You’ve been riding Mat Latos for most of the season but you still can’t shake an uneasy feeling that haunts all young hurlers – the dreaded innings pitched cap.

It makes sense, sort of, because rookie and inexperienced pitchers tend to fizzle at the end of the season since they’ve never handled a gigantic workload before.

And, when you see the first-place Padres place Latos on the DL with a “sneezing” injury, it certainly makes you wonder about the tricks teams will pull in order to limit a player’s number of starts.

Several young pitchers have been performing well for contending teams – the aforementioned Latos, Madison Bumgarner, Mike Leake, and Jaime Garcia – so there is a real concern among fantasy owners that their young ace might get shut down.

I have a hard time believing that a contending team will suddenly pull a part of their rotation during the last half of September.  A more likely scenario is a team skipping a start near the middle and end of August in order to preserve rookie pitchers (the Reds are already considering pushing Leake back after a few poor outings).

When it comes to teams that are out of contention (i.e. Stephen Strasburg and the Nationals) it will be a different story.  Expect the utmost caution.  There’s no need to “risk” a pitcher’s health for the sake of experience, so don’t be shocked if these teams pull the plug a little early.