Has Kevin Millwood hit the proverbial "brick wall" for 2009?Shortly after locking down a splendid seven-inning, 113-pitch Opening Day victory on a chilly, sun-splashed Monday morning some five months ago, a svelte, re-energized Kevin Millwood made the following declaration to D Magazine's Mike Hindman: "Coming out of spring training, I felt like I could do this, but I don't think I've felt like I could do it in years past. Even after I came out of the game, I felt like I could go back out there after 115 pitches or whatever it was. That's a good sign. Conditioning made a huge difference."

Flash forward to Monday afternoon, about 48 hours after Millwood's decidedly unsatisfactory five-inning, five-run Saturday afternoon effort against the Orioles (in which he still logged 109 pitches), when The Hardline's Mike Rhyner and Danny Balis interjected the following criticisms during a prolonged diatribe against Millwood: "He is out of shape ... he is cooked ... the dude's got nothing left."

Anecdotally speaking, I'm not sure how much, if any, credence I would lend to the notion that Millwood's physique has undergone a complete ab-to-flab transformation over these last five months. A quick juxtaposition of photographs snapped on both ends of that five-month spectrum indicates that his 6' 4" frame is no more visibly heavyset today than it was at the beginning of April, and the relative start-to-start stability of the 34-year-old hurler's fastball velocity suggests that his worsening performance is not the product of fading radar gun readings.

How, then, can it be possible for a pitcher who (a) became a front-running disciple of team president Nolan Ryan, (b) bought wholeheartedly into the Texas Rangers' rigorous off-season training regimen and (c) emerged from spring training both physically and psychologically sharper than in seasons past to seemingly (d) run out of steam in the pennant race's decisive final weeks?

The underlying explanation for Millwood's troubling post-June performance is that his decent, but not great early-season peripherals were never aligned with his superb early-season ERA, breeding the expectation that more innings would effectively normalize his full-season ERA; to put it more bluntly, he was never a true-talent sub-3.00 ERA pitcher, and the fact that he managed to maintain such a quality ERA past the 100-inning threshold was a testament to his supporting cast -- particularly the up-the-middle defense -- and elite-caliber performance with runners in scoring position, which isn't something one would deem a repeatable skill when you consider that Millwood is, historically speaking, a below-average pitcher with runners in scoring position.

There is, however, something in play with Millwood's eroding performance that runs deeper than mere random variation, that being management's systematic new approach to major league pitch counts in which the restrictions have been eliminated and the pitcher, rather than his pitch count, dictates the timing of his removal. Millwood's greatly inflated game-by-game pitch counts relative to past seasons and declining pitch efficiency were both acknowledged in this space two weeks ago, but the graphical breakdown is far more jarring than I could have expected:

[I've also constructed a similar graph depicting Millwood's cumulative pitches per inning totals in 2009, which -- not surprisingly -- also shows pronounced regression in terms of Millwood's pitch efficiency.]

While the ballooning nature of Millwood's 2009 pitch counts remain a focal point of concern, what's particularly disconcerting with respect to this graph is that Millwood's inning-by-inning workload is also ballooning, with the corollary being that greater fatigue and diminished performance is to be naturally expected when a starting pitcher is still consistently logging 110-120 pitches every fifth day, but is simultaneously becoming more inefficient with those pitches. He's essentially getting less out of more right now, something which can't possibly behoove Millwood in terms of maintaining a confident mound demeanor and positive body language, and the cut-throat, immensely competitive nature of professional baseball shows no mercy to vulnerable pitchers.

With Millwood seemingly destined to lock in his age-35 season at a lucrative $12 million salary by virtue of his soon-to-vest 2010 option, one can't help but wonder if the Rangers will elect to tinker with their conditioning program, their pitch count philosophy, or both next season, given that Millwood's fuel reserves appear to be depleted with four weeks yet to go in the regular season. Moreover, will the exhaustion effect carry over into 2010, and if so, how much can Texas really expect to extract from a pitcher who is already entrenched in his decline phase?

Insofar as the here and now is concerned, Millwood's opportunities for redemption are quickly slipping away, and with Derek Holland showing his rookie stripes at the worst possible time and the injury-beset offense desperately gasping for breath, the Rangers' chances of reaching the post-season now greatly hinge upon Millwood digging deep down inside and bringing to the table what he hasn't brought to the table in two-plus months -- top-flight, shutdown pitching.