Sunday, April 26, 2009

Bruney To Cutdown Workload to Avoid Future Injuries

From Marc Carig:
Yankees reliever Brian Bruney stops short of calling himself a perfectionist.

Still, when he's throwing bullpens or side sessions while keeping himself sharp between appearances, he'll throw a certain pitch over and over if he believes the pitch isn't executed just right. There is a price, however, to throwing so many pitches, which is why Bruney figures he's landed on the disabled list with a muscle injury in his right (throwing) elbow.

"I think there needs to be a little bit of trust in certain pitches, that they will be there," he said. "I don't need to sit there and throw them 15 times, 20 times in the bullpen."

That's been the message repeated by coaches in the past, the latest being Yankees bullpen coach Mike Harkey. And it's advice that Bruney, the Yankee's top reliever aside from Mariano Rivera, has been hesitant to accept. Until now.

"If something doesn't work well, I'm going to sit there and work on it, work on it. I end up throwing so much," Bruney said. It's something I've always done. But you know what? Now it got me and now I know what they're talking about. Now, we're going to change the routine and throw a little bit less."
"I think it's my fault. I think I throw too much in the bullpen and on the side," Bruney said. "Anytime you have a relatively high workload, I can't do that. I think this is my fault and I've got to make the corrections."
He's not a perfectionist, he's a moron. It takes an injury for Bruney to finally start listening to his coaches? What a joke. Coaches are there to help you, the fact that Bruney felt it was the right thing to just ignore them is somewhat disturbing. Now they'll be without their setup man for at least two weeks in a bullpen that was already having trouble holding on to leads. Good job, Brian.

4 Comments:

daneptizl said...

Blessing in disguise. No Bruney for two weeks, but hopefully in that time Melancon and Robertson do enough to stay and force two others to be sent down.

Brad said...

"He's not a perfectionist, he's a moron"

Wow that's a little strong. I mean we really don't know how the message from the coaches was delivered i.e.an order vs. a suggestion. Maybe this is something that has helped Bruney in his career. I'd rather have a guy that tries to hard then too little.

Lesson learned and hopefully there is no long term damage.

Anonymous said...

I agree Brad. What I got from this is that Bruney is working hard to become a better player

Greg Cohen said...

From the article I'm under the impression that Bruney was advised to lessen his workload and didn't, and because of that is now on the DL. These players need to listen to their coaches, that's why they have them. If they don't I think they're being arrogant and stupid.