Chris Volstad's goals for 2009

Chris Volstad has set his goals for the 2009 season.

Volstad already has set at least two personal goals for next season: a double-digit win total and 200 innings.

His highest single-season win total is 11, in 2006 for Class A Greensboro. He pitched a career-high 175 1/3 innings last year (84 1/3 with the Marlins), continuing a trend of pitching more innings in every year of professional 

Whoa boy.

I'm completely onboard with the double digit wins, whether or not this will happen has a lot to do with whether the bullpen can hold onto the lead.  That, and whether the offense will cooperate by scoring runs.

But the 200 innings thing, I don't know.  Normally you don't want a pitcher, especially a young pitcher, to increase his innings more than 30 over the previous year.  There are of course exceptions, but if he had a healthy season, a 30 inning increase is about the most you want to let him go.

So let's see, if we add 30 to 1751/3 we get 205 1/3.  So he should be good to go.  Yes?  No?  The answers is NO.  Minor league innings do not equate equally to major league innings in the amount of effort used.  A talent like Volstad can almost put it on autopilot and cruise through Double-A.  Something he can't do in the bigs.

It is true that Marlins will be looking for innings from someone to help replace the 200+ by Scott Olsen but I'm not sure Volstad is the guy we want to do it.

Volstad's arm is gold and extending the 22 year-old to 200 major league innings may not be wisest thing.  In fact, it may border on foolishness.