Cingrani to the DL

Tony Cingrani had a rough game yesterday.  He didn't give up a ton of runs in his 4 innings of work, but he threw a lot of pitches and clearly wasn't sharp.  Furthermore, in the 4th inning, his velocity started to really slip.  After that inning was over, I wrote this on the twitter:

Cingrani also sitting 87-89 mph on his fastball... umm.. RT @ctrent: That’s 79 pitches for Cingrani through 4 innings #Reds
— Justin inhisbasement (@jinazreds) May 1, 2014

Here that is graphically:

Big drop, right?

Seconds after my tweet, I started seeing reports that Nick Christiani was warming in the bullpen.  Cingrani was lifted.  It ended up being a pretty bad night for the bullpen, but sending Cingrani out there to pitch again would have been risky...not just because he wasn't throwing well, but because it seems likely that pitchers throwing when they're tired are at risk for injury.

Then, this afternoon, we got word that Cingrani was being placed on the DL:

Cingrani was clearly unhappy with the move. "I don't know why they do a lot of things. I don't agree with it," he said. "But if they don't want me to injure myself, I understand. I think I can keep throwing, but they're exercising caution."

I commend Bryan Price and his staff for acting quickly on this.  They are protecting a young pitcher from himself.  It might well be that Cingrani would be fine in his next start.  But this break will allow him to (hopefully) recover, and to build some arm strength so that he can get back to being himself.  Furthermore, it has the additional benefit of helping to limit his innings.  Cingrani only threw 135 innings last season after throwing 150 the year before.  I would guess that the Reds won't want him throwing more than 180 innings this year (or thereabouts).  If 15 days means three starts, that's potentially around 15-20 innings that Cingrani will log onto his arm.