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.