With the possible exception of Rich Gossage calling contemporary closers a bunch of dickless wonders, there can be no more predictable entry into the annual baseball blotter than 14 year big league veteran Dr. Mike Marshall suggesting everything we know about caring for pitchers is wrong. Marshall, who made a staggering 106 appearances for the Dodgers in 1974, tells the Chicago Tribune’s Mitchell & Kaplan that Ozzie Guillen’s plan to employ a 6-man rotation once Jake Peavey comes back is almost as wrong-headed as his son’s tweeting “the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard of”.

“The more an athlete rests, the weaker he becomes,” Marshall told us. “The body does not get stronger by sitting around doing nothing. You lose bone density, you lose muscle fitness…the research is clear in swimming and track, where they do meaningful research, that rest is the worst thing you can do for the body if you’re trying to be a high-quality, high-intensity athlete.

“The traditional pitching motion is full of injurious flaws that no matter how hard you train, you can’t avoid the injuries. I figured out the key to being able to throw every day and training the body to withstand the stress. I threw 106 games, and if I didn’t pitch the night before, I threw batting practice the next day. I was never stiff, sore or tired.”