To our pitching prospect graduates of 2009...

If you're not going pro, I've got two words for you. Avoid Texas.

You might say I'm nuts. After all, a scholarship to Texas is a nice balance of work and whimsy. You have an opportunity for an excellent future. And there are always a handful of players who get drafted every season. You get a good shot at money with Texas baseball.

And yet?



You have to deal with Augie Garrido. We know Dusty Baker is a man with a well-deserved rep as a breaker of prospects' elbows and shoulders. However? He's a downright renaissance man compared to Garrido. Example? Here.

You know about Austin Wood's Saturday. 13 innings pitched, the first 12 and 1/3 of those without a hit. He threw 169 pitches. That's a total no major leaguer has thrown since the Baseball Prospectus revoulation came to the forefront. You may never see that total touched in the bigs ever again.

Mister Wood had his arm worked to the bone and came through with flying colors. But you know what's lost among this? And this is exactly why Augie Garrido is criminally negligent.

Wood pitched the night before. And not a like a lefty one out guy scenario either. It took him thirty pitches to work his way through Friday Night. And in the arm-breaking Saturday? And he had 199-pitches in 24 hours. That right there is downright criminal action. You're taking a young man with a chance at a career and you're destroying it for a regional.

Garrido should be fired for this. He's had exactly two pitchers who have generated a career beyond the level of cosmic joke in his elongated career. He abuses those who come down to Austin to pitch for him. The only way the smiling monster can be stopped? If he never gets a prospect above one star to pitch for him.

But because the monster wins? You will see careers go Kirk Dressendorfer. Austin Wood will wash out. And he doesn't deserve it.