OT: MLB pitchers and increased injuries

[LegendRider]

I'm a Braves fan and Spencer Strider's recent injury prompted me to read this article.

https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/...der-eury-perez

I have no idea what the solution is, but throwing a ball often at over 90mph 100 times per week is begging for trouble.

[cgolvin]

Thanks for sharing that.

I don't think Manfred has a whit of credibility left.

[peanutgallery]

Pitchers are developed and adjusted to meet metrics like velocity and rotations of the ball per pitch

Curve ball guys are encouraged to throw with more velocity and fast ball guys are putting more spin on the ball to meet these metrics. Not in their natural arm movement or style. Injury is the result

Blame math and spreadsheets...at least that's my theory

[prototoast]

Originally Posted by peanutgallery

Pitchers are developed and adjusted to meet metrics like velocity and rotations of the ball per pitch

Curve ball guys are encouraged to throw with more velocity and fast ball guys are putting more spin on the ball to meet these metrics. Not in their natural arm movement or style. Injury is the result

Blame math and spreadsheets...at least that's my theory

I think it's similar to crashes in cycling... when the talent pool is so deep, and athletes are striving for every competitive advantage possible, one avenue for advantage is increased risk taking.

[MatchDave]

Originally Posted by peanutgallery

Pitchers are developed and adjusted to meet metrics like velocity and rotations of the ball per pitch

Curve ball guys are encouraged to throw with more velocity and fast ball guys are putting more spin on the ball to meet these metrics. Not in their natural arm movement or style. Injury is the result

Blame math and spreadsheets...at least that's my theory

Good theory - matches what Dr. James Andrews (the surgeon who first performed Tommy John surgery) very recently said. Other part (also cited by Dr. Andrews) is that same overemphasis on velocity and spin is dominating development of pitchers in high school and even younger, long before the ulnar collateral ligament can physically mature. Lots of Tommy John surgeries among high school pitchers now. So what's happening in Major Leagues is a cumulative problem dating back years before pitchers reach the pros.

[rogerspam]

This sounds like issues in other sports in terms of needing regulation but not sure how anyone would agree on one set of rules--harder and harder with the money involved, earlier entry of money (NIL in previously "amateur sports"), more ways of monetizing a talent even if they don't make it all the way to the pros.

Makes me think of how some Olympic sports have age minimums to protect the athletes up to a point (that are sometimes flouted in gymnastics and divers--the too young pre-teen girls from China) or how some parents will prevent their kids from playing tackle football until a certain age.

This is likely also an outcome related to the specialized athlete where kids used to play seasonal and multiple sports which typically would be a natural protectant from overuse injuries. Now its all year same sports for many kids especially if you have potential.

As an Astros fan, I am also curious about this issue in that the team has had quite a run of success with signing and developing pitching talent from not obviously high ceiling prospects and often older prospects, mainly outside the US. This hasn't always meant they have been injury free (Framber Valdez just going on IL) but maybe it has helped them some getting more physically matured players? just speculating

[peanutgallery]

Would a Greg Maddox make it thru the development process to make the bigs in today's game? He'd have to fight the metrics that define "success"

I feel the metrics take away from the gadget pitchers that have unique abilities to throw an interesting ball. Off speed, release and all the other dark arts that have been around since the game was invented

Hopefully it is a fad

Originally Posted by MatchDave

Good theory - matches what Dr. James Andrews (the surgeon who first performed Tommy John surgery) very recently said. Other part (also cited by Dr. Andrews) is that same overemphasis on velocity and spin is dominating development of pitchers in high school and even younger, long before the ulnar collateral ligament can physically mature. Lots of Tommy John surgeries among high school pitchers now. So what's happening in Major Leagues is a cumulative problem dating back years before pitchers reach the pros.

[bigbill]

It starts young. I umpire baseball, including Little League, through high school. One of the culprits is travel ball, where kids play tournaments every weekend and then play in the local league during the week. Unless someone checks or is honest, a kid could throw 80-90 pitches on Saturday and be on the mound on Monday. You wouldn't do that in MLB; why do it with 12-year-olds? Two different leagues with a supposed honor system to make sure kids get their rest days. I've seen it a few times, and as an adult with a conscience, I'll call the coach out to the mound and inform him he must change pitchers. Kids hurt their arms by throwing too many pitches, not necessarily the pitch type. When I coached my son's teams, my pitchers had four pitches: fastball up, fastball down, fastball inside, and fastball outside.

