emmett16

If Os signed Soto, Snell, Hader do you think we’d win 111? They have talent at MLB and in their system. Kudos to them for trying to win. The Dodgers are leaps and bounds ahead of every team in MLB, should the other 29 just fold?

This. They have insane talent at MLB level and MiLB level.

If you build it, they will come.

I agree. I don’t think he gets picked up.

He signed (actually think he paid to play) for one game.

You forgot to mention it was against the Dodgers. Mostly minor leaguers but still pretty funny. He must have been amped up in a big way.

Yes and no. Typically a fastball is the most strenuous pitch you throw. Most torque on the elbow, but that’s because you are throwing it harder with more arm speed. When normalized for velocity, the pitches where you supinate your wrist cause the most stress. But, those pitches aren’t thrown at the same velocity. It’s also why you don’t hear of as many UCL injuries to QBs, the ball is 3x heavier (15oz. V. 5.25 oz.). They can’t move their arm fast enough while throwing to damage the UCL. https://www.drivelinebaseball.com/2017/02/fastballs-offspeed-pitches-comparative-relative-elbow-stress/

The Orioles are successful because of their development system and being able to identify players that will thrive in their system. Plain and simple.

Agree 100%. Making the game fun is goal #1 and goes a long way to improving skills as well. I wouldn't advocate for it pre 12U/11U and only for kids that have aspirations of playing past high school and could be subject to accidental coach abuse. It's also as simple as putting on a wrist band, so not cumbersome or time consuming. But it's scary to see firsthand how many kids get 'little league' elbow or 'little league' shoulder because they have no idea how much they are throwing. I see it like a bike helmet. It was pretty lame to wear the helmet when we were younger and we weren’t used to, but it becomes business as usual pretty quickly and part of the routine. When kids were mandated to wear helmets they didn't lose the fun in riding their bikes, it just became the new normal. Fun factor is an aspect that I think is overlooked by all and is a crucial component into making the practice more complete, focused, and deliberate. If practice isn't 'gamified' then kids start to go through the motions and don't put in their best effort and aren't improving and to your point, aren't having as much fun. You'd be surprised. It's actually a game to him to see how close he can guess how many throws he had. He anxiously downloads the info into the app to see how close he can get with his guess. The new generation of kids and tech is wild, any new gadget, app, etc. is exciting to them and they are pretty adaptable.

This is amazing. And spot on. Haha. I think we are just starting to see the tip of the very tip of the iceberg when it comes to fully optimized pitching talent (and in general, arm talent). Legit arm care has fully infiltrated college (actually did before Pro and Pro teams caught on because all their players brought it with them from college) and somewhat in high school. But it hasn't made its way down into the youth ranks yet, at least not on a large scale. Not enough time to implement and no short-term reward to make it worthwhile for a coach that might have kids for a season or two. If you have a 1.5 to 2 hr practice, are you really goanna spend 20-30 minutes getting prepared and then another 20-30 minutes post workout to wind down properly? Doesn't leave enough time for a typical coach to get done what they want to get done in the minimal amount of time they have for team practice. So, it forces to kids to do it on their own time before and after, or not do it.... My son uses a wearable to track (torque, rpm, angle) every single throw he makes and the wearable/App outputs his AC ratio so he knows when he can push it or when he needs to dial it back. Without the tech, you are just going off of feeling. He always guesses how many throws he made at practice or a game before checking the app and is often wrong by as much as 70-80 throws. All that to say, kids and coaches have no idea what the actual workload of the player is. He spends more time pre & post-game/practice on exercises than most kids do during practice. He gets poked fun at for it and when playing with other teams, coaches have given him a hard time because of the time needed to do it properly. Until that general attitude changes there will be issues in the levels above as kids push themselves full bore without being properly equipped to shoulder (no pun intended) the load.

