Phillies ace and World Series MVP Cole Hamels has declined an invitation to pitch for Team USA in this spring’s World Baseball Classic. That’s the word from Team USA manager Davey Johnson Thursday.

It was probably a no-brainer for Hamels, who spent time on the disabled list during each of the four previous seasons before pitching a career-high 262.1 innings in 2008, regular season and playoffs combined. The 6-foot-3 left-hander, who turns 25 next week, posted 14 wins and a 3.09 ERA during the season, then went 4-0 with a 1.80 ERA in five quality starts in the postseason.

On Friday, Jim Salisbury of the Philadelphia Inquirer reported there’s another equally important reason why Hamels will bypass the March tournament: “He has a precise preseason conditioning program and needs six weeks of spring training to get ready to pitch competitively. Participating in the WBC would disrupt his preparation.”

If he were to play in the WBC, Hamels probably would go the way of most pitchers who participated in the 2006 tourney. Only a few of the 25 major league starters who pitched in the inaugural event had ERAs lower than 4.00 at the end of the April. Nearly half had marks higher than 6.00, and even a few front-line starters struggled to stay on the good side of 5.00.

Padres ace Jake Peavy was 1-3 with a 5.17 ERA in five April starts that spring. He finished 11-14 with a 4.09 ERA in 2006, the only season in the last five years he’s posted an ERA higher than 3.00. Lefty ace Johan Santana, then with the Twins, was 1-3 with a 4.45 ERA in April, though he bounced back to have a typical year, going 19-6 (2.77 ERA).

Bartolo Colon was the reigning AL Cy Young Award winner that spring, after a big season with the Angels, but 2006 proved to be a disaster. He worked 14 innings over three starts for the Dominican Republic in the WBC in March -- the most by any pitcher in the tournament -- and was 1-5 (5.11) in a season cut short by a torn rotator cuff. Colon didn’t pitch in April and made only one start after the All-Star break.

April ERAs were also on the high side for Carlos Silva (10.31), who was pitching for the Twins in 2006, Freddy Garcia (5.86), then of the White Sox, and lefty Oliver Perez (7.53), pitching for the Pirates. Two Orioles, Rodrigo Lopez (6.81) and Daniel Cabrera (5.68), struggled to open the season, at a time they were promising members of the rotation. Neither had a good year. Santana is one of the rare slow starters who had a strong season.

That’s not to say pitching in the WBC caused Colon’s injury or will guarantee an off year, but there’s a cost to missing much of spring training to participate. The early struggles of many of the 2006 WBC pitchers didn’t surprise Gary Lucas, a left-hander who spent eight seasons in the majors and has been a pitching coach for 15. The issue isn't the number of innings worked in the WBC, he said, but being out of camp that long. The lost time can have a detrimental effect on a pitcher's mechanics, command and stamina as he faces the demands of a sixth-month season.

"We're routine-oriented people," Lucas said of his pitching brethren. "If you mess with that, the physical and mental preparation for a season is compromised. It's an extremely competitive work environment."

During a late-April interview in 2006, Lucas anticipated that most of the slow starters were on the brink of turning things around, and he proved correct. Most of them simply took longer to be fully prepared for the season, though a few went on to have off years.

The better pitchers, Lucas said, have a better understanding of how much time and work they need to prepare for a season. And that’s something Hamels, who sticks by an offseason regimen, apparently understands very well. He's made the right decision to skip the WBC.