCards pregame will sort it all out
↵gordoszone Love the kid's competitiveness. RT @dgoold: Garcia may have talked his way out of shutdown. Mo says Garcia will miss one start. #stlcards
↵
I'm all for seeing Jaime Garcia start instead of Jeff Suppan to close the season out—though I might be convinced otherwise if Blake Hawksworth saw those starts instead—but if you're worried about a young pitcher's health, the last person on earth to ask is the young pitcher, who, having seen what happened to J.D. Drew, is probably going to say: "Oh, yeah, I feel great. Never better. Can you help me put this shirt on?"