This is spot on. I think the most progressive methods are being implemented by people who say 'we really don't know everything, but we are trying to learn as much as we can and we are going to track everything'. And those same folks are continuously making adjustments as they go and are changing when the data shows it should change. I think the frustrating part is 1. A lot of the people who are doing this are getting scooped up by Organizations and their data and research isn't available to the public 2. There isn't a central database in MLB that tracks every single throw, every single workout, every single pre & post-game routine, etc. from all players so they can build a database and start to find patterns and correlations to the injuries. MLB players are the biggest data pool and so inclined could do the work to start and find some roots of the overlying issue 3. There isn't a huge incentive for MLB to do anything because there is seemingly an unlimited number of players out there dreaming of making the show, so when one person goes down, it's next man up.

It was the other way around. MLB used to have a rash of shoulder injuries, but in doing all the work to strengthen the shoulder, those injuries have come down and UCLs have started to increase coupled with guys throwing harder now. The shoulders can take the increased velo but the UCLS have struggled to keep up. I agree. It's a risk, and when you are thrwoing hard like that you risk injury. I think it's more like playing poker or playing the odds. Try and do things that minimize the injuries from happening. They've at least started to see patterns and scenarios that are causing the injuries and have started to minimize some of the UCL injuries. But I think we have another decade plus before we see a real drop. All this stuff is new and hasn't filtered down to the lower levels yet. I don't see them every going away completely.

He was an anecdote in 'The Arm'. But more as a cautionary tale of taking a guy that was used to throwing hundreds of pitches daily and working his tail off, dialing him back in his workload (which he wasn't used to and significantly changed his chronic workload) and then having him go full bore in games at an arbitrary time (dangerous spike in acute workload). The new thought is it's a happy medium of AC ratio of doing the same workload consistently w/o spikes. The more you build up long term, the more you can go in one sitting and your AC ratio remains constant, but not too much into the danger zone. Injuries typically happen in the danger zone when a pitcher is fatigued. Not so much as 100+ pitches in a game, but more so 20+ max intent pitches in an inning. One guy could throw 9 innings of 15 per for a total of 135 and be perfectly fine, where a guy who goes 3 @25 for 75 is really pushing the limits. Guys in minors that don't have good control, are working on pitches, or are recipients of errors in the field are susceptible to high pitch count innings that can put them in the danger zone.

He didn't tear his UCL. All of the new stuff are still theories and what they think are best practices. A lot of data points to it working but pitching still inherently carries a risk. But, it's also hard to do the scientific work without willing guinea pigs, and MLB arms aren't always excited to be test subjects. A lot of people were preaching throw all the time to build up strength, without rest, but now folks are backing down from that a little bit. Load management in a sense, isn't having a guy throw X amount of pitches. It's managing the AC ratio (acute to chronic) so that the two are similar and there are no spikes. The main principal in play, in addition to biomechanics, are building up a guys 'brake' muscles in shoulders and back (lat included) so that that the arm can handle the high performance 'engine' without snapping a UCL. Seems GRod had some faulty breaks that needed to be adjusted/repair to handle his high velo arm capabilities. MLB needs to have a system that inputs data from all systems that accounts for workload, biomechanics, training regimes, etc. so that they can parse through every workout, every throw, from every body type/arm angle so that they can start to decipher some patterns and make adjustments. Issue is, all those data points are spread out and most are proprietary information.

I imagine they are building him up slowly in a very progressive “with the times” approach that is dialed into his specific physiology and biomechanics. And like you said, doing so in an asset management approach so that he can healthily pitch when it matters most. A couple things to consider though 1. We don’t know what he’s doing in side work, what we see as a light workload is just a small sample of a much large workload that is slowly and systematically getting dialed up. 2. He had 8+ years (10u-18u) before being drafted and going under Elias FO management to contend with. The O’s have his medical and know exactly the mileage on the arm and how it reacts/deals with various stressors. Bauer might get the last laugh on Cole.

