It's no secret to anyone that I've been on the Parra IP count / workload concern bandwagon since the beginning of the season, if not earlier. In fact, I'm pretyt sure I've been driving the thing. Well, the fact is, Parra has put together a pretty good season despite his bad start, and in terms of his overall season he is probably our second most valuable pitcher behind Sheets, and third most valuable pitcher since Sabathia was added to the rotation.

But, in his last 5 starts, the old Manny Parra, from earlier in the season, has appeared. And now we have to concern ourselves with workload once again. You see, the genius of Yost is that not only did the organization not put in place any publicized plan to limit Parra's IP; they've sent him out on the mound, continually, to inefficient outing after inefficient outing. Parra's pitch count and WHIP throughout the season are witness to the relative stress of his IP, and the fact that he's repeating his delivery a lot, a lot with men on base, and throwing a lot of pitches in particular innings when he loses control support a case that Parra has carried a stressful workload this season. Now, there are arguments that can take the blame off of Parra somewhat (he has the worst defensive efficiency of any of the team's starters), but that doesn't change the fact that his workload is both heavy and inefficient.

So now we have these trends -- Parra's season forms three neat segments thus far, divided by the few times he has pitched two consecutive quality starts. Using his first and last consecutive quality start stretches, we can divide Parra's season in the following manner:

 

April 5-May 25: 10 GS, 49.3 IP, 31 R; 932 NP (0 efficient outings)
May 30-July 25: 11 G, 10 GS, 64.3 IP, 20 R; 995 NP(4 efficient outings)
July 30-August 20: 5 GS, 29 IP, 18 R; 480 NP (1 efficient outings)

April 5-May 25: 1.72 WHIP; 18.9 NP/IP; 5.66 runs average, 4.93 IP/GS
May 20-July 25: 1.29 WHIP; 15.47 NP/IP; 2.80 runs average, 5.85 IP/G
July 30-August 20: 1.62 WHIP; 16.55 NP/IP; 5.59 runs average, 5.80 IP/GS

I find this progression to be worrisome for several reasons: (1) Is this simply a case of wild Manny Parra that we saw early in the season?; (2) Is Parra's incredibly inefficient workload wearing on his arm, especially repeating the delivery throughout long IP with many baserunners?; (3) Will this trend continue for approximately 10 starts, until the end of the season?

 This bothers me the most, and I don't have an answer: is keeping Parra in the rotation any longer detrimental to both his future health, his current health, and most importantly, the Brewers' playoff chances?