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That's how I've heard major league coaches talk, about sticking with a guy as long as his mechanics are still good. However, I'm not sure that that alone guarantees pitcher health. The thing is that teams have an extremely structured system for pitcher usage that they force all pitchers to follow. That being the expectation to pitch every 5th game and as deep into the game as possible. I doubt that this is the ideal setup for every single pitcher, especially younger ones, which might mean a pitcher can look good yet still be wearing down his arm rather than building it up.
I have no idea if that's true but if teams aren't going to be more flexible with how they use pitchers then there is some logic to just shutting a pitcher down at some point in the season and then letting him pitch in the winter rather than just assuming that he can start 30+ games at age 22.
I don't doubt that this is suboptimal, but when the down side to over use is so great I just have a hard to being critical of teams, especially when we're really only talking about limiting a players work load for a single major league season.
Take a Lincecum as an example. He may have been able to throw 225 innings as a rookie, but would that really have been worth the risk? By waiting just one season to reach that point, did the Giants really miss out on anything? No, they got their Cy Young work horse at age 24 and I hardly believe that they are kicking themselves for playing it safe.
And really, how would Weaver's way have been any better? By putting him in the bullpen in his rookie year, Weaver would have got FEWER innings out of Lincecum, not more. So while I think teams should be more flexible about using talented starters in relief, that wouldn't result in them throwing more MLB innings.