Read “The Arm” it’s very good and I think you’ll like it. It covers a lot on this topic. Few things at play: 1. Guys aren’t preparing correctly. Or at least haven’t been preparing correctly from a young enough age. 2. In the modern PG (Perfect Game) world of youth baseball, kids are pitching to the radar gun to get noticed and overzealous coaches are over using kids, who are not preparing correctly, to win. This is starting as early as 10 & 9U. 3. Even players, parents, coaches, who have the best intention can get caught up in the moment and overdo it. 4. Players have to have velocity to get noticed. Doesn’t matter if you’re the craftiest pitcher with insane success, if you don’t throw hard you don’t have a job. 5. Pitchers aren’t going through the order 3x so even starters are essentially 100% effort at all times. 6. Baseball training is old and antiquated. There are 3rd party disrupters that have started to make noise, but they were at first ignored, and now the progressive teams are hiring those trainers, and their training methods are now proprietary trade secrets. There aren’t a lot of people out there pushing proper arm care. 7. For the few folks out there teaching the proper way to prepare and train, A. It’s costly B. It goes against the grain and old school baseball heads still don’t agree C. There isn’t a ton of info and finally, there is more research to be done. 9. The guys in the league now are the last generation to not have had the current progressive info on arm care. Hopefully word gets out soon and the new your generation has more success with avoiding injury and have fewer UCL injuries. 10. And lastly, MLB doesn’t care. It’s the cost of doing business in their eyes.

Haha. I’ve been waiting for this. Well played.

Close. Your a coach and don’t know what PG is? Apologize in advance on the emoji use.

I do coach. And I played D1 and pro. I have friends that coach pro and D1 currently. There’s more than one way to skin a cat…as Bauer proved. But then again, he’s the .05% of MLBers that isn’t a freak athlete. Lol didn’t realize I was talking with the CMO of PG. Sorry if I hit a nerve. You do you.

We are talking about an industry that spent 1.5BB on pitchers salaries, about half of which is a sunk cost due to injury, and they can’t get their heads together to figure out a solution to fixing arm issues. I’m not gonna count on them to be future sited. Sad. They could do so much and while doing so grow and expand the game long term.

I was over generalizing as to why travel ball costs so much. Of course there are some good coaches and good programs out there that aren’t trying to take advantage of the youth sports market, but that’s a small minority. Sounds like you are one of those, so good on you. But let’s not kid ourselves into thinking the goal of travel baseball is to “make kids productive members of society”. It’s a money grab part of a multibillion dollar youth sports market and the lessons kids are being taught are that winning is the only thing that’s important. My point was, you do not have to do that. It’s a perception and there are other ways to play a higher level of competing (like playing older kids). There are plenty of players that didn’t go through the travel ball circuit or even start playing baseball until an older age. Once you get to the higher levels, it doesn’t matter if you’ve played 800 travel ball games and are the most drilled and aware player on the field. At high collegiate levels and pro all the players are incredible athletes with physical skills required that no amount of games at a high level can compensates for. I do agree with you that for players that lucked into a good coach and a good program, and can afford to spend a ton of money that the experience can be absolutely wonderful. And if the goal of the program is to make lifelong fiends, enjoy experiences, and have fun that’s fantastic. But to say that’s the only way to have future success is to be part of a $15k a year program is flat out wrong and part of the problem at hand.

Last year was a breath of fresh air. I think they can continue to push a more active and exciting game. I really like the strike appeal rule they used in AAA last year. I think they need to find a way to minimize the strikeouts and get the ball in play a little more often. Anything to continue to encourage the running game would be great. I’ll get roasted for saying this, but I like the idea of being able to steal first base.

The audience won’t change until the product becomes more entertaining. I’m a baseball ell nut and could easily get bored out of my mind watching games the last two decades. Last year was finally a step in the right direction. They need to not rest on their laurels but continue to push forward and make the game more exciting. They need to market the hell out of their stars, market how fast the game actually is, highlight the athleticism, let the kids play and express themselves, and do anything they can to get people into the stadiums to experience the beauty and uniqueness of the game.

Man. On my phone I get 100 invisible ads per post and am constantly redirected. I try to go back and edit but it’s maddening.

Nah. Just play up an age group (or two). Kid will be pushed and play players much better than anyone in the country the same age. Don’t have to go anywhere. Heck, could even do rec if one’s ego could handle it. Doing things cause you think “you gotta do it” is a terrible reason to do anything. Want to be seen. Put something that’s worth seeing on video and and knock down doors. Even if you “are being seen” and aren’t good, it doesn’t do anything except push you further down the list. And hell yea. These boys are awesome and freakishly similar looking lol.