Passan On The Rise Of TJ Surgery

[Can_of_corn]

But first a graph, who doesn't like a graph?

http://sports.yahoo.com/news/how-mlb-s-elbow-epidemic-is-mowing-through-young-pitchers-and-has-no-solution-023608037.html

Compounding the percentages, the league believes a rookie pitcher had somewhere in the neighborhood of a 15 to 20 percent chance of blowing out by the end of his first major league season.

Those in the medical research group have yet to find a commonality among the patients....Of the 77 pitchers whose fastballs have exceeded 100 mph since 2008, 19 have undergone Tommy John ? about 25 percent, exactly in line with the rest of the major leagues.

The real question to me is how much can MLB do, when a lot of the damage has already occurred before these kids sign their first contract?

[25 Nuggets]

I wonder if the increase in injuries is a myth -- just that the increase is in surgeries to fix the injuries. "Back in the day" a ton of pitchers got hurt and simply flamed out.

[Can_of_corn]

I wonder if the increase in injuries is a myth -- just that the increase is in surgeries to fix the injuries. "Back in the day" a ton of pitchers got hurt and simply flamed out.

You certainly didn't have anyone blow out the elbow twice.

[weams]

Martin Perez to have TJ.

[Moose Milligan]

Jose Fernandez has to have it and all of a sudden this is a big deal. Some reliever for the Padres you've never heard of and this stuff never gets brought up.

I don't really see the issue here. It's going to happen. Throwing a baseball overhand is an unnatural motion, the amount of stress it puts on your arm is immense. Most pitchers are going to have some type of arm issue along the way, it's just a matter of when. It's why those college softball pitchers can throw for days and days and not have the same type of issues...throwing underhand doesn't produce nearly the amount of stress that overhand does. Your arm naturally swings that way to begin with.

[PaulFolk]

Jose Fernandez has to have it and all of a sudden this is a big deal. Some reliever for the Padres you've never heard of and this stuff never gets brought up.

People have been talking about this all year, long before Fernandez got hurt. There was a whole rash of pitchers going down with TJ surgeries right around Opening Day (Parker, Beachy, Medlen, etc.).