I have two friends whose sons had Tommy John surgery before they were 16.

[572cv]

The Red Sox just put Nick Pivetta, their best in the early going, on the 15 day IL, for tightness in his shoulder. It is amazing how sensitive this issue has gotten, for good reason as near as I can tell.

My father had a client who became a lifelong friend, Robin Roberts (pitcher, Phillies, 50’s mostly). He had a streak of, I think, twenty eight straight complete games one of which went 17 innings. He had five straight 20 game win seasons. That was a little out of the ordinary, but this was not hugely unusual. I’m not up to speed on what has changed in training, or durability, but there have clearly been big changes in major league pitching.

[zzy]

More pitchers had Tommy John surgery in 2023 than in the entire 90s.

[fiamme red]

Joel Sherman of the New York Post also mentioned this trend recently:

https://nypost.com/2024/03/30/sports...ready-in-2024/

There is an epidemic in baseball. Everyone involved in the game knows it exists. Each club is working on a cure. Yet in some ways there is still an inability to fully gauge the extent of the problem.

There were 166 players on the injured list Thursday for the domestic Opening Day, and I asked 10 baseball officials to guess how many were pitchers. No one got within 20 of the correct answer. Most went through a logic similar to Mets pitching coach Jeremy Hefner, who reasoned half the roster is pitchers, but pitching is a more hazardous occupation so he reasoned, “Half would be 83, so I am going to bump it up to 105.”

When told the correct answer was 132, Hefner gasped, “Oh, my God.”

Yep, 79.5 percent of the IL stints were for pitchers. And the trend line is not good. The number of pitchers on the IL to open the previous four 162-game seasons was 122, 96, 88 and 85. In 2019, pitching injuries accounted for just 66.9 percent of the season-opening IL...

[benb]

Yah the current guys may have gone through the whole ridiculous kids club system.

My son is 11 and just getting into the 5th/6th/7th grade little league level and has always been into pitching.

We let him do camps and he has had lots of private pitching lessons even with some lower level minor league coaches.

But the private club ball is just off the wall. The most recent pitching coach we had him doing weekly lessons with in the off season even said to avoid it.

Two of my son’s friends are doing club ball. The schedule is insane and it’s about $6k/yr. They have practice or a game basically every day. It’s something crazy like a 50 game schedule just in the spring and often 3 games in a weekend.

We have already seen lots of pitch count cheating in kids as young as 3rd grade. If they play club ball and dad coaches the town little league team their son is on and that kid is the best pitcher on the team a whole lot of club pitches disappear when they are supposed to count toward both leagues. We even had other coaches call them out cause they knew the kid had thrown 150 pitches in the last 24 hours.

[verticaldoug]

Originally Posted by MatchDave

Good theory - matches what Dr. James Andrews (the surgeon who first performed Tommy John surgery) very recently said. Other part (also cited by Dr. Andrews) is that same overemphasis on velocity and spin is dominating development of pitchers in high school and even younger, long before the ulnar collateral ligament can physically mature. Lots of Tommy John surgeries among high school pitchers now. So what's happening in Major Leagues is a cumulative problem dating back years before pitchers reach the pros.

One of our Hudson Valley sports writers reposted a link on this a few days ago(April 7) on X with a quote to Dr. Andrews.

https://twitter.com/haggertynancy/st...Czl4lWqj01iWng

Throwing 90mph fastballs as a juniors in High School even if your mechanics are perfect is a lot of stress.

For gymnasts, the thing most casual Olympic fans don't realize is what you are actually seeing are the survivors. There is a lot of carnage in youth gymnastics with injuries along the way.

[trener1]

There was also an article about this in The Athletic
https://theathletic.com/5397742/2024...-bieber-perez/

[benb]

Originally Posted by verticaldoug

For gymnasts, the thing most casual Olympic fans don't realize is what you are actually seeing are the survivors. There is a lot of carnage in youth gymnastics with injuries along the way.

This x1000. Carnage all the way.

My sister was level 10, very close to going to Elite. She quit when she stress fractured a vertebrae from all the shock and switched to diving.

Her injury list along the way was a mile long. I and my 2 brothers all played sports and she had more hospital-level injuries than the other 3 of us combined, and it wasn't even close.

Gymnastics is way beyond hard core.

Mary Lou Retton has been in the news this year with health problems and they mentioned how much orthopedic care she has had as an adult due to the mile long list of injuries she had.