Ryan Madson is 37 years old. He’s 15 years into a professional baseball career that has included World Series triumph, debilitating injuries, a brief retirement, and a remarkable resurgence. The right-handed reliever is, as they say, a wily veteran. But he’s also still learning. And he learned the hard way earlier this month.
When Madson took the mound on April 18 to protect a two-run, eighth-inning lead against the Mets, he felt fine. Nothing seemed amiss even though he was pitching for the third straight day and for the fourth time in five days. What he didn’t realize was he had thrown 75 pitches over that stretch. He was nearing what he calls “the red zone,” which he said begins at 80 pitches over a five-day period. He proceeded to allow six runs and get two outs before getting chased, and the Mets posted a nine-run inning. Most importantly, he threw 26 pitches, pushing him over 100 over those five days.
The heavy workload had repercussions. Madson woke up the next day with his pain level at a 7 on his 10-point scale and it hovered there, not getting any better, for a few days. It wasn’t until last Monday, five days after he last pitched, that he felt good enough to play catch. He didn’t pitch in a game again until last Tuesday. That was six days — or five games — after his outing in New York. The Nationals went 1-3 without him available, losing one game by a run and another by two.
“I wouldn’t change anything before that game other than knowing how maybe pitches I had thrown that week,” Madson said last week, when the Nationals were in San Francisco. “And maybe been like, ‘Eh, I know I feel good, but just based on my numbers, the chances of injury have increased dramatically if I pitch today.’ Because I’ll be in that 80 to 100 mark. Or 80 to 100-plus.”
Madson emphasized he was responsible — not the training staff or Manager Dave Martinez — for the situation. He said he told the training staff he was okay and informed Martinez he was available. Still, one could argue it isn’t wise to have a 37-year-old with a Tommy John surgery on his record who had already pitched in 10 of the club’s 18 games out there for a third straight day. But Martinez didn’t have many trustworthy arms at his disposal and an opportunity to sweep the first-place Mets was on the table. So he went with Madson.
“They’ve given me the autonomy … and that’s why it’s my fault,” Madson said. “I didn’t even know I had thrown that many pitches. Had I known, I’d be more cynical. I had rough innings all week — pretty much all year. I knew I had long innings the whole week but I wasn’t counting pitches.”
Madson represented one-third of the Nationals’ midseason bullpen overhaul last July. He became the club’s eighth-inning reliever, partnering with Brandon Kintzer and Sean Doolittle to stabilize the back end of what had been the worst bullpen in baseball, and posted a 1.37 ERA in 19 2/3 regular season innings for Washington. This winter, instead of adding another bona fide reliever or two for depth, the Nationals let Matt Albers go, re-signed Kintzler, and didn’t add another bullpen arm to a major league deal until they signed 40-year-old Joaquin Benoit almost a week into spring training.
Between injuries and inexperience plaguing the other options, the team’s inactivity left little proven relief depth beyond the big three. As a result, Madson, Kintzler, and Doolittle are crucial to Washington’s success, which made Madson’s absence more notable than most times a setup man misses a few days. The Nationals’ slow start didn’t help.
“That’s the other half of it,” Madson said. “You have a manager that you want to play for. You have a team you want to play for. You got starters that you want to play for. So you don’t want to say I’m going to preserve my services today because of my selfish needs. But it was like that. That’s what happened.”
The effects of depending on the bullpen’s big three so often surfaced again against the Pirates on Monday, complicating matters thanks to Doolittle being unavailable after pitching the previous three days. Nursing a 3-2 lead in the eighth inning, Martinez gave the ball to Madson. He last pitched on Saturday, when he allowed the game-tying run on three hits in an extra-inning loss to the Diamondbacks, and didn’t look like as sharp as usual against Pittsburgh. His fastball didn’t have its typical life and he didn’t have a feel for his curveball. Still, he needed just nine pitches to retire the side in order.
The light load left open the possibility of him returning for a second inning, but Martinez instead turned to Kintzler, who had pitched the previous two days. It was the second time Kintzler threw on three straight days this season. It worked — Kintzler also retired the side in order and got the save — but Martinez later acknowledged the workloads are unsustainable.
“We should have enough guys,” Martinez said. “Some of these other guys are going to have to pitch in big moments as well. And it will happen. But if we start scoring runs, we can start giving these guys days off. But we’ve played so many one-run games already, it’s scary. I mean, it really is. But they’re all ready. They all want to participate every day. But I know I got to take care of those guys to do what we want to do toward the end of the year.”
After Monday, Madson has thrown 38 pitches in 3 2/3 innings across four games since returning last Tuesday. His ERA stands at 5.79 in 15 appearances 29 games into the season.
Madson recalled one other time he went through a predicament similar to his mid-month overexertion. He wasn’t exactly sure how many pitches he threw or when it happened because it was so long ago — he estimated 100 pitches in a week in 2005. But he did remember an angry Scott Boras, his agent at the time, showing up without warning to tell the Phillies he wasn’t pitching for a few days. In a way, Boras was there to save Madson from himself. Nearly 15 years later, Madson has learned his lesson. He will keep track of his pitch count. He vows to save himself from himself.
“Getting put in this now is not cool,” Madson said. “I volunteered a couple times too many … Now you got to be a little different next time. Maybe on both sides, too. But knowing that I have that autonomy, again, I will be in charge of that stuff.”
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